I'M not sure many people would thank their friend for sending them an unsettling image in a text.

For writer, Laura Purcell, it was the catalyst for a book deal with one of the biggest publishers in the country.

That's Bloomsbury, the publishers of the Harry Potter books, who liked Laura's novel The Silent Companions so much, they decided it should the first on their new Raven Books imprint.

"I've written a couple of historical fiction novels previously," Laura begins, "and so when my friend saw a mysterious object at a country house, she sent me a picture of it and asked me what it was.

"I had no idea myself so I did a bit of research and discovered it was a Silent Companion. If I was to describe it to someone I would say it's a bit like someone has painted an eerie portrait and stuck it on a bit of wood. It originally comes from the Illusionist art movement which was based in Amsterdam in the 17th Century. No one really knows what they were for. Either some kind of screen or possibly just a practical joke to make people jump. Some people think they're beautiful but I thought it looked rather terrifying."

At the time Laura was having difficulty writing the third in her series of historical novels and with her husband a big fan of Stephen King, and intrigued by the Silent Companion, she set about writing her own Gothic chiller.

"I just fancied the challenge of writing something different," she adds. "I started by reading lots of Gothic novels and then set about writing the story."

In The Silent Companions, newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s crumbling country estate, The Bridge.

With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband’s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure – a Silent Companion – that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself.

After completing the book, Laura sent it out to an agent, who in turn sent it to a number of publishers, three of which wanted to sign her up.

"It was the proper stuff of dreams," Laura grins. "I had moved to Colchester nine years ago and was working at the borough council but when I got the two-book deal with Bloomsbury I was able to quit my job and write full time."

Born in Basildon but raised in Billericay, Laura went to Chelmsford County High School for Girls but didn't go on to university, preferring to continue working at the place where her Saturday job was, Waterstones in Chelmsford.

"I know it sounds a little silly," she smiles, "but I really wanted to work with books and being a bookseller was the next best thing to being a writer."

It was also the place where she met her husband.

"I was upstairs in children's fiction," she continues, "and he was downstairs with the rest of general fiction."

So she'll be on more than familiar turf when she visits Waterstones in Colchester on October 23 to do a talk and signing.

"Since it came out," Laura adds, "there have been some rather nice reviews and comparisons to Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, which obviously I was delighted with."

The Silent Companions is out now from Raven Books. Laura will be at Waterstones, Colchester, on Monday, October 23, from 7pm, doors open at 6.30pm. Tickets are priced £2, including complementary wine and nibbles, available in advance from the High Street store on 01206 561307.