The Bookseller - Author Interviews - Ann Cleeves | I just didn’t fit in, I heard someone on the bus saying I looked like I’d just come off the farm'

It's hard to believe that Ann Cleeves, the bestselling author of some of the UK's most beloved crime series-her scruffy, middle-aged detective Vera brought to life by Brenda Blethyn; Shetland's Jimmy Pérez immortalised by Douglas Henshall-only became a full-time writer in 2006. She'd written more than a dozen books by then, but was also working as a reader development officer in libraries, to keep the money coming in.

Cleeves is in the Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books offices today, where the publisher is about to kick off celebrations to mark the 30 years she's been with them. Thirty years, six million copies sold worldwide, Pan Macmillan says; 38 weeks in the UK top 10, millions of viewers of her television adaptations, and a raft of reissues and appearances planned over the next six months. The earlier half of those 30 years, however, wasn't quite so gilded.