Becky Jones

A few years ago, I found a box of old letters and notebooks in the loft. One of the notebooks was from when I was seventeen, and it confirmed what I’d been telling myself all my adult life – I had always wanted to write a book. That’s all very well as an ambition when you’re seventeen; when you have kids who are nearly that age, you have less time to think about it.

About me

My new year’s resolution in 2020 was to start writing. I started with a short story, shared it with a few people, and was encouraged to keep going. And then, of course, the pandemic hit us. Lockdown was kind to me and gave me lots of time to write and explore characters and ideas. I wrote more short stories, and thought a lot about the freedom of my own adolescence whilst seeing my teenage daughter forced to stay at home at the very moment she should have been finding her wings. Lockdown also made me miss cafés, and somewhere in this journey of nostalgia, lack of freedom and imagination, Jon’s café appeared, and Amy’s story started to take shape.

I was lucky enough to stumble across Jericho Writers' Ultimate Novel Writing Course just at the point where I'd written about twenty thousand words and realised I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Over ten months, I was part of a fantastic group of writers, and we learnt all about writing, editing, and publishing a novel. I loved the course and during those twelve months, the first version of Searching for Amy took shape.

Since then I have experienced the difficulties of getting published in a traditional way. Rejection becomes hard to take, and my novel was sitting unread on my laptop, so this year I decided to take matters into my own hands and publish it myself. And here it is! Almost ready to go. I am very proud and happy to see it out in the world. I hope you enjoy reading it.