When prize-winning novelist June Oldham decided to end her teaching career and focus on writing she knew it was a life defining moment.

In the 30 ensuing years the Ilkley author has had a dozen books published, most with a 'thriller' heart and aimed at the younger end of the market.

This month will see her latest creation Smoke Trail, the atmospheric tale of a teenager's search for her lost father, take her running tally up to 13.

Like most of her stories, June started the book with just the spark of an idea which had been niggling her.

She said: "I talk to myself when I start working on an idea, and for Smoke Trail I just had this feeling about a certain young girl who had lost her father, but the challenge was how to work it all out.

"I started looking through notes which I'd jotted down years ago and there was a bit about a burnt out car which I had seen on a beauty spot, just yards away from where people were picnicking, which had really spooked me.

"That went on to form a very important part of the book and the burning also gave me this idea of smoke and burning as the story's central image."

Set in a hamlet in the Yorkshire Dales, the novel details a dramatic two week period in the life of the young heroine, Cora.

Smoke Trail adds to the literary tradition of portraying the search for a mysterious father-figure, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dickens' David Copperfield and Iris Murdoch's The Good Apprentice.

June's research for the work has included days out with a sheep farmer and a visit to Keighley Fire Station, to make sure she got all of her blaze-related descriptions spot on.

"You have to get everything right," she says, "not just as a matter of profession-alism but also because you can be sure that someone will pick up on any inaccuracy."

The moor near Cora's home, where she spots the destroyed car which sparks the key chain of events, takes on a large, brooding presence in the book - almost like a living character.

For June, who used the haunting image of a long flooded town's re-emergence during a drought for her previous work. Undercurrents, landscape is a vital colour on the writer's palette. She said: "A lot of my books have been set up in the Dales and for this one I wanted somewhere she could wander alone and which had some kind of history.

"I ended up locating it in the area above Grassington, which I know very well and which has a rich lead mining heritage.

"As this girl turns 13 she longs so much to see the father who deserted her before she was born that she starts to connect every-thing around her to that.

"The story is really about a 'coming-of-age' fortnight which ends with Cora having to make a terrible choice.

"It was one of the quickest books I've ever written, I think it took me four months to finish the first draft.

"I had been going stale on an adult book so I put it to one side and very quickly found Smoke Trail - it is strange how the mind works."

Since dispensing with the day job, June has grown into the role of professional writer with relative ease, using her very own "artist's garret" to help the creative juices flow.

"When I started I would write in the dining room as people passed by," she said, "using an old Olivetti manual typewriter.

"But once the children grew up and moved on we had more space, and now I do all of my writing in the attic. It's my own room and I love it, I'm surrounded by all of my books and my own choice of wallpaper, which is very important!

"I'd always wanted to have a go, to see if I could do it and do it well, but I couldn't possibly teach at the same time.

"So I finished my job and we halved our income at one stroke, but never really struggled because we didn't want all ofthe things which nowadays seem so essential."

Husband Geoff took his own artistic leap of faith by becoming a professional actor some 20 years ago, and has enjoyed his own success on stage and screen.

June says the strength of her family, which includes son Clive and daughter Abigail, has helped her whenever the dreaded writer's block has threatened.

"Geoff and I support each other in what we do and the children have always been right behind us," she said.

Smoke Trail, published by Hodder Children's Books, is due to hit the shelves of bookshops around the country on April 18.