A musician turned author from Beccles has been shortlisted for this year's UK Kindle Storyteller Award.
Ian W. Sainsbury has been selected by a panel of judges from Amazon to win their most prestigious prize for self-published authors, after writing his first ever thriller novel, 'The Picture on the Fridge'.
The novel tells a story about an 11-year-old girl who draws pictures for her family. Mr Sainsbury says: "She starts creating these amazingly detailed pictures well beyond her ability, of places she has never been and her family don't recognise.
"They turn out to be the scenes of murders in America where a serial killer is at large."
Mr Sainsbury currently lives in Beccles, and has previously worked as a musician, stand-up comedian, and circus performer. Despite this varied career, he has always aspired to become an independently published author.
He wrote his first book three years ago, and has since published a four part series and another trilogy on Kindle's Unlimited subscription service.
Mr Sainsbury said: "I found out a couple of weeks ago when the head of Kindle Direct Publishing called me. You normally only get a call from the boss if it's something very good or very bad, luckily it was the former.
"I had to sit on that for a while before anyone could know, I told my family obviously but that was all, it was really hard."
Ian lives on Alexandra Road with his wife and two children, who are 17 and 11.
He said: "I might have opened a very decent bottle of wine and had a quiet celebration that night."
Mr Sainsbury said he was excited for the awards night on October 14, and added he was looking forward to meeting the other writers.
He added: "There's never been a better time to be a writer. If you have a story you're burning to write, my advice would be to do it. Get it out there."
'The Picture on the Fridge' is available on Amazon.
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