“If anyone ever said to me ‘what’s the one thing you want to do’ it was write a book.”

It’s been a long, hard slog, with plenty of ups and downs, but Heidi Perks has finally seen her dream come true.

The mum-of-two, from Southbourne, is now the very proud author of Beneath the Surface, a family psychological thriller about a teenager who returns home to find her whole family missing.

Growing up, Heidi loved reading and writing, but it wasn’t until she was on maternity leave with her youngest child that she took redundancy from her career as a marketing director in 2012 and decided to concentrate on her passion.

“I just thought I would give it a go,” she remembers.

“I would always come up with a story and see how far I could get it, then used to think ‘I don’t know whether I could make a whole book out of it’.

“This one I came up with the idea because of this thought I used to have when I was a child, which was what would I do if my mum suddenly turned out to be something different?

What would I do if she did something that was so out of character?

“I came up with the thinking of what would you do as a child if you came home and found your mum had just disappeared?”

Once Heidi got started on the idea, she found it increasingly hard to step away from the computer.

“You’re mid-sentence, standing up from the chair to go and do the school run, not knowing when you go back,” she smiles, “the days and the weeks just go.”

But it wasn’t always that easy for Heidi. She paid to have the first book she wrote professionally critiqued and was told that, while she had something, it wasn’t going to be with that story.

“The thought of starting again is really draining,” she says.

“But when you get into it, it was okay. I constantly learn more and more about it over the years. The first words I had written were probably horrendous.”

It took Heidi around five months to come up with the first draft of Beneath the Surface, followed by months of re-writing before she found an agent around 18 months ago and began sending the book out to publishers.

While the feedback was good, there was a general feeling that the story didn’t fit the exact genre the publishers were looking for.

“Everybody is looking for the next Gone Girl,” says Heidi.

“It was a thriller or a drama, but it wasn’t that hardcore thriller that everyone wanted. I decided to write another book, but I kept coming back and I wasn’t happy not doing anything with it because so many people love it.”

Eventually, Heidi found a new publisher, Red Door, which takes more of a shared approach with the author. Heidi had to take on some of the costs herself, but it meant she had more control over the marketing of the book, and the cover.

“They loved it,” she says.

“It was last summer that they said yes, so it’s taken a little while to get to this point. But getting it through the door and saying ‘oh that’s my book’ was a really lovely moment.

“There’s been lots of lovely moments along the way, and that was a highlight.”

The book is now available on Amazon, paperback and Kindle, and in local branches of Waterstones. The reviews have been good, and Heidi has already started working on her next novel, a psychological thriller.

It’s been a long road to achieving her dream, but Heidi is adamant that perseverance is the key to success.

“There are so many ups and downs, things can happen along the way – it’s not a straight forward journey at all,” she says.

“This is what I wanted to be doing and my hope is that I will make it into a career and that I will be putting a book out every year, but who knows?

“It’s an exciting time at the moment.”