All My Sins (Now Or Never Publishing), the debut novel by Daryl Sneath, is a story about guilt, false accusations, a revenge-plot and the desire to wipe the tablet clean and begin anew.
Today Open Book speaks to Daryl about the research behind his novel, what he’s working on now and gives us some insight into All My Sins’ protagonist, Ben Dunn.
Open Book:
Tell us about your book, All My Sins.
Daryl Sneath:
Premise: a teacher who fractures the archetype and suffers for it.
Speaking of suffering: after I suffered the tenth rejection for my first attempt (a doorstopper called The Waters) I decided to try again. (I mean, I can shrug off nine, but ten? Come on.) The advice I gleaned from all those ‘Not for us but best of luck with your writing’ letters was consistent and plain: character-driven tomes that lack narrative drive do not sell. (I like character-driven tomes, but I was in no position to argue.)
Enter Ben Dunn and All My Sins, a story about an English teacher who is escorted from his classroom one afternoon because the principal and the local authorities have good reason to believe he has been trafficking marijuana to students.
He has not been trafficking marijuana to students (though the ‘good reason’ lies in video evidence to the contrary). He has, however, slept with a student, which is why he believes the principal and the authorities have come for him that afternoon.
After discovering one of his less-than-collegial colleagues, Grant Richards, is responsible for the so-called video evidence, Ben commissions the help of his good friend and former bandmate Booker to help plan the attempted revenge that ensues.
Conclusion: a story (I hope) with drive. (I have no control over the ‘sell’ part).
OB:
What research did you do to write your novel?
DS:
I read Hamlet. I read Hamlet again. I read essays on Hamlet by writers with names like Eliot, Coleridge and Hazlitt. I flew to Denmark in search of Ophelia.
I cut and pasted images of Dun Laoghaire and St. John’s into microsoft scrapbooks. (The jaunt to Denmark tapped my travel funds.) I frequented online etymology dictionaries. Listened to copious amounts of Johnny Cash, Ron Hynes, and Neil Young. Attempted to teach myself some of their grand little ditties on my own dimestore sixstring. Kept a copy of Strunk & White in the bathroom. Reread Barney’s Version and consumed as much CanLit as my frustratingly slow reading speed would allow: those of the Burning Rock collective (some of the novel is set in St. John’s after all), mainstay oracles like MacLeod and Ondaatje, small-g gods like Gaston and Harvey, genre-benders like DeWitt, and on the cusp of becoming CanLit greats like Whetter and McPherson. In a tip of the hat to the Dun Laoghaire setting I read some of the Irish masters (no, not Joyce, Yeats and Beckett—that goes without saying): Enright, McCann and Doyle. Oh, and Elmore Leonard. I don’t know how anyone can write dialogue or fully appreciate how useless the semi-colon is without reading a little Leonard.
OB:
How would you describe Ben Dunn, the protagonist of All My Sins?
DS:
Wracked with guilt and hope. Full of love but not sure how to express it. Fond of the ale and ailed by it. Wronged. Trapped. Righted and freed in ways he does not expect. Paripatetic. Pathetic. Painfully aware. Desperately in need of one of two things: a therapist or the time-and-means to write his story down. (To note, he wisely decides on the latter.)
OB:
Does living in Seagrave influence your writing?
DS:
The landscape/headscape of home inarguably informs what a writer writes, however unconsciously. For me it’s the slow narrow river that cuts by our house. The cedar trail leading to it. The decrepit creaking dock that gives us access. The herons perched on stumps among the grasses along the shore. Great and blue. The name itself. Sea. Grave. Its proximity to the place I’m from, the lake that place sits beside, the family that place still holds.
OB:
What advice do you have for writers who are trying to find a publisher?
DS:
Carefully aimed, persistent scattershot and the patience of Santiago at sea.
OB:
What are you working on now?
DS:
On the writing side: a multi-generational novel called Before the Snow Flew which tells the story of Thomas Tern who, at birth, is named Mars Foreman. At fifteen (which was the deliberate and decided-upon age) Thomas’ parents (the good doctors Tern, unconventional as they are) tell their son he’s adopted. His reaction, in keeping with his rearing, is unconventional. He says nothing about his beginning and resolves not to open the manila envelope he finds waiting for him that night on his desk in his room. After some reflection he declares (precociously and without knowing exactly what it is) that he intends to become a geneticist. Life as it was continues and Thomas remains Thomas. Ten years later there’s a blip: he’s kicked out of med school for an incident (his word) in the cadaver lab which he stupidly cellphone-records. The video ends up on YouTube. Life as it was ends and he’s faced with an uncertain future. So he decides—ripping, at long last, into the envelope—to delve into the past and go looking for where and who he comes from.
On the business side: selling a novel called Steele Blue which tells the story of intellectual running prodigy, Vector Sorn, who witnesses the tragic death of his mother (and subsequent downward spiral of his father) and attempts—through running and the writing of his memoiresque keystone project (the final degree requirement at Quest University he titles Steele Blue)—to render some sort of catharsis and understanding of the heartache and strife he has endured. Along the way (more precisely, in the sky en route to Quest) he meets Valerie Steele, a dangerously beautiful (and equally intelligent) flight attendant who, Vector comes to discover, is the director (and star) of a surreptitious online sex-show called, yes, Steele Blue. An unconventional relationship ensues and Vector uncovers a chilling truth about his mother’s past which, however indirectly, contributes to her untimely death.
Daryl Sneath was raised in a small town near a lake. Currently he shares his days with his wife, Tara, and their three children—Ethan, Penelope, and Abigael—in another small town near a river, that being Seagrave, Ontario. All My Sins is his first novel.
For more information about All My Sins please visit the Now Or Never Publishing website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
Post new comment