A RIBBLE Valley musician has juggled raising a family with publishing her first novel.

Tara Guha, who grew up in Mellor and Whalley, won the 2014 Luke Bitmead Bursary award and as a result her novel Untouchable Things was published this week.

The bursary was set up in memory of Luke Bitmead, who was the first novelist to be published by Legend Press, after his sudden death in 2006 aged 24.

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Miss Guha said the book was a psychological thriller about relationships between friends and their consequences.

She said: “I’m really fascinated with what makes us tick and how we act in groups because we do change and adapt when around different people.

“It’s about a collection of friends, which revolves around the power of one of the characters, Seth, who has a great impact on the group.”

Published by Legend Press, the novel is based in London during the 1990s and follows an art group called ‘Friday Folly’.

The book tells the story of each of the friends’ perspectives.

Miss Guha said: “ It looks at how the characters in this group can cope with the different situations and I really wanted to explore this and see how much they could take.”

The Bursary only accepts authors who have not had novels published previously, mainly those who have personal or financial circumstances which makes them hard to focus on writing as a carer.

Miss Guha said writing the novel started when she had her first child, Leela, nine.

She said: “Having a baby got me writing really. People think once you have a baby any me-time you have is over but I still wanted something to do for myself.

“I was blissfully naive about how hard it was to write, and had a first draft within nine months but soon saw the challenges that lay ahead.

“When I had my second child, Evie, who’s six, I had next to no time to write it.

“Family became my priority and I kept coming back to it and over a period of nine years I had it written.

Miss Guha, who now lives in Skipton, was announced as one of the finalists last year and was awarded publication and a £2,500 cheque at a ceremony at the Betsey Trotwood pub in London.

She said: “ It’s a strange experience having something you wrote out there for the world to see, it’s a feeling of exposure.”

Untouchable Things is available at legendtimes group.co.uk/legend-press/books.