Bio

Potter, John

It goes something like this:

1967 – Born in a hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

1983 – Having failed to find anything remotely interesting while attending school, save for my English teacher, I left with a single O’Level in English language and a few other inconsequential certificates

1984-1989 – I self -learned programming and girls, the later resulting in a move to the Midlands which eventually landed me a job doing the former

1989-1992 – Moved to Edinburgh to head Standard Life’s PC development team

1994 – In need of a new challenge I moved to Suffolk where I found one. We were married in 1998, separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002

1996 – 2003 – Started my own company as a freelance technical troubleshooter, which took me via a lawyer’s in Aldersgate to the Bank of England, to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Kuwait, Dubai, Harrogate and back to London for my sins. During these years I realised the different people and cultures I was working with, were a lot more interesting than the job I was doing.

2002 – It occurred to me that I didn’t know whether the Bible or Dan Brown had a better handle on the truth of the life of Jesus. Galvanised to re-discover my capacity for imagination I started writing short fictional stories and studying religious history.

2004-2006 – I moved on from studying religions to human history and then human psychology. Mostly it was cognitive psychology. I also met by complete accident, my future wife #2

2007 – I decided to make a serious go at this perfect medium for channelling my imagination - writing.  This led me to an irrational desire to sleep very little and widely read commercial fiction.

2008 – I started writing Chasing Innocence with no idea for what would be involved in finishing a book, other than a sheer determination to make it as enthralling as possible. The benchmark was Joss Whedon and Lee Child, which I probably did achieve in some areas and not, in many others. They are not a bad benchmark to have, however.

2009-2010 – Having learned a LOT about what it takes to finish a book, I learned a LOT MORE about what it takes to turn a finished story into a thrilling read.

2011 – I learned a LOT about taking a thrilling read and turning it into a book. Having very quickly realised the futility of working with agents I decided I would publish my own book. Of course I learned a LOT.

2012 – Chasing Innocence was released in paperback, Kindle and ePub versions, along the way getting shortlisted for three awards, making it to the final five in each. I worked to finish back to back novels with a view to publishing a brand new series and a sequel to Chasing Innocence in 2013, hopefully capitalising on the success of that first book.

To Be Continued