How does one go about adapting a Margaret Atwood novel to the small screen?

"With great trepidation," laughs Tassie Cameron.

The 37-year-old screenwriter was brought in to pen The Robber Bride (CBC, Sunday at 8 p.m.) after a British writer wasn't able to come up with a workable script.

Cameron, who wrote the 2005 movie Cake starring Heather Graham and Sandra Oh and earned a 2004 Gemini for her work on CTV's The Eleventh Hour, took several months last year to come up with a first draft.

Cameron says she learned about how toxic female friendships can be as a teenager growing up in Ottawa, and for that reason The Robber Bride had long been one of her favourite books. But she also had to put aside the spectre of Atwood as "icon and a genius" before she could get to work.

"That involved losing some characters and adding a character to sort of stand in for the reader," she says.

Actor Shawn Doyle plays the addition, an ex-cop who takes the viewer through a complicated plot centred on the demise of main character Zenia, played by popular American actress Mary-Louise Parker.

Cameron says she was thrilled to see how Bride came to life in the hands of actors such as Doyle, Parker and Wendy Crewson. Even better, the original author also approves.

"About two weeks before we started shooting, I got a call from the producer saying Margaret had read it and that she liked it," she says. "And it was a glorious moment. It was a bells-ringing, angels-singing kind of moment."

The Peterborough-born Cameron, daughter of journalist Stevie and older sister of Playing With Matches author Amy, lived in Ottawa from ages 7-16 before her family decamped to Toronto.

She penned Cake to get into the Canadian Film Centre, going on to earn a Master's in film and cinema studies from New York University. She spent almost a decade working for HBO and in independent film before returning to Toronto. In addition to stints writing for Degrassi: The Next Generation and CBC's Tom Stone, Cameron has also co-created, co-written and executive produced the four-hour miniseries Would Be Kings airing this year on CTV.

Cameron is currently sequestered at a rented Guelph farmhouse tapping out a pilot for a show she pitched to executives at TNT in the U.S. It's a cop show with a female lead to be directed by Steven Bochco, and marks her first American gig.

Cameron says though she hasn't yet had a chance to experience the real "milk and honey" of Los Angeles, it is tempting. She already has an agent there and has been making regular visits, even writing The Robber Bride last year while hanging out in Venice Beach.

"I love Canada so I'm reluctant to make a permanent move," she says. "And I'm very proud of working here and hoping to be part of that new wave of Canadian writers and filmmakers."