THE vivid recollections of her past has served author Lilian Harry very well in the present.

As a very small child she was brought up in Gosport in the war years. And it is those memories that have provided the springboard for 14 novels.

Her latest book, Under the Apple Tree (Orion £9.99), has just been published and on Friday she was busy signing copies at Book Stop in Tavistock.

?I wanted to write about the war. I have very vivid memories or being a small child and being in the air raids.

?I was originally asked to do six books although I felt that four would be all the market could take. Now I?m writing my fifteenth ? and all but one of them has had a wartime setting.?

Lilian also writes as Donna Baker and says in total she has written more than 60 books ? ?One for every year of my life!?

?I have good recall but I do research. One of the advantages was that I left the area that I write about when I was 22 and came to Tavistock ? so my memories are fixed in amber.?

Now living at Yelverton Lilian says she always wanted to be a writer.

?As a child I was telling myself stories all the time. I had this on-going story in my head, and if I was sent to the shops I?d often forget what I was sent for!?

She knew she wanted to be an author even as a young child.

?But it is not something you can do when you leave school.?

She wrote in her spare time and began writing features as a freelance.

?I had been writing in my spare time and came to realise that if you don?t do what you really want to do, instead of talking about it, you may never achieve your ambition.?

She worked for the Civil Service before becoming a full-time author.

?I worked with them for three times ? they were the only people that would employ me! I worked in a fish and chip shop. That was fun but hard work.?

She believes she has been lucky to be a successful novelist.

?When I started writing 500-word features you learn to write tightly ? every word counts. That is still the same writing a novel.?

Admirers of her work say the books are easy to read.

?I?m not trying to be clever, just tell a story. It is the characters that are important. It is how they react that turns the story and drives it along.

?My characters are ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances and that is part of the appeal.?

In Under the Apple Tree, set in Portsmouth, two women who have suffered the loss of a loved one join a team of WVS workers in the time of the blitz.

?They are ordinary people ? it is their circumstances that have extended them and that is part of the appeal.

?Girls who had sheltered lives suddenly realise that there is another world. They can go out and do things that they can see to be worthwhile.?

As a writer Lilian is always open to inspiration.

Recently abseiling down Plymouth Civic Centre for charity she suffered such fear she imagined it might be the same as someone diagnosed with cancer.

?I was terrified. But I saw the rope as a lifeline of chemotherapy and I drew that analogy.?

She raised £1,000 for the abseil, but wanted to put her literary skills to work on the experience and wrote a feature for Saga magazine.

?If I see something that affects or impresses me I want to write about it.?

She likes to share her emotions and enthusiasms with the reader.

?You dream of success. You never really think it will happen. You just hope. I thought how lovely it would be to have a book in my hand that I wrote. I never thought it would happen.?

Lilian?s next novel, Dance Little Ladies, set in Gosport, is published in June.