A hospital laboratory manager who admits to rarely reading as a child has signed a publishing deal on the strength of his first ever novel.

Ken Leonard, laboratory manager in the clinical prosthetics centre at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, turned his hand to writing children's fiction last year - and struck gold at his first attempt.

Uncle Simon Undercover tells the story of Ben who is forced to spend the summer with his boring uncle, only to find he is in fact an international spy. But as the father of four teenage children admits, picking out his writing influences is a pretty tall order.

"To be honest I didn't have much interest in books as a boy," said the 45-year-old.

"My dad was a great story teller and I like to think I carried on that tradition with my children."

Spurred on by his two sons, James and Robert, it took Ken only six weeks to complete the book.

"I got the idea and just went head long into it," he said.

"I started just for fun but when it got to the stage where my boys were waiting for me to print off the next page and were passing it around their friends it encouraged me to try to get it published."

After failing to attract the interest of a couple of the bigger publishing houses, the manuscript lay in a drawer for several months until a friend persuaded him to try his luck with smaller companies.

It was eventually snapped up by Nightingale Books, an imprint of publishers Pegasus Elliot Nightingale and was released on June 28.

To mark his success Ken is now planning to set up a book stall at St Luke's Hospital, Bradford, and donate the proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Relief.

He will also be visiting children's wards at Bradford Royal Infirmary to present copies of Uncle Simon Undercover to young patients.