Fiona Field

Fiona Field is a pseudonym used by Catherine Jones, the fiction novelist and the chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association. She also wrote as Kate Lace and as Annie Jones in collaboration.

Catherine Jones, aka Fiona Field, joined the army at 18, married a bomb disposal expert at 21, and then at 26, got thrown out of the forces for getting pregnant. She began writing with a column for an army wives' magazine and is now a full-time novelist.

Jones wrote her first novel, Gumboots, and Pearls (1990), in collaboration with another army wife, under the pseudonym Annie Jones. This is how the novelist described the start of her writing career:

"I know — the army isn’t renowned for developing the creative writing skills of its officers. It was after I left that I got into it. I was asked to help a mate who was running a magazine for fellow army wives; she didn’t want me to write but she knew I was good with organizing people and getting them to do things. I said yes, and the next thing I knew was she needed ‘about 200 words on living on the married patch — and make it funny. I was used to obeying orders, so I did as I was told. I was amazed when I got some positive feedback and was asked to do the same again the next month. Eventually, my mate, Annie, said she thought the columns had the makings of a book. It seemed a bit of a scary jump from columnist to author, but Annie persuaded me otherwise, offered to help, and the upshot was a book which took the Micky out of officers’ wives — Gumboots and Pearls."

Later she started to write books under her married name Catherine Jones. Since 2007, she has signed under her maiden name Kate Lace and since 2014, as Fiona Field.

Fiona Field has published three books in the Soldiers' Wives series. The first novel came out in 2014. Soldiers' Wives is a classic soap opera that intertwines the stories of three women trying to adjust to military life. Soldiers' Daughters (2015) and Civvy Street (2016) followed.

From 2007 — 2009 Catherine Jones was the chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and captained the RNA team in University Challenge — the Professionals that got to the Grand Final in 2005.

She has now written two non-fiction books and over twenty novels on subjects ranging from army life to rowing to gypsy weddings. Her latest book focuses on a setting in which she is a great expert: rural village life.

Catherine lived in Tama, South Oxfordshire, for many years after she and her husband retired from the army.