An award-winning Wembley author this week told the Brent & Kilburn Times about her excitement at hitting international shelves for the fifth time.

Rayner Tapia’s new science fiction novel The Magnificent Reveal is now available in bookstores across the UK, Europe and in the USA, where talks of adapting the books for film are in process.

The mother-of-three, who lives in Langham Gardens, said her book is already being welcomed abroad.

“I was in Spain on holiday recently,” she told us, “and it was very good to hear people knew about my book over there. It’s all very exciting.”

Ms Tapia, who has multiple sclerosis but says she doesn’t like to dwell on it, fell into writing by accident when she gave up a job in the City after her third son AJ was born prematurely.

Her books tell the story of two principal characters, brothers Tom and James McGuire, and their adventures.

Her publisher insisted The Magnificent Reveal couldn’t be released under its original title, The Final Nemesis – because it wanted to keep the door open for further stories.

In The Magnificent Reveal, 20-year-old James embarks on a journey to bring his brother back to Earth. The pair and their fiesty scientist friend Amber Rawlings battle powerful demons along the way.

The first book, Bard of Typheousina, was followed by Morkann’s Revenge and then The Dream Catcher, which won the North American Book Entries (NABE) Pinnacle award for best juvenile fiction in 2012. Her fourth book, the Last Enchantment, picked up the NABE winner for best sci-fi in 2015.

Rayner was also nominated for the Circle of Honour Ring of Books Award 2017 for three of her books. And she was asked by All Star Books to showcase her work at the LA Times Festival of Books last year.

As reported in the Brent & Kilburn Times in March last year, Ms Tapia has been signed up by American publisher Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Agency, which also has an eye on turning one of her novels into a film.

She told us movie plans were “moving along, slowly,” adding the film would be mainly based on one novel, but that its makers were planning to draw on the whole series.