'I was told I was an idiot at school but now I'm a self-made millionaire and best-selling author'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

She's a self-made millionaire and celebrity agent who has worked with some of the UK's top soap stars. But in 2011 Stockport-born Melanie was driven by tragedies into making a career change.

Melanie, 45, says it was the death of her mum Mary in 2011, aged 52, and the loss of close friend that jolted her into pursuing her dream of becoming a writer. "I thought 'oh my god I'm going to die and it's not what I want to do.'" she told us.

In 2019 her first book Thunder Girls, about the rise and fall of a reunited eighties girlband inspired by her time working in music management after working behind the scenes on Top Of The Pops, was published and it was made into a play starring Coronation Street's Beverley Callard and Coleen Nolan.

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Melanie, whose clients include Emmerdale icon Clare King, EastEnders legend Gillian Taylforth, Dynasty glamazon Stephanie Beacham, Coronation Street and EastEnders' star Michelle Collins and Patsy Kensit, thought her first novel, which is now being re-released and written as a trilogy, would become her legacy after being made into a play derailed because of Covid. But in lockdown she went on to pen the glamorous bonkbuster thriller Ruthless Women, which became a number four Sunday Times hardback bestseller and an ebook bestseller in 2021, selling 250,000 copies and translated into eight languages.

She has now followed this with Guilty Women, her second novel about the cast of the fictional soap Falcon Bay. Melanie, who has put older women front and centre in her storytelling and in her work as an agent, is proud to be writing about a leading character who is 70 but is