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Welsh author, Owen Jones, was born in Barry, Wales in August 1954 to an industrious, working-class family. He had four brother, three of which remain alive on Earth. To distinguish him from other Welsh authors with the same name alive or deceased, his middle name is Ceri (Keri).

Early Life of Owen Jones.

Welsh author Owen Jones went to Colcot Primary School, High Street Junior School, and then Barry Comprehensive School. He joined ‘The Comp’ in 1965, the first year it was open. His year’s school intake would later be referred to as ‘First Year Comp’. He was chosen to sit for the Oxford entry examination in 1971. However, he passed it over because his girlfriend was going to Portsmouth Polytechnic. He also studied there – Russian Language and Soviet Studies – and his replacement for the exam went to Oxford.

After finishing his degree, he moved to s’Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in The Netherlands for nine years. Then he worked for his father with his brothers for thirteen years. In 2004, he moved to Thailand with his Thai wife. He is still there now, living in her remote rice-farming village in the north.

The Welsh Author Emerges.

Owen began creating websites to pay the bills at first. However, they needed a lot of fresh content to keep them high in the search engine rankings. In 2011, he realised that he had 145 websites and had written 1,200,000 words that year to support them. After a few beers one night, it dawned on him that he was writing the equivalent of ten largish novels a year to support websites that would crumble after his death. He had always enjoyed writing, and had started a book in 2004, when he first arrived in Thailand. He resolved to finish the novel.

Owen Jones’ Books.

He published Daddy’s Hobby, the first volume in the series Behind The Smile: The Story Of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya in April 2012 – eight years after he had started it. However, volume two, An Exciting Future, appeared six months later, and Maya – Illusion, volume three, three months after that.

Within seven years, he had written fifty-two novels. These included twenty-three novelettes called The Psychic Megan Series, which is based on ideas that he had learned from his Spiritualist family, and set in Barry. Meanwhile, Behind The Smile has grown to seven volumes comprising 720,000 words. He finds it difficult to stick to one genre, he says. Although most of his books involve some supernatural or paranormal content.

However, even that is not the full story. He has written a military drama mini-series called Dead Centre, which is about a new form of terrorism barely contemplated because it is so awful.

Prolific Welsh Author’s Future.

I asked him why he has not sought representation in the traditional publishing industry. He replies that he had made several half-hearted attempts to attract interest from literary agents five or six years ago, but he gave up, because so few of them replied. I also asked whether he might try to become a traditionally-published Welsh author again. He replied “Maybe”, but didn’t look at all enthusiastic. “I think that The Psychic Megan Series might be ‘quite easy’ to sell. However, writing to these people and waiting months for a reply is such a mind-numbingly boring slog!”

In my opinion, the 68 years old Welsh author from Barry, Owen Jones, has never really cared whether he goes down the traditional route of well-known authors or not. He is quite happy sitting in his quiet, remote Thai village organising the translation and narration of his existing books, and writing the occasional new one.

Owen Jones , the extremely prolific Welsh author, now has more than a thousand books with his name on registered at the British Library, so he must be doing something right!