🏰 Author Interview Featuring John Andrew Fredrick, Author THE KING OF GOOD INTENTIONS III

 

We have a very talented author here today to tell us all about his new book, The King of Good Intentions III. John Andrew Fredrick is the author of five novels and one book on the early films of Wes Anderson. He is the principal songwriter/singer of an indie rock band called The Black Watch that has released twenty-two albums to considerable acclaim. As Popmatters.com has observed, he is an accomplished painter. His poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Press, Santa Barbara Magazine, and Artillery, among others. He lives in Los Angeles and London. Visit him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/john.a.fredrick and Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177676792-the-king-of-good-intentions-part-three.

As a book bloggin’ and book luvin’ Princess, I’m always curious to find out how authors get the ideas for their books.  How did you come up with the idea for your The King of Good Intentions series?

I moved from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles in 1988; I had started my band in 1987 but came to LA without them, looking for like-minded indie rock musicians.  The trilogy is quasi-autobiographical, the story of how manic and thrilling it was to be a jangle-pop band in a hair band era.  I thought it was time that time--and the characters, in both senses of the word--was satirized.  I called my narrator "John" in order to play a sort of game with the reader.  He's not at all "me," but he could be my shadow self!

Can you tell us a little about the main characters of your book?

I tried to make the principal ones "round" (as E.M. Forster defines them), and the peripheral ones "rounded"--to, admittedly, variable degrees of success.  They're all young and ambitious and pretentious and endearing--as only artistes in their late twenties can be.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be?

Know that no matter how hard it is to write a novel, getting it published is far more difficult.  I wrote 500 pages of a novel longhand before I realized it had no plot other than starring two recent Californian college grads who summered in England.  I threw it out.  I think I did the right thing.  That's advice I'd give to anybody who writes fiction:  just because you throw out a lot of material it isn't a failure but a prompt, as it were, for you to do something better.  Perhaps. 

As a published author, what has been your greatest moment? 

There have been many of them but the best ones have to do with readers telling me how many times they laughed out loud at my stuff.  That's my sole goal, really.  Other than making something beautiful and memorable and whimsically poetic.

Do you hear from your readers? What do they say?

See above.  It's very flattering at times.  Sometimes they object to the main character's garrulous nature, and to his morals or moral quandaries.  But satire, for me, is THE most moral genre.  The bad in my books always get their minor comeuppance. 

Is there anything you'd like to say to your readers and fans? Upcoming plans for more books?

I have a Hitchcockian thriller that I would LOVE to find a publisher for. We shall see. I am not fundamentally a very prideful person--I am too much aware of the greats who've gone before me to get to be too chuffed with myself--but I am super best pleased that strangers have found my novels and told me they didn't want the story to end.

About The King of Good Intentions III

As The Weird Sisters return from their first What-Could-Go-Wrong (spoiler alert – everything) National Tour, bandmates/lovers John and Jenny face their iffy futures together (or apart) as the brilliant and mysterious Katie upends the romantic/artistic balance that’s been precarious-at-best. The unmitigated vanity, the mythopoeic beauty, the megalomania and heartbreak, the exquisite talent and ludicrous hubris – it’s all here in Fredrick’s wonderful, tart-sweet, final installment.   

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