By day Louise West can be found teaching classes and setting homework for pupils at a South Holland primary school.
But the 33-year-old teacher from Holbeach is now leading a double life as a horror writer after publishing her first-ever book of short stories.
Strange Ideas: Death, Destiny and Decisions is a collection of five short stories exploring subjects including life after death, omens and celebrity culture.
The book is available from Bookmark in The Crescent, Spalding, and Louise said: “I’ve always been a writer but teaching took up a lot of my time until I changed my job and was able to explore more.
“My first short story called Late: A Ghostly Tale was written in autumn 2012 and when I self-published it on a website, people who read it said the story was quite good.
“It had more than 1,000 downloads and it was then that I thought of bringing it out in paperback for people who want to read it but don’t have the internet.”
Louise, who writes her stories at weekends and in school holidays, is currently working on her first novel called The Hungry Man but hasn’t ruled out publishing another collection of scary short stories in the future.
She said: “The feedback I’ve had is that people love the stories and want more of them but I have to be organised and disciplined in writing them. “The day job is the most important thing and the children I work with come first.”