A WRITER who grew up in a Midland children’s home has told how battling cancer inspired her to write a series of books for teenage girls.

Malaika Rose Stanley’s book Skin Deep has just been published.

It is a special moment for the former Rednal Hill Primary School and Bournville Girls’ Grammar School pupil – she became a full time writer after developing cancer.

She overcome breast cancer 16 years ago.

But doctors then told her she had developed secondary cancer in the lymph nodes.

She then decided to give up her job as a special needs teacher and began to write full time.

“I knew that the only way I would be able to write was if I gave up my job completely,” says Malaika, who now lives in London, but taught at Cockshut Hill School in Yardley.

“It’s the perfect job as I can work it around my treatment.”

Malaika, who has two grown-up boys, has recently been told she is in remission, but still has to take monthly medication.