Venture down a small alleyway barely visible from the High Street in North Berwick and you’ll find a small cottage with an owl guarding the front door, says Deborah J Miller, giving me directions to her home. It is fittingly obscure for Scotland’s only female fantasy writer. And my subsequent journey to this literary bubble is spent conjuring up visions of a dark and mysterious dwelling.

The illusion quickly shatters. The owl is plastic. And the cottage, just a stone’s throw from the beach, nestles serenely amid quaint art galleries and posh ladies’ tearooms. Miller greets me with a smile, opening the door to an airy open-plan living room complete with trendy art photographs and well-placed baskets of pink potpourri. In fact, the only clues to Miller’s profession are a small dragon figurine perched on a coffee table and, of course, the contents of the bookshelf.

But Miller is used to delivering surprises. She published her debut novel five years ago under the pseudonym, Miller Lau, in the hope that an androgynous identity would help a lone woman in this profession.

Since then Miller, 43, has proven her ability to write, “hack and slash,” as she calls it, with considerable success. Blood and gore, including epic battle scenes, murder and even rape feature in Miller’s novels, which have won international acclaim.

This week Miller is penning the final words to her fifth novel, Swarmthief Treason. The submission deadline looms ahead of her appearance at the 57th British National Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow later this month. As she rushes through battle scenes at breakneck speed, she relishes writing what many readers still perceive as male books.

“Many readers still believe women can’t write nitty-gritty. But I can. And I enjoy it,” she says.

In her first published novel, Talisker, she writes in graphic detail about the murder of six young women in Edinburgh and an ancient prophecy in the fantasy world of Sutra which will lead to further deaths. Her current book features dark, tortured characters from the spirit world and the threatened destruction of the Earth.

Miller cheerfully admits she’s a grown-up tomboy with a lifelong dislike of Barbie. A few days ago she indulged in an internet test to establish which side of the brain she uses most. “It showed I was quite male in the way my brain works. I wonder if all female sci-fi and fantasy writers are the same,” she muses. “You have to fight harder as a woman to be recognised. Male writers easily attract a male audience whereas female writers have to fight for it. Also, publishers don’t often market women as the next big thing, because they hardly ever are. It’s very unlikely a female sci-fi writer will achieve J K Rowling status.”

Reaching the dizzy heights of Pottermania is not Miller’s dream, however. Her mission is to encourage more people to read fantasy, which she says is languishing in the literary ghetto, a victim of the book world’s snobbery. “People think we’re all geeks and nerds,” she says.

Miller, described by her friend and fellow writer Andrew Wilson as “strong, funny and indomitable”, is a living antidote to misconceptions about sci-fi/fantasy followers. Today she is dressed in a white long-sleeved T-shirt and red trousers; no black robes or piercings in sight. She was never a black-clad Goth — they didn’t exist in her day — but she admits to being a hippy teen. She does not own 10 cats, rather two plump and placid corgis snoozing comfortably on the sofa.

Married to Bill, an environmental scientist with an Edinburgh consultancy, Miller has a 22-year-old daughter, Tiffany. The closest she has come to role-playing games is Final Fantasy which she enjoys on her PlayStation.

Gender and stereotypes are just two of many hurdles she has overcome. As a child she discovered the joy of reading — during the quiet hour her family insisted upon after dinner — and, at Boroughmuir High school in Edinburgh, she developed a flair for English.

“I was looking for something to absorb me. I learned in that short space of time that an hour spent with a book could take you anywhere. I had a sense of excitement about reading books, although I have to admit I was reading Enid Blyton,” she says, grinning.

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