Former Chronicle reporter Nina Bhadreshwar is publishing her first crime novel. But her own life story is quite eventful - from an unlikely friendship with rapper Tupac to being held at gunpoint in Los Angeles...

I GREW up in Barnsley when it was a civic and wonderful community with a real sense of pride.

We were involved in the Mayor’s Parades, the fetes, gymkhanas, community theatre productions, church, the Temperance movement, playing out in the fields or on our bikes each night.

At twelve, I had an eating disorder and social anxiety. There’d been years of strikes, no electricity, bread, gas going off and then the Miners’ Strike.

I remember coming home while doing my O Levels, dodging riots, witnessing police brutality, blood on the streets. Then the mines closed. I was looking after my mum at that time as she was dying of cancer. It was the worst of times.

Stories and music were my escape. My primary school and Barnsley Library fuelled my love of books, stories and making up my own worlds.

I won English prizes across all the Barnsley primary schools and knew I wanted to write for a living. But it didn’t really seem possible.

I worked at the Chronicle during my university holidays and then completed my journalism training after graduating.

Back then, there was no internet and a story was down to solid, nose-to-ground graft.

It was a fantastic training ground for me. I learned it wasn’t so much about finding the answers as asking the right questions. Most of my stories were spiked by the news editor; rejection was an everyday reality. Being a reporter there helped me understand how communities are built, what holds them together.

Rave, graffiti, colour and sound helped me through those years it was like my senses were woken up and stayed jammed on full volume.

Jobless after leaving the Chronicle, I started my own arts and music magazine which became successful overseas.

And that’s what took me to California.

I had nothing to lose as a 24-year-old and running my business had taught me how to market stories and music together. I just transferred all the skills I’d learned about building and documenting community to the streets of South Central and East Los Angeles.

Tupac had been a penpal for a while but, when I got a job at Death Row Records, opposite his record company Interscope, I was determined to do something to help him.

I was doing stand-up comedy on the black comedy circuit for two years and sold a comedy screenplay. Actress Regina King and I co-wrote a screenplay too.

However, months followed of being harassed, stalked and threatened. I was lying in my studio flat with a broken leg when Oasis’ ‘Hello’ came on the radio: an accent like mine, waking me up in a wall of melody, telling me where I belonged. That’s all it took; Regina kindly bought me a one-way ticket back to Manchester airport.

I returned the day the Arndale Centre in Manchester was bombed, having escaped being helped at gunpoint and having my business seized.

My troubles weren’t over though. One of the people who had been stalking me in LA actually flew over to the UK to pick up where they left off.

It was one Barnsley police officer, PC Etheridge who intervened and stood up to one of these intimidators.

She was fearless and the police escorted him back to the airport. I think that WPC became my blueprint for DI Diana Walker, a character in my book.

I moved between temporary secretarial jobs while living in a terraced house with drug addicts as housemates,

I retrained as a teacher. I never knew what I would come home to: overdoses, the TV being pawned; the computer, fridge, bookcase... Anything.

If it had legs, it would end up in Cash Converters.

I never stopped writing though. I wrote every day: on the train or bus to my teacher placements, at weekends, anything just to keep myself sane and escape from my situation.

Finally, I got a teaching post in and never looked back. I kept writing while teaching for two decades, gradually getting back into music journalism, self-publishing books, restarting my magazine, living largely between Scotland and California.

I taught high school and mentored at-risk teens in foster care.

I’ve also completed postgrad work in creative writing and linguistics. The novel I completed during lockdown and the online MA in Crime Fiction at UEA helped gain me a prize and a publishing deal.

Even if I just sat writing in a shed for the rest of my life, I’d never use up all the inspiration I got from those dark days in Yorkshire and California.

n Nina will be talking about her novel ‘The Day of the Roaring’ at Waterstones, Orchard Square, Sheffield on Thursday at 7pm.