A decade on from the runaway success of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the fuss has died down and Lynne Truss has regained control of her life. As her new horror novel's published, Hannah Stephenson discovers why she's happier being out of the spotlight.

Just like her books, Lynne Truss is clever, droll and perfectly punctuated.

The writer, who became an unwitting star in 2003 thanks to her little book about punctuation - Eats, Shoots & Leaves - is today on a very different plane as she discusses her first novel in 10 years, a horror yarn.

Cat Out Of Hell is a Gothic horror novella with lots of funny bits, written as part of a series collaboration between horror film brand Hammer and Arrow books.

"I'm a fan of old classic Gothic style. I grew up with the Hammer films. We'd go to all-night horror flicks and think we were above it all, but as you get older, your imagination is much less robust in that way," she says. "Now, I'd never go to see a horror film unless I had to."

Her story concerns the mystery of a missing woman, an evil talking cat called Roger (who sounds like Vincent Price), a remote seaside cottage and an amiable retired librarian with a dog called Watson.

It begins as an academic recovering from the death of his wife goes through papers and manuscripts given to him by a colleague.

Through these, he is introduced to Wiggy, a man who says he has been visited several times by an evil talking cat called Roger, who claims to be a member of a feline conspiracy spanning centuries.

There's plenty of bloodthirsty goings-on, deaths and supernatural shenanigans, but much humour peppers the prose.

Truss, 58, seems glad to have left behind the tub-thumping writing for which she is most famous, firstly the punctuation book and later her examination of rudeness in the modern world in Talk To The Hand.

Her rise to fame began after she gave up her job as a sports writer in 2000, due to stress linked with the death of her sister.

A little while later, she made a programme about punctuation, and was then asked to write a book about it. Eats, Shoots & Leaves became an unexpected bestseller, selling more than three million copies worldwide, and made Truss a star and a millionaire.

"It took up about three years," she recalls of the furore which surrounded the book. "I had to keep touring and talking about it. It was a mad period.

"It was 'pinch yourself' stuff. I keep thinking, 'It did happen', but it all still seems very unlikely.

"While it was going on I did find it stressful, and I also thought, 'I'll be so happy when this is over'. I would say to people, 'This isn't going to last forever, I'll get through this', and I'm so happy that I've got past it."

Why did she find the success and fame so stressful?

"When something's as successful as that, people make assumptions about you," she says. "They start saying, 'Oh, you're only interested in the apostrophe', but I've always been interested in lots of things. I've had a very versatile career.

"I'd written novels, plays, I'd done sports writing, and there I was with what I thought was a fantastic portfolio of interesting things to write about.

"It was like I was deliberately scuppering my whole career, because suddenly people were thinking that I was only interested in punctuation. That was a bit dire for me, because I want to be in control.

"What was depressing was when people would say, 'I wrote this very carefully because you were going to read it and I hope there are no errors in it'.

"But I made a policy never to criticise anybody else's punctuation and I never have."

The daughter of a milkman and self-taught accountant, Truss grew up in a council house near Richmond, Surrey, in an environment where good manners were equated with not upsetting anyone.

She has said that when she was a child, she wanted to be invisible and tried to keep out of family rows.

She became a jobbing freelance journalist for newspapers and radio, and also wrote books. You can see why she was unprepared for her most celebrated title's overnight success both at home and in the US.

"When I wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, I lived in a very quiet world of correct stuff, because I worked in print. Most of the people I corresponded with were educated at the same time as I was and had the same rules," she observes.

Nowadays, punctuation inaccuracy doesn't bother her as much and she has avoided going on shows which require a talking head on the subject.

"I could see that there was a role that was open for me to be this kind of Barbara Woodhouse figure that turned up on telly and just told people off about their punctuation, which is something I absolutely didn't want to do."

Despite the circus which surrounded the book, she doesn't regret writing it.

"It set me up in lots of ways. I had much more money than I ever expected to make and actually, I still love the book. If I didn't, I'd feel very conflicted.

"The main thing was not to do more. Lots of people thought I should keep writing books which tap this same audience."

Talk To The Hand was the follow-up, which focused on the subject of rudeness within the modern world, and was again a bestseller.

After that, publishers wanted Truss to write other books on modern language but she refused.

She understands that she's still best known for Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but it doesn't worry her.

"I'm not ashamed of it. It was a phenomenon, but I felt it was up to me to make sure that it didn't ruin my life."

The last non-fiction book she wrote was Get Her Off The Pitch: How Sports Took Over My Life, in 2010, about her time as a sports reporter. She also writes a column for the Sunday Telegraph.

"There's been a weird diversion into my opinions and now I can get back to writing novels," she says, almost relieved.

She's just completed some radio monologues and hopes to write another supernatural novel with comedy weaved into it.

Truss, who is single, lives happily in a large house on the outskirts of Brighton with her dog, a Norfolk spaniel called Hoagy. She's obviously much happier staying out of the limelight.

"I've learned how to talk to an audience and I do monologues for radio, but I don't want to be mentioned on telly."

However, there have been moments of joy from the recognition, she recalls, such as the time she was watching a David Attenborough TV programme on pandas.

"There was a bit where the panda put down a bamboo cane, walked off and David Attenborough said, 'So you might say he eats shoots and leaves'. That was nice."

With only her dog for company, she hints that she's perhaps not settled down with a partner because she's too much of a romantic.

"I'm not a loner, but the problem is that I want things to be perfect and lovely and exciting. I know people who go out to get a partner in quite a practical way.

"I still hope I'll meet someone and fall in love, but I'm not waiting. I just get on with my life."

:: Cat Out Of Hell by Lynne Truss is published by Hammer, priced £9.99. Available now