In her book, Nom de Plume, Carmela Ciuraru writes: "To a certain extent, all writing involves impersonation—the act of summoning an authorial 'I' to create the speaker of a poem or the characters in a novel." And she's right, especially for those in the fiction **** e; creating a world, characters, understanding and illustrating their interior lives, all evidences a knack for occupying a **** e other than their own. Some writers take that bifurcation a step further, choosing a pen name to write some or all of their work under; George Orwell, Mark Twain, and Lewis Carroll are all pen names–it's a tool commonly deployed by a marginalized class to gain credibility among readers who would otherwise look past their name. The Bronte sisters famously wrote under male pseudonyms; before Little Women, Louisa May Alcott wrote under the name A. M. Barnard.
Next month, Minotaur Books will publish the private detective mystery Killer Vibes by Jack Friday–or as readers will recognize him, John Fram. Fram burst onto the literary scene in 2020 with his acclaimed novel, The Bright Lands, followed by No Road Home, and most recently The Midnight Knock; he's made a name for himself crafting queer horror novels that deliver mind bending thrills and nuanced character studies. Fram's newest endeavor is in the crime fiction **** e and that shift, in part, inspired the author to write under a nom de plume: Jack Friday. Killer Vibes is the first in what will be a series that centers on Peter Key, a bisexual stoner who inherits a home from an uncle he barely knew, only to find out that his death was probably not an accident. "He starts to poke into the case and attracts some very dangerous people, but he also makes a lot of really cool new friends, including a private investigator," Fram tells me. "By the end of the novel, Peter has gone through a lot of scrapes but he has come out a detective. He's realized that he finally has something that he's really good at and loves to do."
Ahead of Killer Vibes' release, I caught up with Fram to talk about his decision to write under a pen name, telling queer, Southern stories, and what fans of Fram–and Friday–can look forward to in this book and beyond.
Caroline Reilly: What made you decide to write your next book under a pen name?
John Fram: I think that for me it was a matter of making sure people had the right expectations going into the book. I didn't want to alienate my horror readers with something that's not a horror novel. There's nothing supernatural in Killer Vibes. So on the one hand, it was making sure people who have read my previous work knew what they were getting into. Secondly–I remember once reading a review of my book and there was a comment on it where this lady said, "I've always been interested in this author, but I'm too scared to read horror." And that was always in my head, I thought, the fact that one person has said this means there's other people who maybe feel this way. Let me give them something wh