Interview with Nicholas Sumner

Author of The Herring Barrel

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Who are you, in terms of your author persona?

• Expressive, opinionated, confident in my beliefs, unafraid of my opinions, extravagant with words, unwilling perfectionist, appreciative of the past, wary about the future. Easily distracted, occasionally focused, never satisfied, sometimes open, often closed. Positive, negative, frequently. Usually haunted by the thought I should be doing something useful.

How long have you been writing and in what form?

• It seems like forever but is probably shorter than that. The shape of a paragraph more interesting than what a pronoun might be, this pupil spent time in his school library, booted out of class for contempt, to a place where published words sat on disorderly dusty shelves and made sense – the one subject in which I excelled took quite a while to prove of use. Into the Royal Navy age fifteen, a boy with a strong taste for adventure, unafraid of risk or exposure to hard graft in dangerous places, prepared to take on whatever happened along. I can easily trace back to a navy youth sat in front of a clumsy microfiche machine in Singapore library, absorbing copy from the Straits Times, reading about the War Crimes trials not so long over at the time, reported in depth because that was where the crimes took place, a toil of research for a novel that never came about. I still have those thin foolscap pages. The need to earn a crust has an annoying habit of getting in the way of creativity, in my case for many years. The Herring Barrel is a useful example of that.
  My career moved from military service into the North Sea in the early years of offshore oil development, which was the nautical equivalent of the moon landing, at least as dangerous. That in turn led to technical author work in the oil industry around the world and within atomic energy UK, time back at sea when the need to be there insisted, no environment for writing. Several years ago the opportunity to devote dedicated time, rarely less than twelve hours a day, seven days a week, to my personal writing came along and I grabbed it.

What should a reader of The Herring Barrel expect?

• A good read from this author’s point of view, in fact a novel he enjoyed writing that met all of the demands he made of it which I would hope says quite a lot. It’s easier to suggest what it is not, if simply to save the followers of specific genre valuable time. No fantasy, fairies or fashionable witches and warlocks. No romance apart from that of the sea, the author schooled in writing on subjects he knows about. Nothing out of this world, perhaps because I have not been there yet. No monsters, magnificent creatures or moppet fiction, no demons or dragons or dinosaurs, or horror. So what exactly should a reader expect, you may ask.
  Honest old fashioned story telling, for a start. I expect you know the sort of thing. Riddle of the Sands and The 39 Steps just two fine novels easy to mention. Books in which you can be there beside the author, unaware of where that journey is going to end, sharing the expected as well as the unexpected events that contribute to the round. The Herring Barrel in the spotlight here, not assuming it deserves to be mentioned in the same paragraph as the two mentioned titles, the opportunity to read thirty or so pages of the paperback or hard cover on Amazon’s Look Inside — a more generous fifty pages in the digital edition — a good idea for serious prospective readers. Mind you, as the story moves beyond the first few chapters, the narrative adjusts pace to strike out across a broadening landscape. There is a great deal more to the book than a look inside might suggest.

What really inspired you to write your book. Who, if anyone, has influenced your writing style?

• Inspiration is not the right word. I’ve always enjoyed a book with a well-defined structure that leads the reader constructively, informatively through the narrative, y’know? To my mind, essentially, it must be believable and right there lies the skill. Conrad, Buchan, Innes, Shute and MacLean, those novelists come immediately to mind, their work emminently readable time and again. The wish to write, to describe, to construct an interesting story if you like, could be considered my inspiration. I have never attempted to imitate, or adopt the style of anyone, which may not be the shortest route to author fame but surely is by far the most satisfying. I had the word ‘rewarding’ in mind, but that is so often linked unashamedly to pound/dollar success.
  If inspiration comes into this writer’s approach to the written word, it’s found in the effort necessary to hammer a sentence into a shape that looks just right for what it has to say, what it has to support. The narrative I approached with the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ very much in mind. The early chapters set a deliberate pace considered necessary for readers to fully enjoy the following chapters of the book. There are many examples in The Herring Barrel of hours spent on a single sentence, even a word, that has to be there. Both plot and construction have consumed countless such hours, each given the consideration needed to produce a book, in this writer’s opinion, worth reading.

In spite of many early rejections, as you say on the dedication page of The Herring Barrel, you continued with it. Why?

• Because I’m prepared to admit it was not in the best shape it could be. Of course it’s only too easy to over-edit, the printed paper stack of scrap built in the last three years is more than ten reams high. No kidding. Structural changes have been made, mostly in the interest of clarity. Much minor fiddling with sentences read aloud. That’s frequently essential. Sand-papering I call it. Back in the day, my early work sometimes returned with encouraging remarks, sadly a rare courtesy today with recipients focused on financial gains to be found with predictably successful titles. Often close to chucking returned chapters in a bin by an aspiring (I dislike that word) writer with better things to do, I kept in mind the experience of Frederick Forsyth, whose first and eventually very successful novel The Day of the Jackal was rejected, he said in a TV interview years ago – seen by this writer, encouragement taken from it – that book rejected more than a hundred times before he insisted it was read, first page to last, in his presence, publisher or agent, I do not recall. He knew he had a novel that deserved to be published. I’ve read it over, and the qualities that make it a classic are outstanding. How it could be rejected so many times is beyond comprehension. He did not have the option to self-publish. I do, and no longer have any intention of adding to a slush pile when I know my work does not deserve to be there.

What is The Herring Barrel about and whom do you believe is your targeted reader?

• Not simple questions for me but I’ll try. I’ll refer first of all to the forward in which I mention the fictional account by journalists Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, Seven Days in May, published in 1962, about a conspiracy to remove the president of the United States with plans for a government controlled by senior personnel of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have not read the book. From the late sixties, almost unmentionable rumours of plans for a similar scenario against the left-wing UK government of the period appeared to have grounds for belief, a clandestine plot eventually mentioned by a small number of political observers in biographical opinion not so easy to dispute.
  Against the background of a failing aviation industry, a successful government project likely to be cancelled for no reason other than political austerity it seems, two leading scientists are drawn into the disappearance of their stubborn head of project. Various unexpected interests, from a senior government civil servant to a shady individual known to be in a department of military intelligence, appear to have agendas of their own, as a result the plot thickens with tragic consequences. Threatened with detention, the protagonists are given no option but to flee their country, expected to find answers to what appear impossible questions. The trail leads them across France to the wild wastes of the winter Camargue, where they discover dramatic evidence of an incredible event which they feared had occurred, now certain they stand alone with their country against them.
  There is an interwoven story following through the events narrated, the missing prominent scientist’s journal written during World War II and beyond, his experience of the war in Poland, further mystery uncovered that his colleagues find difficult to reconcile.
  The trail appears to end at Marseille, where the scientists’ search for their colleague takes on unexpected assistance, resulting in a sea chase in pursuit of a tired East German freighter, Soviet intervention on the horizon fired up by fictitious reports in the UK press, that reaches a climax in a vicious Mediterranean gale on Christmas Day. The protagonists suffering personal tragedy once again, witnesses to unfolding drama with unimaginable consequences, their early conclusions challenged, the way forward no longer in their hands. It becomes evident somewhere ahead they have a part to play in a dangerously intense international situation with the future stability of their country at risk. Not without further tragedy, events move toward an extraordinary finale on New Year’s Eve, 1969.
  The Herring Barrel is written across such a broad landscape, and seascape, that I cannot imagine a targeted reader. All I can say, if you like reading about the sea and ships, if you really dislike politics and politicians, if you like a story with an ultimate message you can imagine might affect you. If you like a novel that, in the inimitable words of Robert Baden-Powell fellow writer, paddles its own canoe, this book is for you.

Are the locations and characters in the book real or imagined?

• Most of the characters are imagined, with a few exceptions, one of whom will be obvious to the reader. No way around that one. The locations are real and of the period, experienced by or known to the author. That’s just one of the strengths of The Herring Barrel, protagonist scenes throughout the narrative as real as I can make them.

Is marketing a problem for you?

• Marketing is the problem for me. I’m never short of ideas. I’ve made some expensive errors, obvious in hindsight. Exposure to social media is a bit of a joke, so-called book clubs mostly interested in something free. Of course, they get exactly what they pay for. It seems to me grossly disrespectful of a writer’s time and effort when he is expected to give the results of his efforts away for a pittance, all in the interests of marketing plans. For me that’s a lot of nonsense, designed by fleas riding on the back of anyone daft enough to have them there, not that I don’t have a presence on Twitter. But I don’t really understand it. If I could afford to organize bus and tube publicity I would, simply because I believe The Herring Barrel would make such an exercise worthwhile, the book likely to be controversial but never intended to be so. It’s just turned out that way. The plot set at Christmas rather than a Christmas story, a push as the year goes on will see promotion on Twitter around that time, only an occasional presence for the moment. I would like to do more. But nothing free, my work deserves better.

What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers?

• Waste paper. Forget climate concerns and recycle. If the quality of written words you produce compliment the art of writing, if you can see on the page in front of you evidence of that and it’s the very, very best you can do, my advice, you keep on writing. If you’re churning out words with no attention paid to the art of writing, and examples are more numerous than hairs on a scavenging pack of dogs, do yourself a favour, give up displaying your lack of ability impossible to erase in digital print there for all to see with your name on it. Spend your time working at something worthwhile, you’re doing the art of writing no favours.

What trends in the book world do you see and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading?

• Answers related to the previous question, and for me, worrying questions. The ease of contribution to a recent digital eruption of ebooks has resulted in a poliferation of printed scribble, the perpetrators of which presumably refer to themselves as writers, or worse, authors. They are neither of course. Caught up in there may well be outstanding work that deserves attention. Assuming their title is a result of years of effort, an author is presented to a readership that expects free or 99’cent copies of that work, mostly in the interests of Kindle profits with no positive benefit to the author, and probably quite the reverse. As I’ve mentioned, it’s obscene. I totally understand it’s a route many writers are forced into because there is no other, forget those who go there because the credible routes to publication would never have been open to them in the first place, but it’s a chill wind blowing, this writer firmly believes, for those of us who care to put quality before the results of sales on a chart. That’s all I have to say about that.
  Thank you for this opportunity to discuss The Herring Barrel.

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