Christine Sussman: Hellfire

John Ellsworth graduated from college with a double degree in accounting and English. He then taught high school English for two years before enrolling at Saint Louis University School of Law. Three years later, he took the Arizona Bar Exam, where he scored third out of 233 candidates, received his law license, and proceeded to the courts, where he spent 30 years defending and prosecuting. He attended the University of Oregon's creative writing program and finished first in his class.In 1996 John became ill, and was forced to retire from law. The State of California found him to be severely disabled and propelled him to the front of its rehab line, essentially asking what he would like to study or learn to support himself. He said he would like to study computers, thinking the job could be done from a wheelchair. Several months later, he had taken and passed four Microsoft exams to become a certified software engineer. Diploma in hand, John drove a mile to the Intel Corporation and asked for an interview. There were two: a personal interview and a tech interview. Two weeks later, he was hired and tasked with designing and building computer software capable of replicating the screens used by Intel workers in chip production screens of the enormous corporation. Soon, he was noticed for his re-designs of many of the systems and was eventually approached and told he was going on the road to troubleshoot Intel emplacements around the world. Which he did. This morphed into dealing with software languages and datatypes that normally didn’t mix. After marrying and wanting to settle in one place, he returned to law.In 2014 John retired from law and immediately set about writing a lawyer novel about a young attorney named Thaddeus Murfee. Thirty-eight books and eight years later, he still pounds the keyboard for a few hours a day and consults with various customers on secret tech issues. Today he lives in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Sailing, scuba diving, sailplaning and gardening are some of John's happy pursuits when not writing his books. So far, he has also visited 94 countries around the world and says he'll be happy when he hits 100. John's advice for young writers: "Write."