.png;w=960)
This article was previously published on EloraFergusToday.
ELORA – It wasn’t long ago that Martin Featherston, traded his corporate suit and tie for an author’s pen and paper which has led to a critically-acclaimed first novel and a recent follow-up.
In early February, the Elora-based Featherston released The Universe, Earl Grey, and a Duck, the second book in the Anywhen trilogy which started with Nothing Sacred - A Divine Comedy released in 2022.
Originally from Rugby, England, Featherston said in an interview he came to Canada as a child in the late 60s.
“I’m pretty much 90 per cent Canadian now, but I kept all the British humour,” Featherston said.
He explained he grew up on Monty Python and books like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, whose tongue-in-cheek and sardonic style he cites as a big influence on his own writing.
“It’s humour and it’s deeply steeped in philosophy and a sort of critical eye towards society, who we are and what we do,” he said. “You get to the end of it you go ‘well I enjoyed it, I laughed but I think I have a new outlook on a few things in life.’”
Featherston didn’t start his career as a writer until later in life, ending up in the business world for “several excruciating decades” after not having much of a plan following post-secondary education.
The last company he worked for was Brother Canada, a printer manufacturer, eventually becoming CEO. But he walked away at the age of 55.
“It’s been a great life in terms of getting me the house and the material things that we all strive for but I was never happy,” he said. “It was excruciating, the politics, the hours, not being yourself. Over the years it turns into a persona, a facade and that is suddenly who you’re defining yourself by.”
After a few years to decompress, he found writing made him happy again and after writing some short stories he wrote and published his first full-length novel Nothing Sacred as part of a planned trilogy called Anywhen.
The first book is about a down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter and staunch atheist named Earl Grey in a world that doesn’t care much for newspapers anymore.
Through a series of coincidences, he ends up getting sent to Phoenix, Arizona, to do a report on the pandemonium surrounding a well-dressed and foul-mouthed old man found in the desert who claims to be God, named John Doe.
Grey unwittingly becomes the sole media liaison for this alleged God for the worldwide media.
Featherston stressed the book is not an attack on religion nor on atheism but contemplates a third option or middle ground.
He said he’s observed in modern society that everyone seems to pick a side whether that be in religion, politics or other parts of life.
The recently released follow-up continues this story with Grey and others forming a company to tell the world of Doe’s testimony and Grey’s own visions of Armageddon. Featherston said readers don’t need to have read the first book to understand the second.
“It’s inspired by what I consider to be the obvious conclusion of humankind in terms of all their differences because I certainly can’t see it working out well and I think current events in the states even prove that more,” Featherston said.
“The world seems to be going away from unity and into these separate little kingdoms and groups at an amazing pace and in my personal opinion that can only lead in one direction which is more strife, more hate.”
Featherston said he feels a lot more fulfilled in his life as a writer and ultimately didn’t care if Nothing Sacred didn’t sell a single copy.
However the book became well received by critics, garnering many five star reviews and a big response from readers asking for a follow-up which he said was very humbling.
Featherston is taking a break from the Anywhen trilogy to write other novels but the third is expected down the line.
The Universe, Earl Grey, and a Duck is available worldwide on Amazon but Featherston encouraged locals to pick it up at Magic Pebble Books in Elora if they are able to.