{"id":2775,"date":"2016-06-06T13:33:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T12:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=2775"},"modified":"2016-06-06T13:33:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T12:33:17","slug":"pot-luck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/pot-luck\/","title":{"rendered":"Pot Luck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Fisher<\/strong>\u2019s first novel is due to be published in June. It is described as a dark and desperate tale of greed, crime, drugs, family and fear and is set in Weymouth. He talked to Fergus Byrne<\/strong> about where it came from and the characters involved.<\/p>\n

A week ago Nick Fisher was deeply involved in a kidney transplant. This week it\u2019s a heart transplant. It\u2019s difficult to shake off a vision of his heavily tattooed arms peeking out from hospital surgery scrubs, his latex gloved hands raised in the air as a nurse helps ensure he is properly sterilized before entering theatre. Thankfully for Nick\u2014and for me for that matter\u2014it is all just theatre. He isn\u2019t likely to be found wielding a scalpel whilst covered in another man\u2019s blood. And his fingers, rather than sporting snugly fitting latex gloves, are more likely to be tapping out the whole gory scenario on a computer keyboard.<\/p>\n

These days Nick is one of the core writers for the BBC<\/em>\u2019s Holby City<\/em>, a British medical drama that airs on BBC<\/em> One every week. Surgical transplants, car crash carnage and intravenous drips are all part of a day\u2019s work for a man who has been writing TV scripts for decades. \u2018Ah the kidney transplant\u2019 he muses when I remind him of it. \u2018That\u2019s done now. Did she live or die? I can\u2019t remember.\u2019<\/p>\n

Immersed in so much drama it isn\u2019t surprising that in many ways such life-changing surgery could seem mundane and easily forgotten. But thankfully, when it comes to the detail Nick is surrounded by experts. \u2018They\u2019ve got very good medical researchers there\u2019 he tells me. \u2018Everything more or less comes from the doctor\u2019s mouth. I\u2019ve done so many; something like a kidney transplant is really quite basic. But what Holby loves is really exotic operations or very technological ones, and that\u2019s when you have to do a bit more research.\u2019 He recalls a recent heart operation that he worked on which had \u2018only been done in two places in the UK so far.\u2019 The operation used new technology and Nick had to understand the equipment involved, understand what it does and know why that\u2019s different from everything else that\u2019s been around for years. However, dramatizing it is something completely different. His job is to \u2018make that information sexy, make the operation sexy and then make it go wrong and then go right.\u2019 Giving the story its dramatic twists is the part that is most challenging, and that\u2019s the part that makes use of his abundant talent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that talent and ability to pull viewers and readers into the engrossing and emotional depth of whatever scenario he is working on that makes Nick\u2019s latest venture so appealing. In June he is publishing his first novel, Pot Luck<\/em>. The book is based on a subject close to his heart and one with which Marshwood Vale<\/em> readers may well be familiar. Described as \u201cA dark, desperate tale of greed, crime, drugs, family, fear\u2014and commercial crab fishing\u201d, it is based in and around Weymouth and follows the antics of a cast of characters whose lives intertwine around an unusual catch during a fishing trip. As the man who hosted and wrote the TV series\u2019 Screaming Reels<\/em> and Dirty Tackle<\/em>, and one who has written more words on fishing than JK Rowling has on Harry Potter, Nick is perfectly placed to spin a tale of intrigue on the choppy waters off the South Coast of England. Pot Luck<\/em> introduces characters that are at times dysfunctional, opportunist, occasionally hilarious and often sad. However most of all they are very real and their adventures, or at least the adventure that brings them all together, has no shortage of twists and surprises.<\/p>\n

In a show that he wrote many years ago I spotted a doctor named after a local person and mentioned this to Nick at the time. He explained that he often used real names when writing a character but occasionally forgot to change them when the script was approved. Thankfully it hasn\u2019t led to too many awkward moments. In Pot Luck<\/em> he admits that characters are definitely influenced by other people. \u2018There\u2019s a skipper in Weymouth that I gave it to read and he said he was going to look forward to watching all those Weymouth boys arguing about who\u2019s who\u2019 he laughed. \u2018I have spent a lot of time on boats there and those kinds of characters are all around.\u2019 The people in Pot Luck<\/em> are not particularly descriptions of any one individual he says, but more \u2018influenced by them.\u2019 Even the boats reflect personality he explains. \u2018From a gin palace to a barge on a canal. There are certain people that would love the barge and there are certain people that would love the gin palace. And then there are people that are forced to work on boats that they absolutely hate because they are ugly smelly things that aren\u2019t working half the time, and it\u2019s just about fitting characters in.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nick\u2019s ability to write from within the mind of the person he is describing has the effect of sucking readers into the story that little bit more, enough to more than enhance their surprise at the unexpected. It\u2019s an ability that he has honed through years of writing for television. \u2018It\u2019s kind of an extension of script writing\u2019 he says. Using Holby City<\/em> as an example, he explains that in every script you have guest characters, doctors, nurses and management. \u2018You\u2019ve got porters, you\u2019ve got a whole spread of community and you have to write a voice for each one. And you have to write stories that resonate and relate to everyone. So you\u2019re continually putting yourself into the head of other people. And I think with this book it\u2019s the sort of writing that I like.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the sort of writing that comes naturally to Nick. He wrote the bulk of the story, \u2018which had been hanging around my head for years\u2019, during a two week break from the day job of script writing. However with two thirds of the book written, he questioned what he was doing. \u2018It wasn\u2019t a vanity project and I wasn\u2019t getting paid for it, so why should I finish it?\u2019 he thought. If it hadn\u2019t been for his family\u2019s urging, that\u2019s where it might have ended\u2014on the writer\u2019s equivalent of the cutting room floor. However, having read the first draft one of his sons tentatively asked how much it would cost to pay him to finish it. He was prepared to go out and raise the money to pay his Dad to complete the project. That did the trick. Nick finished it, coincidentally had a call from a publisher interested in his work and within days they had offered to take it.<\/p>\n

There is a sweet poignancy to the story of Nick\u2019s son offering to help pay to get the book finished. If the characters in his writing live very real and at times hair-raising or broken lives, they may pale in comparison to their creator\u2019s experiences. Twice going through rehab, Nick has bared his soul and fought an army of demons to bring a solid structure back to his own life. \u2018All my children know I don\u2019t drink, they know I don\u2019t smoke dope and they know why\u2014with differing degrees of understanding\u2019 he says \u2018And they also know I go to meetings\u2019. Explaining that he enjoys writing about how criminals mess up and make stupid mistakes, he describes himself as once being another useless criminal. \u2018I had ridiculous pretentions of being a some sort of suave international drug dealer when I was younger and even more stupid\u2019 he says. \u2018My life all came very badly unstuck at an early age, with very dysfunctional, messy teens and early twenties, that involved getting busted for various things and messing-up quite badly. It wasn\u2019t until my mid to late twenties that I ever really got writing or work together.\u2019 And that despite his father, also a TV writer (Dixon of Dock Green, Hammer House of Horror<\/em> and Dr Who<\/em>) telling him, \u201cDon\u2019t ever become a writer\u201d.<\/p>\n

If Nick had followed his father\u2019s advice and his own interests he might be a mechanic or a plumber now. \u2018My sisters were very academic and I hated all that\u2019 he says. \u2018I didn\u2019t want to go to university. Wasn\u2019t clever enough. Instead I wanted a trade.\u2019 The need to be different from his siblings and a wish to have an older brother character in his life led to an association and \u2018apprenticeship\u2019 with a heroin-addicted motor mechanic and years of petty semi-criminal activity. It all went horribly wrong for Nick Fisher when he was younger but with the help of those closest to him he eventually turned it around\u2014unlike some of the characters in Pot Luck<\/em>\u2026 But then you\u2019ll have to read the book to find out about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Fisher\u2019s first novel is due to be published in June. It is described as a dark and desperate tale of greed, crime, drugs, family and fear and is set in Weymouth. He talked to Fergus Byrne about where it came from and the characters involved. A week ago Nick Fisher was deeply involved in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-articles","category-arts","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}