Gleed John

Article by Erika Glasberg
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November 2, 2011

Morrisburg - It took a while to gather all the information that John Gleed needed to publish his first book but now that he has, he hopes it's a great success.

Gleed, the author of Earth's New Beginning and resident of Morrisburg, never thought he'd become an author until he really started thinking about writing in his 40s.

"It would have been a little bit later (that I thought about writing) probably when, let's say, sometimes when you get kind of stressed about things that aren't going the way that you want and people are not reacting the right way from your perspective so (you think about) taking on a career where you're your own boss and you don't have to deal day to day with those kinds of stresses," he said.

Earth's New Beginning follows the lives of four individuals - one Morrisburg, as well as Kenya, England and the United States - who are survivors of a deadly virus called the Sleeping Death Contagion (SDC). The virus causes the death of nearly everyone in the world with only one in 100,000 survivors and takes lives as people sleep.

"My book is the ultimate disaster novel,'' Gleed said."It's the story after the contagion has run it's course and you're down to a very small number of survivors (and it) basically follows the paths of those four survivors through the first month and then the first winter.''

The inspiration for the book came from some of Gleed's favourite reads such as "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, "No Blade of Grass" by John Christopher, "On the Beach" by Neville Shute and "The Stand" by Stephen King.

"I've always been interested in those books and if I find a new one that comes out I usually buy it and read it and it's always the kind of fiction that I've enjoyed,'' he said. "I think I've kind of done a self-analysis of why I'm so interested disaster novels and I think it goes back from growing up in the time when nuclear war was a big thing and thinking about what I would do.''

Gleed explained that if he were to be in the situation where there was nobody in his town, he would first look for the things that he needs to sustain himself.

"I'm a very practical guy," he said. "As you can see, food is important so certainly worrying about sustenance is very important so I would probably go to a grocery store. Canadian Tire would be my next stop to get a generator.'' Though the novel has been published fairly fast, it wasn't written quickly.

After starting the book, he stopped writing after he retired. "The whole work was a fairly extended period. I started (writing again) after I retired and then put it down for a while, picked it back and tried to look into the possibility of getting it published and looking for an agent and getting some professional edits. It certainly was discouraging at first.'' he said.

After a while, Gleed decided to take the self publishing route where he was able to have Earth's New Beginning published as an ebook (electronic book) on Amazon Kindle, Chapters/Indigo Kobo, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony eReader and others as well as a paperback copy arriving in the near future.

"Most people would put (the novel) into the science fiction category but what I'm more interested in is the fiction that takes a lead from where we are now;' he said.

For more information, visit www.earthsnewbeginning.com