To celebrate turning 40 a few years ago I signed up to an MA in Creative Writing. I was nervous about doing this, having not written much fiction before and had always thought an MA in Creative Writing was for 'other people who knew more than me'- but I loved it.
A YA novel I wrote during the course had some positive feedback from agents after querying but ultimately wasn't taken up. The next novel I wrote won me membership with Jericho Writers which has been fantastic (and much appreciated). My most recent novel has had some interest from agents so I am keeping all my fingers crossed on that while writing the next one...(eeeeeee)
My first children’s picture book, The Hospital Hoppities, was published with Eyrie Press last 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 available in the journal Mindfulness (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01306-9).
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.
