An award winning novelist who used to work as a newspaper reporter has published his latest book to raise funds for charity.

Huw Thomas, 46, started out as trainee reporter on the Romsey Advertiser in the early 90s and later worked on newspapers in Cumbria and Devon.  He is currently teaching English in Portugal.

The Vault is a story of hidden secrets, childhood drama and murder which is being published on Amazon Kindle in aid of the disaster relief charity ShelterBox, priced at £4.84.

Half of all royalties will go to the charity to help its work in aid of people made homeless by disasters around the world.

Said Huw: “After a year or so of trying various careers like fruit-picking, bar work and landscape gardening, I eventually got a job as a trainee journalist on an old-fashioned weekly paper in my home town.

“Over the following years I moved to work on newspapers in Cumbria and Devon – then met Carolyn, my wife-to-be, and we set off on a rather belated gap year backpacking around New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia and Nepal & India.

“When we returned, I fancied a change from journalism and drifted into the PR/communications field – doing everything from PR for a theatre to managing the communications strategy for a European funding programme.”

In the meantime he carried on writing novels and got his first break in 2005 when The Tale Of Findo Gask won the national prize in a new contest for first-time writers called Undiscoved Authors.

He then ended up taking on a job managing the publicity and fundraising for ShelterBox.

In 2011, Huw and his wife, Carolyn, completed a one-year tandem bike ride for ShelterBox. They cycled 10,800 miles across North America, New Zealand and parts of Australia and Europe, raising almost £50,000 for the charity.

For more information log onto at hdthomas.wordpress.com.