A WOMAN has overcome a battle with cancer and severe dyslexia to produce a science fiction thriller.

Brenda Walker, 68, of Tophill, Portland, is celebrating the publication of Buzz, a tale of a tiny alien which enters people's bodies and can cause them to explode.

She overcame poor spelling through sheer determination and wrote the book to combat boredom while running a café.

It took her two-and-a-half years to pen the book, and another 26 to get it published.

Mrs Walker said: "I kept sending it to publishers and getting rejections, I even sent it to film producer Steven Spielberg in America but it came back unopened, so I decided to publish it myself, but had to save up.

"It cost £1,200 but I had to take a chance."

She added: "I made some changes before it went to print because I'd learned a lot about life since 1982, having been divorced and remarried. It was well worth it and I hope to inspire others, particularly those with dyslexia, to give it a go."

Now her thriller, printed by Arima Publishing, is available through Amazon. Written under the penname Sharleen Davidson, it is set in Dorchester, Weymouth and Africa.

She said: "It's about a tiny creature that injects itself into people. If it gets in their dietary system they're OK but once its in the blood system, they explode.

"I'm not sure where the idea came from but I was married to a pathologist, my first husband, for 13 years.

"It was all handwritten, I did it while running a new café, Breakaway, on Portland in 1980. I was bored stiff waiting for customers, they did eventually come of course.

"I turned the cafe from nothing into something and left after three years."

Mrs Walker underwent a serious cancer operation in 2001 and while she has recovered, she is now unable to walk far and is mostly wheelchair-bound.

Just before Christmas she embarked on a second book Needlepricks, a tale of drugs, sex and violence and she is hoping the first book will pay for the second.

But in the meantime she is just delighted to have proved the people wrong who laughed at her for being unable to spell at school.

She said the key to getting past her dyslexia was through 'clenching her teeth' and she is now putting posters up around the town to promote her book.