About Jo
Jo has wanted to be a writer since she could hold a pen in her hand. At school she won poetry competitions. At university, where she studied French, she wrote for the campus paper and lived in France for a year, which was where she had her first idea for a book. Soon after graduation she had French Tarts accepted for publication by Octopus. It was a cookbook, but Jo had not made any of its recipes. Was this just beginner’s luck? No, she thinks that her success could be attributed to the following:
- she had the authority to write it
- and – the right idea
- at the right time,
- in the right market,
- with a catchy title,
- sent to the right publisher.
- It had focus,
- a defined niche
- and a wow factor.
- Importantly, Jo believed in her project
Since then, Jo went on to be commissioned to write 13 computer handbooks in plain English for Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Pitman and Paradigm. When she went to live in Dubai in 1987 Jo developed a career as a features journalist and taught her first creative writing class. In Oman, she co-authored her second cookbook, Dates, and published it herself through her imprint, Summertime Publishing. With her target market on her doorstep, this book was a huge success.
In 1996 she moved with her family to Norway, where she began work on a book based on what she had learned about maintaining a portable despite frequent international relocations. A Career in Your Suitcase was published in 1998.
In 1997 the family repatriated to Stamford in Lincolnshire, England, and Jo grew both her publishing business and career as a journalist, writing for The Independent on Sunday, Resident Abroad and The Weekly Telegraph. In 2000 she was appointed editor of Woman Abroad magazine. Summertime Publishing grew its list, publishing several more titles until, in 2002, Jo decided to focus on sharing what she knew with other budding writers and started mentoring clients to become published authors or features journalists. She led her workshops, Release the Book Within and Definite Articles all over the world and developed a range of keynote speeches that she delivered to conferences. By the time the family moved to The Netherlands in 2005, she was established as a writer, author, journalist, mentor, editor, teacher and speaker and continues to specialise in inspiring and empowering new writers.
In the last seven years Jo has taught over 600 people to write, written Expat Entrepreneur, Find Your Passion, Release the Book Within and her memoir, in poetry, a Moving Landscape. She has personally mentored more than 50 people to write and publish their books, many of which you can see here on her website.
Since she has been in The Netherlands, Jo has been actively involved in the Expatriate Archive Centre, and runs their writing program, teaching people to write their life stories. It is this work that has led Jo to become passionate about the role that life story writing has to play in every type of writing, including memoir, blogs, journals, non-fiction, poetry and fiction. In 2008, Write Your Life Stories was added to her suite of workshops. In early 2010 all her programs will also be available as home study courses .
