“A lot of people’s perception of a writer is someone who wafts around in this lovely dress, waiting for the muse to strike,” says Della Galton.

Crikey, if even half of what she’s just told me about how hard she works to make a respectable living is true, I’m surprised the nation isn’t littered with typewriters draped in emaciated corpses.

“I work 60 hours a week,” says Della, outlining a giddying round of bashing out short stories (chances are if you read woman’s magazines it’s one of hers that’s entertained you), writing erotica, teaching creative writing at weekly classes, at a writing school in Wales, critiquing, being an agony aunt for Writer’s Forum magazine, judging competitions, and tweeting, Facebooking and blogging about her latest book, Ice And A Slice.

Oh yes – and walking Seamus, her gorgeous Irish wolfhound, who is quite possibly the largest and soppiest dog in Dorset.

“Funnily enough, on Facebook recently, someone asked a writer how much they earned for a short story,” she says.

“They reckoned it was about £1,000. If only. There’s an awful lot of markets that still pay £100 and have done for ten years. It must be the only job in the world where they tell YOU what they’ll pay. Imagine a plumber doing that.”

She hasn’t been a plumber but she used to work as a manager at Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water company before deciding to write full-time.

“I was going out with this guy in 1987 and he decided we didn’t have enough in common and should do something together, so we chose to do this creative writing class,” she remembers.

“I was hooked from the first session.”

One of the students had sold her 27th story to the new-defunct Loving magazine and Della resolved to do the same.

“I wrote an issue-lead story called Second Chance, about a girl who backs out of having an abortion,” she says.

“I think they paid me £28! I went and bought six copies of the magazine. When the newsagent asked me why, I said it was because I wanted to read it six times.”

That thrill has never gone away although Della has switched to novel writing because ‘an awful lot of people think you’re not a proper writer unless you’ve had a novel published. I decided to try and get a novel published so that I didn’t feel sub-standard as a short-story writer.’ She did and is now busy promoting what she hopes is the book that will finally put her novel on the map.

“Ice And A Slice was inspired by the fact that half of my family are alcoholics,” she says.

“Loads of my family have died of alcoholism and it’s quite scary.”

The main character in the book is SJ who we first meet in hospital suffering with alcohol poisoning and the story explains what happened before she arrived there.

“I like writing issue-lead stuff and moving people,” says Della.

“It’s quite dark but funny, the character is scatty and completely in denial, but she’s the best character I’ve ever written by far. My agent says I’ve found my voice at last.”

Skimming through the first chapter she could be right; the words fall off the page like pieces of well-cooked lamb from the bone.

“I read all the time and if I’m not into it from the first page then forget it,” she says, explaining why the book starts with a bang. She’s had more than 30 five-star Amazon reviews both in the UK and USA.

“I think – I hope – this is the one!” she says. If not she will certainly write another, and more short stories and maybe some journalism too because: “I am a writer.”

She is. A proper one. And how many of us would like to be able to say that?

  • dellagalton.co.uk