We chat with author John Fram about No Road Home, which follows a young father who must clear his name and protect his queer son when his wealthy new wife’s televangelist grandfather is found murdered.
Hi, John! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi, Nerd Daily! I’m John, a novelist from Texas and the author of NO ROAD HOME, a Gothic thriller about a young father, his queer son and the demented family of a TV preacher who want to tear them apart.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
This feels weirdly impossible to answer. My mom says that I cried as a kid because I was so desperate to read and write, so it must have started pretty young. I blame Texas: nowhere loves a tall tale like this place.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
- First Book- I read Edgar Allen Poe when I was drastically too young. Not that I’m complaining.
- The Book That Gave Me The Desire To Become an Author- I remember reading Mary Higgins Clark’s Remember Me at twelve and thinking, “I bet I could scare someone like this.”
- The Book I Cannot Ever Stop Thinking About- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. It’s one of the few books I’ve read as an adult that’s sucked me in and filled my imagination the way books used to do when I was young.
Your novel, No Road Home, is out July 23! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
“God laughs at your plans.”
What can readers expect?
On one level, it’s a murder mystery at a crumbling estate cut off from civilization and maybe haunted by a ghost. On a deeper level, it’s about the horrors of familial curses and the way pain (and secrets) can pass from one generation to the next. But at its heart, it’s a story about the lengths a father will go to make sure his child feels protected and safe.
Where did the inspiration for No Road Home come from?
A couple years ago, in the wake of the pandemic, my life was a mess and I needed to come home to my parents for a reset. At first I’d dreaded the idea, but as soon as I got there I realized what a blessing it was to be close to your family again as a grown adult. With that new perspective, I saw how fundamentally decent they were, and realized how few good fathers seem to appear in fiction. And almost the minute I had that idea, I had Toby and Luca, the father and son at the heart of the novel.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
This is a bit of a cheat, but I genuinely cared for all these people, even the awful ones. Aside from Toby and Luca, I’d say I really loved any of the scenes with a very secretive butler named Julian and a very dangerous golden child named Richard.
What are some of the key lessons you have learned when it comes to writing and the publishing world?
That the only thing you can control—literally the only thing—is the quality of the work you do. Everything else is some combination of kismet, timing, endurance and grace. But it also helps to have an audience in mind for a book.
What’s next for you?
Don’t worry—we’ll be announcing something else very shortly.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
I recently read Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith for the first time after loving Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden, the film the book inspired, for years. It’s a shockingly good novel on just about every level, full of sex and double-crosses and Victorian atmosphere and I can’t wait to read it again in a few months.
