London, Jan. 9 (Reuters): Surrounded by best-sellers in the bookshop where he works, Stuart Hill spent years trying in vain to write his own masterpiece.

Forever encircled by the literary triumphs of others, the frustrated novelist was on the point of giving up.

Then, after staging a ceremonial burning of all his rejection slips from unimpressed publishers, the soft-spoken Hill decided on one last throw of the literary dice.

Now, after two years spent tapping out a children?s fantasy on the bookshop computer when there were no customers around, he has hit the jackpot.

In a publishing industry revelling in hype, Hill is being hailed as the new J.K. Rowling and Hollywood is eager to film The Cry of the Icemark, a tale of werewolves and vampires being published tomorrow.

Determined to keep his feet on the ground, the 46-year-old plans to retain his ?11,000 a year job as bookshop assistant in Leicester.

But the debut writer, who looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights amid the ballyhoo, could end up ?250,000 richer after publishers from around the globe scrambled to buy the rights to his epic saga at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

?I have been completely overwhelmed by the attention. After 30 years of writing, I had decided this would be the last one. That helped me to relax and write the story I really wanted to. I threw everything into it ? vampires, werewolves and ghosts ? and had a great time writing it.

?I wrote quite a bit of it on the shop computer while sitting there in quiet moments between customers,? he said.

Bookshop colleagues convinced him to send the manuscript to publisher Barry Cunningham, who had launched Harry Potter?s creator Rowling on the road to literary stardom. He eagerly snapped up Hill, whose novel became the target of a bidding war.

?Now the French have taken it, the Australians, the Germans and the Japanese. It is coming out in the US,? said the bewildered author as he set out on the publicity treadmill. And there could be years under the media spotlight.