Jimmy Smyth comes from a mental health, nursing and social work background. He is the author of several children’s books and a number of non-fiction books.  

Having since retired from the NHS in the UK, Jimmy is now a counsellor, life coach and mindfulness teacher with a number of charities and private clients and is one of the partners in the Health & Wellbeing Company, based in Northern Ireland.

The idea for The Journey came to him in 1980, when he was looking through old notes, in the basement of the psychiatric hospital where he worked. The hospital had opened its doors as a lunatic asylum in 1869.

To this day he wonders whether he heard the voice of a young girl incarcerated in the cold, dark, lifeless building.  Steeped in history, the basement held the deepest secrets of the patients who battled their own minds and the brutality of the system they were imprisoned in.

Or maybe his imagination just run away with itself?

Regardless, the quest to tell Mary’s story began and the idea to bring her to life in this novel was planted.  Throughout the years Jimmy believes the quiet, sweet voice of the girl who spoke to him that first day continued to remind him of his goal.

As well as this novel, Jimmy is in the process of finishing a non-fiction book about the history of women and mental illness.

Meanwhile, what has become of the voice of the woman in his head desperate to tell her story?  She’s still there and isn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.