AUTHOR Jane Lark has overcome dyslexia and illness to write romantic novels and now one has been shortlisted for a top award.

Mrs Lark, 50, who lives in Poulshot, near Devizes, is in the running to win the Romantic Novelists Association's historical romantic fiction novel of the year.

She said: "I am so excited. I have an illness called Ankylosing Spondylitis which also causes chronic fatigue and yet I am still working in a day job as well as writing and so it is really special to achieve this.

"I have been publishing through Harper Impulse for three years now and published 15 novels.

"I was 50 last November, and I have always wanted to write a novel, started and didn't finish a couple, but when I was 30 I put 'write a novel' on my to do before I'm 40 list."

Mrs Lark, who is married with a grown-up daughter, says she gets inspiration for her books by spending Sundays visiting National Trust and English Heritage sites and reading diaries and letters by people in the Georgian, Regency and Victorian periods.

She said: "The real life events in the literature of the period inspires elements and characters as much as reading the information on the internet about people today inspires my contemporary stories.

"A few of my contemporary books are based on places I've been to in the US. Las Vegas, New York and New Orleans. But over here Lacock, Devizes and Seend appear in the historical books.

"Jane Austen mentions staying in Devizes in her letters, and I have written one story about her life called Jane the Authoress so I read all her letters. Corsham is also a fabulous place for an inspiration for settings in books."

She said that writing is away for her to escape her illness and believes it adds to the emotional intensity of her books. She said: "I have had a lot of experiences throughout my life that other authors may be imaging but not know how it feels and illness and hardship can be hard to really understand without experience.

"A character in my latest contemporary novel Just for the Rush is knocked over by a car, which is where my illness began and the families reaction is all drawn from experience. So in an odd way. If I did not have the illness, and had not lived the life I have with all of its hardships, would my writing stand out as much as it does."

Her shortlisted novel The Rechless Love Of An Heir is available in paperback priced at £7.99 or as an ebook at £1.99