A STOURBRIDGE teacher who dreamed of becoming a writer has been given a dose of much-needed good luck - just months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour which threatens to kill her before her 40th birthday.

Katie Smith, aged 31, has won a children's book writing competition, launched on the Lorraine Kelly show on ITV, which invited budding storytellers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved authors Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and David Walliams.

Katie's story The Pumpkin Project was announced as the winner of Lorraine's Top Tales live on the Lorraine show last Thursday (May 12) - and the unpublished author, who beat off competition from around 3,000 entrants, will get to see her story in book stores in October.

She said: "It's amazing. I can't really believe it's happened."

The win, however, is bittersweet for Katie who was diagnosed with a brain tumour last autumn.

Having left Holly Hall Academy in Dudley where she'd worked as a teacher in the English department for eight years, she'd enjoyed a dream honeymoon in the United States with husband Luke and just started a new job at Wyre Forest School when she started having headaches.

Tests later revealed a large tumour on her right frontal lobe and brain surgery followed and she said: "They managed to remove it but they can't get rid of microscopic cells.

"I've been told it'll come back and probably get worse and it's 50-50 as to whether I'll reach 40."

She added: "Emotionally I've gone through a bit of a roller coaster. I have days when I feel fine - and on those days I enter competitions and write books; then there's days I think this is really bad."

To top it off, Katie has also had to cope with the shock cancer diagnosis of her mum who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She said: "It's been a real hard six months for the family. The competition has just been something that's taken my mind off things and made things a bit more positive."

Katie said she decided to enter the book competition as both she and her mum had "flirted with the idea of getting something published" but she never dreamed she'd win.

The judges, however, loved her original tale - about a little girl who grows a pumpkin in her shed for a school project - and TV legend Lorraine Kelly described it as a "fantastic story - really imaginative".

She said: "It was really difficult to choose a winner as the standard of writing was so high but all the judges felt Katie Smith's story, The Pumpkin Project, stood out. I can't wait to see the finished book."

Katie Price, spokesperson for the Hachette Children’s Group which will publish the story under its Hodder Children's Books imprint, said: "The Pumpkin Project was accomplished in its overall polish and has the perfect mix of strong characterisation, a great story arc and a lovely moral."