Author Outtakes: Richard Herley

I am here today with Richard Herley, author of The Drowning, The Tide Mill, Refuge, The Penal Colony, and The Pagans trilogy. Hi Richard. Tell us a little about yourself.

RH: Hi, Jairus, and thank you very much for the invitation. I was born in 1950, in a market town about 20 miles north-west of central London, went to school locally and then on to Sussex University, where I studied biology. On the eve of my final exams I decided I didn’t want to be a scientist, but a professional writer. I worked a variety of jobs while trying to learn the craft, finishing a couple of execrable novels which are now hidden in my loft. In 1975 I had the idea of writing an historical thriller, set in Victorian times, but was intimidated by the research needed. So I kept going further and further back. Finally I reached the Stone Age. Since I knew a fair bit about the natural world, I was in business: The Stone Arrow was my first published novel.

JR: I was very intrigued with The Penal Colony. What inspired you to write this book?

RH: I started this in 1985, in the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister. Her government replaced a dismal socialist administration. As time went on she and her cabinet  lurched ever further rightward. Some of the rhetoric on crime and terrorism was startling: the IRA’s bombing campaign in mainland Britain had begun in the early Seventies and was now at its height; the cost (financial and political) of keeping prisoners in jail was being questioned more and more, and popular opinion was in favour of capital punishment. Banishing evildoers to an island seemed just the sort of thing that would get the Conservatives re-elected. The moment of inspiration came on the cliffs in north Devon. Also I had, in 1965, spent a holiday roughing it on Skokholm, an island bird observatory off the Welsh coast, and was able to bring some of that to my imagined island of “Sert”. I can’t say where the inspiration came from: I wish I knew.

JR: What was it like seeing your book The Penal Colony made into a film? Were you involved in the production of the film, or did you just have to sit back and hope for the best?

RH: I was kept at bargepole’s length. When I finally saw the movie at the local multiscreen, I thought to begin with that I was in the wrong auditorium – until I saw my name on the credits. The only possible response, after some minutes of profound disappointment, was hilarity. I’m just grateful that they bought the rights.

JR: You’ve been writing for a long time – your first publication was back in the seventies. How have you changed as an author in this time period?

RH: When I started I had no idea what I was doing. What carried me through was my background of reading – as a child, I devoured everything. We had lots of books at home, and from them I absorbed most of the rules of spelling and syntax. My scientific training made me particular about detail, and the telling detail is what makes a scene come alive. I also have an ear for rhythm. That may be why I found an agent with my first book, even though it is, as I say, execrable. He went on to sell The Stone Arrow a few weeks after completion of its first draft. We parted company, so I had no career advice and thought I needed to go on producing thrillers to survive. In the 1990s I found another agent and gave her Refuge, which even today she regrets being unable to close a deal on. They all loved it, blah blah but, you know the rest. It marks a big change from The Penal Colony, which preceded it. The Penal Colony is about the humanization of the protagonist, who arrives on the island with a fairly complete set of prejudices and loses them all, but it is also a conventional story. Refuge comes from a darker place. When I had finished it I was not quite sure what I had done. It was a relief to turn to the innocence of The Tide Mill, a coming-of-age story set in the thirteenth century. The Drowning has the form of a “literary” (i.e. otherwise unclassifiable) novel, and is the one I enjoyed writing the most. I have changed over the years to the extent that my technical skill has improved and everything is naturally more mature. The downside is that I have learned just how difficult it is to get a piece right.

JR: Looking over your books, I see a diverse group of genres. Is there any genre you prefer to write?

RH: The previous answer covers much of this, but I should say that The Tide Mill and The Drowning are books 2 and 4 in a mooted quartet of free-standing novels, each set about 400 years apart. Book 1 is in the research stage and will be set in the Viking era. Book 3 will be set in Shakespeare’s London. Three of the quartet, then, are to be “historical novels”, but Books 1 and 3 will also have a fair amount of derring-do. I am impatient with the constraint of genre: and willing to pay the price of escaping it. I see myself as a storyteller, really, and tailor the setting to the sort of story I want to tell.

JR: I enjoy the historical aspects of some of your titles. Do these require a lot of research or are you a history buff?

RH: I am no historian, but I try my very best for accuracy. Failure to do so is a surefire way to alienate an educated reader, and I work on the assumption that the reader knows more than I do. However, my job is to convince, to create a credible world, and if I have done that but made  mistakes I hope a specialist in the period will be generous enough to tolerate them. Research is a wonderful way to get new ideas for the narrative. For example, I learned that, for pre-Christian Igbos in Nigeria, multiple births were regarded as an abomination. The heroine of The Drowning is a twin, a fact she lets slip in conversation with her native gardener: her response to what follows provides a neat way of illuminating her changing attitude to her new life in the Lagos of 1965.

JR: What can we expect from you in the future?

RH: The quartet is ambitious and Books 1 and 3 are taking a long time to research; the whole project will amount to half a million words. In the mean time I have some other ideas on the go. At the moment I’m drafting two. The first is a fictional memoir based in Shackleton’s ill fated 1914-17 Antarctic expedition, and the second is a crime story set in modern Britain. The Shackleton one is experimental and may come to nothing; the other has just taken a gruesome turn and may also end up in the capacious drawer where I keep the “dust and debris of my former fancies”, as Mr V. Nabokov terms them.

JR: Onto some other topics. I see many new authors struggle to balance self-promotion of their work, marketing and writing. What is your advice for an author struggling in these areas?

RH: Self-promotion is tough to get right, because it’s only a whisker away from begging or – even more off-putting – boasting. Obviously you need a web presence, and a blog is good for that. I feel uneasy about using social media for selling things, but that’s just me. Really I don’t know how to go about promotion, or indeed marketing. They say that many purchases result from word of mouth; others are made by those who have already read and liked one of your books. My best advice is to concentrate on the writing. If you build it, they will come!

JR: Do you have daily goals for writing, for example word counts?

RH: I used to set goals, but that’s unrealistic for me. Some days I can’t do anything but tinker; on others I might produce 3,000 words.

JR: When did you realize you were born to be a writer?

RH: All my life writing has come naturally – I was good at English at my primary school, helped edit the magazine at the secondary school, and even had a whole page to myself in the university newspaper (a proper letterpress weekly, now defunct). To begin with I think I saw writing mainly as a way to avoid a conventional career, but my struggles with publishers made me give up after The Penal Colony. I started an electronic publishing firm with a friend, but our market collapsed and we decided to wrap the company. Then came Refuge, which had had its origins about ten years earlier and which I thought (and still think) would make a gripping movie. Failure to place that left me deciding to retire, but in 2002 I found myself sketching out The Tide Mill.  Only at that point did I realize writing was my vocation. I even feel that I have some sort of duty to see it through. Born writers write because they must: it’s a curse, they can’t help it, and may wish it were otherwise.

JR: The industry is changing on month to month basis right now. Where do you see the industry in five years? Where do you see yourself in five years?

RH: The mass-market paperback is doomed. As reading devices improve, many illustrated books will also become uneconomic to print. I see paper books in five years’ time as on their way to becoming a niche product for bibliophiles who will demand the highest standards. By then I suspect that few authors will be content to see the bulk of their ebook revenue going to others: deprived of best-sellers, the big publishing houses will probably be dissolved by the corporations that own them. This will open the way for small, nimble publishers who will have a better relationship with their authors. As for me, I hope that the status quo continues – that I am able to write what I like, publish it electronically, and depend on its reception by readers for my income from authorship.

JR: This is my favorite question to ask authors. How do you overcome writer’s block?

RH: If you find yourself blocked, it is because you have made a mistake. Typically this will be a wrong turning in the narrative, often an unbelievable action by one or more of your characters, forced upon them by the needs of what you suppose to be the plot. But the plot should grow from the development of the characters, which happens largely in your subconscious. The subconscious is the main engine of storytelling. It puts the brakes on when your conscious mind tries to make it do something unnatural. The same happens when you write to order, perhaps in an attempt to follow the market. What results is flat and you can’t understand why. If you’re not a hack, you can’t continue. The way to fix things is to retrace your steps until you find the fork where you have taken the wrong turning. This can be painful, particularly if it means discarding much work. In extreme cases, the whole project must be junked because it is flawed. Start something else, don’t throw good time after bad, and try to remember that your subconscious is your mojo and your mojo is king.

JR: Your turn to be the interviewer. Ask me any question you would like.

RH: OK. Where do you see the industry in five years?

JR: I see the eReaders getting cheaper and cheaper, and at one point, they will be so cheap, it would be dumb not have one. I see it like the landline to cell phone trend in the 90’s. Almost everyone has a cell phone, and some still have landlines. At one point, all readers will have an eReader and their “tangible” books will only be their favorites. I see Amazon continuing their domination of the industry for the foreseeable future, but don’t be surprised if they bite off more then they can chew at one point.

Short Answer:

One thing I can’t stand about the publishing industry is… I have no complaints about it, thanks to epublishing.

One thing people would be surprised to know about me is… I’m a Martian. Just kidding. No real surprises: most writers are dull dogs, in the flesh.

Occupy Wall Street is… naive.

One book I would love to see made into a movie is… The Eyes of the Overworld by that under-rated imagineer, Jack Vance.

My favorite character in a book is… the nameless and long-suffering narrator of Damon Runyon’s tales of Broadway.

My blog is at http://richardherley.blogspot.com/