FORMER Masterchef winner Sue Lawrence is renowned as a food writer and TV chef, but now she is about to demonstrate a new talent - as a novelist.

Her debut, Fields of Blue Flax, a genealogical mystery set in the present and Victorian times, will be published by Glasgow-based Freight Books next month. Freight will also publish a second novel next year.

Ms Lawrence, who lives in Edinburgh, and who won the BBC Masterchef competition in 1991, said yesterday: "I've been starting to write fiction over the last six to eight years. My sister and I were researching our family history but we came to a standstill with our great grandmother. A little flame seemed to appear and I thought, that would be fascinating.

"My book is a genealogical mystery. The main protagonists are two cousins who investigate their family history, and it is slightly unusual in that it has two time-frames."

The cousins, Christine and Mags, uncover a forgotten relative, Elizabeth Barrie, who had been born 150 years earlier. Her origins are not what they seem to be, and the cousins gradually stumble across a shocking scandal within an outwardly respectable family.

"The Victorian part of the story goes backwards - it starts in 1888. goes back to 1870, and so on, as we gradually discover who Elizabeth really is," Ms Lawrence added. "It starts in Edinburgh, goes back to Dundee, which is where I am from, and then to Tannadice, a little village in Angus.

"The book isn't simply about family history. There is a lot about female jealousies and betrayal, and family secrets. There is a lot of dark stuff in there."

She said she had initially trained as a journalist, "but I found that the old habit of snapping things down as quickly as you can doesn't work in creative writing. You have to expand, rather than pare down.

"I attended a creative writing course at the university here: it was absolutely fascinating, being able to see the different writing approaches that writers have to take."

Years ago, she had tried her hand at writing children's books, but "nothing ever happened" to them. It was her dream "to tell a story, and get something out there, and I'm delighted it has finally happened."

She is also "absolutely delighted" that Freight has taken her second novel, which is "done and dusted" and also has a dual, part-historical narrative. Ms Lawrence has now begun work on a third book, which will be set in contemporary times.

* Sue Lawrence will talk about her novel at Aye Write! at Glasgow's Mitchell Library this Saturday at 3pm. Tickets £9