It was always my ambition to be a writer. It outlasted my other ambitions (ballerina, dairy farmer) and other careers - carer for young disabled, social worker, optician's assistant, secretary, and PR executive.

I've written stories ever since I could write. My first novel was 100 pages long, written in biro in a couple of exercise books, at the age of 13, and only my sister was allowed to read it.

By my twenties, I was seriously writing a book. I'd heard how difficult it was to get published, and how you should never send the whole manuscript, only a couple of chapters as a taster. So I was caught out when, having sent three chapters of my first adult novel to Penguin books, an editor wrote back and asked to see the rest of it. I had to ask her to wait six months because I hadn't written it yet!

That book went in the bin; it wasn't very good. And the next one went in the drawer. But the one after that got published, and won an award. Now I've had ten books in print - and gone out of print. And I thought it was finished - been there, done it - and assumed God meant me to do something else.

Two years ago, though, my husband's nephew who works for Oasis India, a charity for the poor and marginalised, asked if I would go out to Mumbai and see their  work and maybe write a book about it.

I didn't think people would want to read a book about poverty. But I wanted to go.

I thought I was prepared for it - I've seen the documentaries on TV. But nothing prepared me for the sight of hundreds and hundreds of people living alongside the main city roads, or in slums with 16 toilets for 25,000 people, or young girls in brothels who had been tricked by the offer of jobs in the city and a better life, or children living on the railway lines, or families decimated by Aids.

I came home and cried. For weeks. I was completely disorientated.

Then I started to write. I wrote the words these incredible survivors had had the courage to confide in me, a stranger from a comfortable country the other side of the world. These people had not only survived: they'd discovered something precious and valuable about life. I felt they had so much to teach us - to teach me - and I wanted them to have a voice. I called the book ‘Finding Oasis'.

Writing books is teamwork: I found a literary agent, whose job is to find a publisher, and she was optimistic - but after 11 months the book was still on her desk; she hadn't sent it out. So I took it back, and prayed, and kept knocking on doors but not getting any response.

Finally, I felt sure that what I should do was use the current technology and put the book out as an e-book on the Internet. People could pay a small amount to download it, read it on their computer screen or print it out, and all the money could go to Oasis India, with no go-betweens making a profit.

I already had a blog - an on-line journal which anyone could Google up and read - called christianbutsane and was confident that at least some people would read ‘Finding Oasis' if it was out there on a website. The only problem was - I didn't have the technical know-how to set up a website or publish an e-book. I hadn't a clue how to do it.

I was praying about this before coming to church one Sunday in December 2007. The first person I saw when I walked into church was Andy Wilson. I asked how he was, and he said he'd been up half the night redesigning the church website ......!

He couldn't do anything till after Christmas, he said - but he lied. Before the tinsel was taken down, my website was up and running, complete with the blog and the e-book, and it's growing week by week now.

I'm asking God to bless this project and everyone who gets to read ‘Finding Oasis'. I want them to meet the people I met and hear what they have to say.

If you would like to do that, I invite you to log on to the site clarenonhebel.com and start reading. And thank you for listening. And thank you, Andy.