I signed up to my first writing course just before my second son was born seven years ago. Initially I wrote psychology related non-fiction but in recent years have moved onto fiction. To celebrate turning 40 a couple of years ago I applied to do an MA in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University. I was nervous about doing this, having not written much fiction before, but I absolutely loved it and am mourning the loss of it now it's over.
A novel I wrote during the course was long-listed for David Higham Associates Literary Agency inaugural Open Day. I subsequently pitched it to literary agents and although it had some 'full' requests and nice feedback it ultimately wasn't taken up. I will go back to it and do a serious re-write at some point but I am currently working on a new novel which is an ‘up-lit’ contemporary women's fiction with a historical element.
I like to write stories about people in difficult situations and enjoy finding new ways to describe the nuances of human micro experiences. One of my short stories Therapeutic Truths was recently long-listed for the RNLI Words Magazine and my first children’s picture book, The Hospital Hoppities, was published with Eyrie Press earlier this year.
I have written psychology non-fiction for magazines and blogs including The Green Parent, Complex Child, and motherhoodtherealdeal.com, and contributed to chapters in two non-fiction books Managing Anxiety with CBT for Dummies and Clinical Psychology: Topics in Applied Psychology.
I have also written a book for new mums Self-Kindness for Mums and supervised a doctoral thesis based on the book which was developed into an online self-help intervention. The paper resulting from that research is currently under revision with the journal Mindfulness.
I hold an MA in Contemporary History and an ITEC Diploma in Body Massage and have previously worked as a residential social worker, clinical studies officer, research worker and for about three hours as a glass collector (that last one didn't end well...in a crash, smash, crash, smash... don't bother coming back sort of way...)
My writing Twitter handle is @CharlHJones where you can discover content veering from writing related tweets to pictures of my ginger cat Flash and inspiring tweets about...er...snack preferences... and occasionally more important things than that.
