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“Registering Erin’s presence, he partially turned his head, offering a rosy-veined slab of cheek. The corner of his mouth twitched and his eye sparkled amid the surrounding folds of flesh. In his dilated pupil, Erin glimpsed a fiery flicker that made her legs go weak. She had the impression of looking into the bottom of a well, from which the bucket — or something — was rapidly shooting upwards.”
The quote above is from the opening of Gus Gresham’s book, Earthrise, right after Erin’s Uncle Dom dies and then springs back to life in the hospital. The staff doesn’t understand the man’s revival and is trying to get him to stay for testing, but Dom is wired with electric energy. He has never been Erin’s favorite person, but she will notice in the next coming weeks – he just keeps getting weirder and weirder. In fact, everything and everyone is exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Spider Clock & blood rain - escape into the pages of Earthrise: a thrilling eco-adventure
I have a handful of favorite writers on Medium, and Gus Gresham is easily in my top 5 – probably more like top 3! His book Earthrise combines all of the elements of a fiction novel that I love:
- alternate worlds (Yes, please. An escape from the daily grind is so nice!)
- mystery
- suspense (Prepare to be scared!)
- action
- character diversity and clarity (I hate it when an author doesn’t describe characters well! It makes it hard to picture the story! The people in Earthrise are real.)
- horror and gore (Hell yeah.)
- eco-friendly message (But, in a balanced and non-preachy way.)
- spider clock, blood rain, wolf packs, and more
I was hooked from beginning to end! There are a lot of fiction novels on Medium.com, but I’ve never read past a few chapters of each one, until Earthrise.
About Gus Gresham and Earthrise - An Interview
Me:
My jaw dropped when I read some of your memoirs on Medium about traveling to different countries, often with little direction or cash flow. But, you always seemed to find work and land on your feet. Your rogue past has laid an intricate yet sturdy foundation for your writing style. It's clear those escapades from long ago continue to fuel your imagination today. I'm curious - what inspired you to travel so fearlessly in your youth?
Gus:
Maybe it wasn’t so much fearlessness but naivety! The first time I travelled, it was to escape what felt like the trap of a conventional lifestyle. I’d not long completed an apprenticeship and was working as a mechanical engineer. I was a loner who read books on mysticism, the supernatural, and weird fiction.
Around that time, I encountered some old school friends in a pub. They wowed me with tales of shoestring travel and fruit picking on the trails of Europe. As I’ve written elsewhere, “not as old as the beatnik culture, we nevertheless aspired to something like that lifestyle. I was fresh out of ditching an engineering career (circa 1980), looking for a road guru, and there he was — lying stoned and unconscious at the edge of a vineyard in the afternoon sun, an empty Beaujolais bottle in the grass and a Jack Kerouac novel spread-eagled on his chest …”
So to answer your question, I think it was the romantic notion I had of travel, especially Kerouac-style, or after England’s own Laurie Lee (As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning).
Me:
I loved reading your book Earthrise, and was hooked from beginning to end! In your own words, could you please summarize what it's about without giving too much away?
Gus:
Erin is haunted by thoughts of our fragile blue world floating in the infinite blackness of space, and she doesn’t want the environment to be trashed. With the help of her friends from the rock band – Nisha, Kane, Josh, Logan – she aims to raise awareness and lobby politicians and business leaders into action before it’s too late. But then Erin uncovers evidence of a terrifying supernatural conspiracy that can only be stopped by risking everything in a parallel dimension known as Chthonia, a place usually only glimpsed by humans during nightmares or psychosis …
Can one 14-year-old girl infiltrate the nerve-centre of an all powerful corporation in time to avert eco-Armageddon? Fasten your seat-belts for mystery, suspense, twists and dark fantasy.
Me: Some people care about issues like environmental degradation, conservation, resource depletion, pollution, and climate change more than others. Sometimes I wonder about the origin of different people's values. Why do you think you are passionate about these issues?
Gus:
Largely from an empathy with animals, I’d say. I became a vegetarian at 17 and never missed wildlife documentaries. The journey from there to wider environmental issues was a natural progression. Old proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the next best time is now.”
Me:
What is your favorite animal?
Gus:
So difficult to pick just one, but in the early 1990s I spent a year working for Greenpeace in Australia and my big focus then was on humpback whales, so, yeah, I’d say humpback whales because they are beautiful and amazing.
Me:
Each Earthrise character has quirks that makes them interesting, and the polarization of their personalities solidifies their authenticity as real people. How do you approach character development? Do you pull inspiration from people you've met, or is all of it pure imagination? (If you pull from real people, I'd be curious to know who inspired Uncle Dom!)
Gus:
I treat character development as an intuitive exercise. I think it’s a mistake to base fictional characters upon real people, and although it’s inevitable that elements of people I’ve known will filter through, it would not be a conscious decision.
Also, I never use AI in my writing, but I tend to think of my creative mind as dipping into the infinite well of the collective unconscious and seeing what can be dredged up. So, while Uncle Dom is not based on anyone I know, he has the psychological truth of perhaps being distilled from the many villainous characters I’ve encountered in life.
Me:
How long have you been writing?
Gus:
About 40 years. Although I’d written short stories as an adolescent, I really began to see it as a passion in my early twenties when I tried to capture my travel experiences. Fresh back from 10 months hard living and travelling on the roads of Europe, I set out to write about the pros and cons of fruit-picking, hitch-hiking and sleeping rough.
Me:
I'm excited to read more of your books! How are Kyiv Trance and Marmalade Skies different from Earthrise? Are there similarities too?
Gus:
Earthrise and Marmalade Skies have parallels in that they both have older children or young adults as the main characters, and they both have coming of age themes. The differences are: Marmalade Skies is set in the early 1970s and explores those times and values; Earthrise is set in the modern day world, and the social issues faced by the young people are dealt with as a backdrop to the environmental issues in the forefront. It also has elements of dark fantasy and horror.
Kyiv Trance is totally different. It’s a twisty crime thriller and dark love story set against the backdrop of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Where You Can Read Gus' Work
- Medium.com – Read Gus’ travel adventures, short fiction pieces, and novels on Medium! I recommend the short, 7-minute read, “Angel Reach – Hallucinating Andromeda“… Holy shit. It’s so strange!!!
- Click this link to read Earthrise on Amazon Kindle, or click the images above for more of Gus’ work.
Thanks for Reading!
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