by Roger Zotti
James Fredericks’ novel, “Brother,” concerns itself with “the nature of brotherhood.
James Fredericks’ first novel is titled “Brother” (Bascom Hill), and he hopes readers get in touch with him after finishing it. “I’d like to get their feedback because you learn from your audience,” James said. (His website is www.jamesfredericks.com.) He added that the biggest compliment a reader could give him is saying, “I enjoyed the story and stayed up until two in the morning reading it.” He’d also like readers to consider and question the nature of their own relationships: “We often go through life taking relationships for granted. We avoid telling people things and connecting with them in certain ways to keep a shell around ourselves, and that puts us at risk.”
James said, “Brother” is about “the nature of brotherhood and how far you’re willing to go to help a man you call your brother. More specifically, it’s about twin brothers in very different circumstances, who are challenged by nefarious forces outside their control. They have to come together to solve the dilemma that faces them and see how far they are willing to go to attain justice.”
The idea for the book originated when James thought about his two brothers and “four friends whom I consider brothers. We’ve been together for thirty plus years. I started considering how easy it is to be friends when times are good, but when times are bad it’s different. I just started delving deeper into that idea and asked myself how bad does it have to become to challenge those relationships.”
For James, what proved most challenging about writing “Brother” were certain individual scenes. He singled out “the introspective ones, where I have to get inside the head of a man in a coma who’s facing torture and somehow survive it and at the same time help his brother – those were challenging because obviously I’ve never been in those circumstances.” On the other hand, “the courtroom scenes moved quickly and I enjoyed writing them. They almost wrote themselves.” Of course, there’s revision, too, which is always a challenge. “It was more difficult than the writing itself,” James said. “I specifically remember writing a chapter and then having to slash a lot wholesale because I had to keep the book tighter…That was very painful and took longer than I anticipated.”
An avid reader, James admires many authors and for that reason he kept his audience in mind as he wrote his novel. “I know what I like and what makes me feel good about a book. So I tried to incorporate some things my favorite authors did successfully that connected with me. I tried to write a book that appealed to me that I hope would appeal to others who read the same genre.”
Before readers begin his novel James hopes “they feel they’re in good hands. They should feel comforted that it’s a story that will carry them [from page one] to the end.” And yes, James is working on a new project that’s “somewhat a sequel to this novel. I have a character at the end of the book I was exploring and I just started working on that.”
