Echoes

John Franks was born in Nottingham in 1960, and had the kind of childhood most boys only dream of - climbing rocks, building campfires, making cannons fuelled by gunpowder from fireworks, falling off bikes, and generally doing stupid and dangerous things that now seem to have been lost from childhood forever. During his four years at Art College studying sculpture, John not only had a great time being an adult without the responsibilities, but it was also the time he shed atheism, and met and married his wife Elaine. Employment came as a shock, and six years working in a rural community for the mentally handicapped was tough. After that John 'fell' into bookselling and stayed in it for seventeen years, working up from part-time 'un-packer' to senior company level positions. After leaving bookselling in 2007, John joined a charity that helps people escape the blight of debt, running their operations team. John turned to writing seriously in his twenties. In his own words, his early attempts 'should all be burnt', but in the late eighties, he started a short story that proved to be the genesis of Where Waters Meet. After twenty plus years, and a number of re-writes, it has become his first published novel. John and Elaine live on a smallholding in Wales with their teenage son, horses, dogs, a cat and numerous chickens. As well as writing he plays drums and is teaching himself woodland management and hedge-laying.