Borrowed Light is the fourth novel to be published from the pen of Bradford's Joolz Denby, but it is one that she never thought would hit the bookshelves.

The performance poet and artist actually wrote the novel before last year's Billie Morgan, which earned her an Orange Prize nomination and made the literary establishment sit up and notice the former biker.

Like Billie Morgan, Borrowed Light is published by the independent press Serpent's Tail, a company Joolz decided to go with after she was less than satisfied with the publishers of her first two novels, Stone Baby and Corazon.

Joolz, 50, said: "Harper Collins wanted me to set my books in London, and wanted me to write detective novels."

Although often filed under "crime", Joolz's books are more concerned with the people who commit or are the victims of the events detailed in her novels.

After Harper Collins turned down Borrowed Light, Joolz shelved it and got on with writing Billie Morgan, which was picked up by Serpent's Tail.

She said: "When it didn't look like Borrowed Light was going to be published I had people contacting me asking what it was about, so I ended up e-mailing the whole manuscript off to anyone who asked. Word got about and I was deluged with requests, from Brazil to Australia and all points in between."

When Billie Morgan was nominated for the Orange Prize (it didn't win; the award went to Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, which is also published by Serpent's Tail) Joolz's new publishers asked if she had anything else up her sleeve.

She said: "I told them, yes, actually, I had a finished book. They had a look at it and I think that within 48 hours they'd decided to publish it."

Whereas Billie Morgan was set wholly in Bradford, Borrowed Light shifts location to the fictional Cornish surfing village of Polwenna.

A Bradford family the Sharps had packed up and headed south looking for a better life. Now Astra has had to drop out of her course at Bradford University to look after her sick mother, while her well-meaning but useless hippy dad tries to keep the peace among the siblings, the warring twins Gwen and Lance and toddler Git.

Although Astra is dating a local boy, she only has eyes for god-like surfer Luke, a rich boy who spends the summers in Polwenna.

Then Astra's old friend Con comes down from Bradford to open a beach cafe in Polwenna, and life seems pretty good.

Until, that is, Con's beautiful femme fatale of a sister Angel comes to visit, and her machinations cast a shadow over the idyllic Cornish village, with things rapidly spiralling into the psychological collapse that Joolz has made her trademark.

Although not a real place, Polwenna is based on somewhere very much like it, where Joolz has visited regularly for more than two decades.

To immerse herself in Cornish village life she also spent three months living there as preparation for writing the book.

Joolz said: "Borrowed Light is a very special book to me, particularly as I thought at one point that it would never get published.

"I'd been told by my previous publishers that the descriptions in the book were 'too poetic', if that can be possible, and that there were worries that it might offend the type of people who do aspire to have a second home in Cornwall - they don't come off too well in the novel.

"People often talk about moving away from where they live, and very often think moving to the seaside will solve all their problems.

"The thing with problems is that no matter where you go you tend to take them with you like a rucksack, so not only do you have the stress of starting a new life, you also have to deal with the problems you had before, and that combination sometimes proves too much for people.

"I think the message of the book is that it's fine to want to relocate to somewhere else, but make sure you sort out all your issues before you go or they'll just end up doubling."

Meanwhile, Joolz is continuing to work on her fifth novel, provisionally titled Wild Things, which concerns a feral child and the effect he has on the people who try to bring him to civilisation.

Borrowed Light is released in paperback by Serpent's Tail on February 23, priced at £8.99.