Little did John Barrie know that after retiring from a career as an engineer that he would become a prolific author.
The Okotoks resident has published six books over the past seven years with the latest, To All The Dogs I’ve Loved Before, released this spring.
“It was a big feat doing the first one because the production part is the most difficult because I didn’t have anybody to guide me and the people at Amazon knew less than I did when I asked for help,” Barrie joked.
“I finally got through the first and then the second and then the third, and my goal was to do The Road to Mandalay, my memoir, before I croaked.”
After Barrie retired in 2009, he sat down at the keyboard with the aim of writing that memoir, but it didn’t turn out exactly as planned.
“So, when I wrote my first chapter and I read it the next day, I said, ‘God, that's the worst piece of junk ever.’ And that's learning experience, right? You're your own worst critic.”
He soon turned to a local writers’ group and began embracing the outlet that creative writing provided by penning an increasing number of short stories, eventually deciding to put some of them in a collection he titled Beauty in the Beast and other musings. It was published in 2016 and was followed by another collection a year later and a third one a year after that.
Writing about his family’s experiences remained on the back burner until, as chance would have it, an assignment for the writers’ group involved a short memoir piece.
“One of the club members said, ‘John, that's the best piece you've ever written.’ I thought it was kind of average, but she saw something in it that I didn't see and then another said, ‘Yes, you should (write your memoir) because it's a very unusual life you've had and people would love to hear about it. So that's what got me onto it.”
The Road to Mandalay looks back at his family’s experiences in Burma beginning in the 1930s when his parents married. It includes a Japanese invasion and subsequent moves to India and Pakistan before eventually immigrating to Canada in the 1960s.
Barrie has since published the thriller Missing in Bangkok, which was born from a writers’ group exercise in which the first chapter was suggested followed by a challenge to finish the book. He was the only member of the group to take the story to its conclusion.
His latest book, To All The Dogs I’ve Loved Before, looks at the menagerie of four-legged friends that have come into his life over the years, thanks in large part to his wife Gabriele, the founder of Pound Rescue.
Barrie would like to put together another anthology as he’s already got a number of short stories written, one of which, a psychological thriller, he might publish as a separate book.
“I have all these ideas bubbling in my mind and I want to write more,” he said. “I just wish I had more time to do it.”
