John Evan Harris

John Evan Harris is an Auckland writer, journalist, and former rock musician. For many years he was a TV producer, and founded Greenstone TV. His interest in the Maungatapu Murders (which form the background of The Physician’s Gun) was sparked when he produced the award-winning historical re-enactment series Epitaph for TVNZ. Some trivia about John: 1. A punk classic: As a young man, John was guitarist/singer in a New Zealand pop music group, the Bluestars. He wrote the song Social End Product which became a punk classic and was covered by half a dozen bands around the world. 2. A family passion: The Physician’s Gun is John’s first book. But his three siblings have all written books before him: Peter Harris (The Girl and the Guardian), Rose Boom (The Barn Chronicles) and Penelope Foote (The Adventures of Romy) are all continuing to write. 3. Boy fell in pond?! People ask about John’s company name: Boy Fell In Pond. He explains that when he was a preschooler, he ran home from Kindergarten one day in great excitement and told his mother “Boy fell in pond!” The incident occurred during a field trip to the Queen’s Gardens in Nelson. That’s the city which was the location of the infamous Maungatapu murders which feature in John’s book The Physician’s Gun. “I’ve never found out what happened to that boy,” says John. “I presume he survived! But the phrase became a family joke, and I chose it when I needed to invent a new email address and company name.”