In our second post today to coincide with National Novel Writing Month, we talk to author, Christina Jones about her route to publication and how all started with a boy called Tony…

My route to publication was – to quote every contestant X-Factor has ever had – a bit of a roller-coaster… And a lifelong roller-coaster at that… I’d always enjoyed writing stories and making things up, and I had my first short story published when I was 14 (in a teenage magazine – remember them?). I wrote about Tony from the chip shop who I was madly in love with and who ignored me and went out with my best friend instead. I poured every bit of teenage heartbroken angst into that story I can tell you! I sent it to the magazine without ever thinking it’d be published – but they loved it, bought it and paid what was a fortune to me then, and it opened up a nice little niche for me – and I carried on writing short stories, serials, articles (I became the pop correspondent for “Jackie” – was the envy of all my friends!), and anything else they’d pay me for (!) for the teenage mags while I was still at school,  and then did the same for the women’s magazines for years. It was my hobby – and I was earning enough pocket money from it to have a couple of nice holidays each year – and that was about as far as I ever imagined my writing career was going.

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