Author interview: The Scoundrel's Son with Frederic Fahey
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Hey friend, today I have something a little different. I sat down recently with the author Frederick Fahey, who after an impressive career as a medical physicist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has taken a fascinating turn into the world of historical fiction. His debut novel is The Scoundrel's Son, and it picks up where Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper left off, but not in the way that you might expect. Fred,

Fred takes us on a journey through the Tudor world following Tom Canty as he grows up in the royal court, befriends Edward VI, meets Lady Jane Grey, and wrestles with what it means to be a good person in a complicated world. In this conversation, we talk about what inspired Fred to give Tom his own voice, how he blended fictional and historical characters, and why he chose to be a good person.

and why friendship, loss, and identity are at the heart of this story. Plus, we get the inside scoop on the incredible book cover, which was designed by the same artist who did the Wicked book cover. So that's a fun connection. If you want to be part of these chats and discussions live, you can do that by becoming a patron or a member.

So going to patreon.com slash englandcast or just clicking join this channel, we do pretty regular monthly author chats with authors like Fred and others. So thanks so much for watching. Let's dive right in and learn more about Edward VI. And if you're a fan of Mark Twain and the Prince of the Pauper, this is definitely going to be one you want to watch the whole way through. All right, let's get into it.

All right. So you have this wonderful book. You have the, Oh, you should tell me before we even get started the story behind the cover of your book. Cause you shared something very interesting about that. The scoundrel son. Tell me about this beautiful cover.

So, you know, one of the advantages of having going to a small publisher is they said, you do the you do the cover. You know, my writing coach told me she doesn't even think Stephen King gets to pick what his cover looks like. But there's some. So I live in this island off of Portland, Maine, called Peaks Island. And there's some very talented illustrators on the island. And one happens to be Doug Smith. So he lives about maybe three quarters of a mile from me here. And he did this.

the original cover of wicked, um, you know, you know, not the, uh, not, not the Broadway poster, but the actual book. I can tell that now that you're saying it, it looks familiar. So, uh, so he also read my, my book very carefully. Cause, um, although I probably had veto power, he chose the six scenes. He just, he decided to illustrate, you know, and he has on this side of the book, a book cover, um,

Part one, it's a little bit lighter. On this side, part two, it's a little bit darker, you know, so, so, so it was great working with him. And, and Scott Nash, another illustrator worked with us. Scott helped design it. Doug did the illustration. Awesome.

So your book kind of picks up or picks off, I would think it's kind of, it's not necessarily a sequel to The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain, but it's more of like a companion, I guess you could say. So you pick up the story of Tom Canty from The Prince and the Pauper. And if people don't know that story, maybe you can just give me a little digression.

In the first chapter, you kind of give this little synopsis of The Prince and the Pauper. And maybe you can tell me a little bit about kind of the story and how you pick it up. And I'm curious, what was it about Tom Canty's voice that kept kind of tugging at you and why you wanted to write this companion, for lack of a, I don't want to call it a sequel because it's not a sequel so much, but yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sort of calling it a continuation in a way. But I, so when I was a kid, I saw the Errol Flynn movie version of The Prince and the Pauper. And at the end of it, you know, I said, wow, it was, you know, Edward really a real person. So I ran to my encyclopedia, you know, Collier's encyclopedia, 20 volumes, and looked it up. And lo and behold, a lot of people sort of know the story of Prince and the Pauper, but they don't realize that the prince is an actual prince.

You know, he's Edward, you know, Edward VI and King of England. And so that intrigued me. And what Twain says about Tom is that he lived to be an old man. But my encyclopedia said that Edward's not. So I wondered what happened next. Actually, in The Prince and the Pauper, and maybe we'll talk about this a little bit more later, but

they don't spend much time together. You know, they sort of meet, they decide they're going to exchange places. And then Edward goes on, often has these harrowing adventures in the city, which he thought would be cooler than it actually is. And Tom's in the palace trying to make believe he's the prince. And then the king dies and, you know,

So I thought, well, what happens next? And so now many years later, I decided now I know what happened next. And I like the other thing that came into it, which we maybe will talk a little bit about later, is probably about 10 or 20 years ago, I visited Tower of London. And the yeoman, B. Peter, that was given the tour talked about Lady Jane Grey. So then I was intrigued by her.

And, you know, her tale. And so I thought, well, it'd be sort of fun to add a teenage girl to the mix. So I decided to do that. And so then I figured that's how I sort of got the idea of it. I wanted to know what happened next.

Very cool. Yeah. And there's sort of like, I don't want to give anything away, but there's an interesting tension with Tom and Jane Grey. I don't know. He seems to want to impress her. And it's almost like a little bit of a love interest, but not really like kind of from afar sort of thing. It's cool. It's neat to bring that in like that. So you frame it like a memoir, Tom as a grown man looking back. And I'm curious why you framed it that way. What made you decide to have it come from that perspective? Yeah.

You know, partly it was, this is the first novel I ever wrote after being a scientist for many years. And I retired, I decided I'd try to write a novel. And I figured, well, one way to tell a tale is to tell a tale, you know, so I thought that might be easier. And it is in some ways, but it...

It's limiting in other ways, right? Because all you know is what Tom knows. It is in retrospect. So I'm loosening it up a little bit. He's telling it 20 years later. And so that was sort of why I chose it. I said, okay, it's going to be in first person. It's going to be a tale told to somebody. And I'm not going to do what Twain did. I'm not going to try to...

do my version of Elizabethan English, you know, then it's pretty much going to be modern English. Because I did, you know, because again, it was my first book, and I just I wanted to make it as easy as I was possible. But I think it worked well. I mean, I thought that, you know, we, because Tom, it brings a certain perspective to this, to the Royal Court that's unique. And I thought that that would be something that would be interesting to see. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, congratulations on this first book. It's a marvelous first book. It's, it's a delight. Yeah. So I'm interested in this friendship between Tom and Edward. Of course, Tom goes off and he's the King's ward at this point and living his life. And how you envisioned how you decided to imagine or depict their friendship as they both grew up and entered adolescence. How did, how did,

How did you decide to play it like that and to portray it the way you did? Yeah, you know, one of I think the themes of the book or one of the things I wanted to capture is those friendships we have when we're at that age. You know, let's say the story sort of starts when they're 11 and it ends when they're 15 or 16 years old. And, you know, sometimes some, you know, in your life, sometimes some of your strongest friendships you've ever had.

are in that time period. And so, like I said, Edward and Tom didn't spend much time together actually in "Prince and the Pauper." So then I wanted to expand that on, are they still friends? Do they still have a relationship? Did just Tom go his way and Edward went his way? And then I thought, well, then Tom

Tom brings something unique. Edward, king of England now, right? So he spends a lot of time with people a lot older than he is. And then Tom comes in and he's a kid. And he's the same exact age to the day as Edward. And so they do little boy things. I have a scene where Tom tells a joke and milk comes out of it.

Edward Snow, the King of England's nose. Right. I remember you said something like, oh, that made milk hit my nose or something. So I was trying to capture that. Friendship is a very strong part of what I wanted to present here. Yeah. Do you, from your research and what you learned about Edward as you were researching this book and kind of, do you think Edward was,

needed friendships like that do you think edward had any friendships like that um he did uh because he was at school and they and uh they i don't think he was educated just by himself i think there were other there um i can't not sure if i can remember his name but it was an irish kid for example um

Like something like that. Wasn't Robert Dudley, I think, part, they're part of that, like Elizabeth. Yeah, he did know Robert Dudley a little bit. And, you know, you know, so, so in that family, but that, you know, so he did. And, you know, some of his other friends.

cousins, you know, Ned Seymour, you know, he went, maybe he knew. But, you know, that's still in the, you know, sort of the realm of, you know, either school and, you know, and being king and being, you know, being the royal family. So he's able to sort of let his guard down when he's with Tom. And that's, you know, and I think that that makes it a little bit easier. On the other hand, as the story progresses and

you know, and things, and they get a little older, Tom brings a unique perspective to what's going on. Tom, you know, he doesn't have as much schooling as Edward or Jane, but he has street smarts that they don't have. You know, he's a little bit guarded because he's not had an easy childhood, you know? And so he knows that there's good people in the world, but he also knows,

that there are not. And he learns through this story that even if you are a noble or a royal, you could still be a scheming person. - Sure, sure.

Yeah, I remember there was a scene where one of his friends, not the noble when they were playing and he was cheating at card gem was cheating at cards and stuff. And it was just this awareness on I thought it was like an interesting dichotomy playing like both sides, the noble sides and like that kind of thing is everywhere. And he was more introduced to that early on. There's this wonderful cast of characters that you have Father Christian and Robert Nobson.

How did you come up with these characters? Did any of them surprise you as you were writing? Did any of them just appear to you? Did they take on bigger roles than you had imagined? Tell me about them. You mentioned Father Christian. That's sort of a funny thing, because if you are familiar with the Prince and the Pauper, he is friendly with a priest called Father Andrew. So I started writing my first draft with Father Andrew, and then it occurred to me, wait a minute, Father Andrew died recently.

I had to make a shift. I think one of the other, you know, I'm very much, I like characters. And I, you know, I'm a very character driven kind of reader and writer. I take one of the ones that I liked and had a bigger part than I would have expected is Richard, the king's head groom. They sort of bond because Richard knows

what Tom brings to the, to the, you know, to, to the show in, in both early on and then later, you know, when, when things sort of, you know, evolve, I guess I can say. So he is an interesting character and he has a respect for Tom, but sometimes I had to invent a character like Richard because I feel, how do you, how did, you know,

How do you grease the wheel to get him to Tom into the places where he wants to be like there's another, you know, William the guard, you know, you know the guard who roughed him up in the Prince and the pauper now be friends and, you know, so anyways I inside I liked him you know and

Father Christian is sort of a little bit of a spiritual. Tom's not really that spiritual. And then Robert is more like his mentor. He's an apprentice. And that provides. And then I drag Miles Hendon in from The Prince and the Pauper because we need someone who knows something about him.

covert operations yeah for sure and how like you it's interesting because you brought in normally with historical fiction you're bringing in real people with invented people and characters and mixing things and then you also have another layer where you're bringing in characters from another historical fiction book from 100 and something odd years ago almost 150 years ago so I

How did you mix together all of these characters? What were the challenges with that? And also the idea of bringing in real characters and having historical accuracy while also being faithful to the characters that Mark Twain created and then putting your own spin on them and then also bringing in the characters that you had to invent as well. Tell me a little bit about how you were able to do that process.

You know, so, you know, I'm the person who ripped off Mark Twain, who did not win the Pulitzer Prize. So...

So, you know, so kudos to Percival Everett for James. But, you know, it's about, so I followed his approach. And, you know, and I thought it would be easier again, my first novel. Okay, I got history. I got a scaffold. I know some things that happened. And I've got some characters that are good, you know, that are worthwhile, you know, Tom, you know, mostly. And, yeah.

A little bit his family. I probably expand on his mother a little bit more than you probably learn, you know, from the Prince and the Pauper. I mean, she's a good woman in the Prince and the Pauper, but I think I make her funnier. And so I was trying to take advantage of that. But then the history thing, you know, I've exchanged some emails with an author from Boston, Bill Martin, who writes historical fiction, not fiction.

tutor, but he goes American historical fiction from the revolution up to, you know, the 60s. And he told me that when he starts a book, his research is a mile wide and an inch deep, you know, like he knows a little about a lot. And then as the story progresses, he starts to to

things start to pile up as you need to know more things, you know? And I sort of, when I started, I sort of didn't want to hamstring myself. I knew some things. I knew some things about Jane and Edward and the tutors. And so I took advantage of that. But I sort of told myself I'm not,

You know, I'm not a historian. I'm an author. And I don't mean to sound like, you know, I'm putting myself in the same category as Shakespeare, but if you want to know history, don't read Shakespeare. Sure. That's like saying Game of Thrones is history, right? I mean, it's a story.

But on the other hand, you know, I'm not Quentin Tarantino. I try to stay with what actually happened. You know, Sharon Tate really did get murdered by the Manson family. Yeah.

You know, so I tried to not, you know, so Jane was, you know, things were going to happen, you know, and I wasn't going to change them. You know, I moved in some things around, you know, I moved some things happen different places and they actually happen just to make it convenient for Tom to be there. So, so anyways, I, I tried to mix it in and I tried to early on, I probably did more, you know,

You know, exposition here, you know, and then and my writing coach really pushed me to try to make it more seamless, like try to tell the history as part of the story, you know, and so I tried to do that. I hope I did. And I hope I gave people enough history that they didn't have to keep running back to Wikipedia to figure out what the heck was going on.

Yeah. Easier though than your Collier's encyclopedia after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I tried to, to mix the history in, you know, and, but not make it too onerous, but make it see how, you know, how it, how it fit into the story, you know, and some places I did more than some places I did less, obviously Jane becomes a more important in some ways, maybe eat the Tom Jane relationship because,

becomes the relationship in the story but you know i mean thomas seymour and edward seymour sort of you know and john dudley they sort of come in and out and they're they are you know they are in the story um but they they more come in and out and even um even queen mary you know uh yeah

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Happy summer wishes from me, Martina Bonior, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Scandinavia. Go there now. Yeah, okay.

And this book, there's so many kind of deep themes in it, even though I know The Prince and the Pauper was written, what, for children of all ages or something, didn't Twain say? Yes, he did. And it kind of has that same sort of style. So it's not reading like a really deep kind of thing. But at the same time, there are some really deep themes in there around class and identity and loss and temptation. And I'm just wondering, like, themes that...

if there were any that felt most personal to you, how you, how you kind of wove those themes and it made it accessible in a way that it didn't feel like one was reading, like, I don't know, some really, it felt easy enough to read. You could read it before bed and fall asleep. And it wasn't like really super hard reading, obviously. So how did you work these themes into a story that was based off of a children's story and still make it

kind of have have that thought-provoking part to it you know even um even twain if you know the the parts where edward is getting into trouble in london is pretty some of it's pretty dark you know um and it's a good thing that miles hendon's there to get him out of different jams um i there were two aspects of this that you know i i like i said friendship these young you know

These these young people being very close friends, you know, and so some of it I tried to is, you know, as I said, you know, as Patty Smith would say, wanted to make them just kids, you know, but but on the other hand, there's some loss, as you say, you know,

And Tom, on the first paragraph of the book, points out that he's going to go through some things that a young man maybe shouldn't have to deal with. And there's an aspect of it, people have asked me, why do you call it The Scoundrel's Son? My writing coach said to me once that stories, as you try to frame them, are what does the main character want?

And what's in their way? You know, what's the obstacle to that, that they have to get around? And what he wants is not to be his father. You know, his father is a scoundrel. His father's a jerk. And he really wants to be a good person. And he wants to work at that. But what he learns in this story, to some extent, is even if you are a really good person, bad things still happen to you.

and you have and and what do you do about them and how do you and how do you um and how do you get around them uh he's you know he's not so religious to say well it's just god's plan and that's it you know other people in the story do have that perspective but tom doesn't necessarily so he's trying to so he's trying to come to grips with that and you know i i um

well, I don't know whether it's unfortunate, but, you know, I, as a young person, you know, dealt with loss, losing someone who was a member of my family, you know, because, you know, you can imagine this time in the 1500s that, you know, that people die all the time. But it's another thing when it's,

your best friend, you know, or something like that, then that changes, you know, how you, how you grasp that. And so that, that rang to me. And I wanted to explore that a little bit, but also in the context of, you know, in the context of these three kids are, are, are friends, are friends and, and, and like each other. And yeah, I think Tom is smitten. Yeah. Very sweet.

And talk to me, you have Jane and then there's another female character, Allie, who is a friend of Tom's as well. And she's a really super cool character. I really loved her. How did you, like what inspired her and how did you feel about writing these kind of very strong female characters in the Tudor world? Talk to me a little bit about your thoughts with that. You know, I, I,

That's always something when you're writing your first novel. How am I going to, am I going to do a decent job in making these people real? You know, so we do have these two young female characters, Allie, Allison, you know, who lives in the neighborhood. She's poor.

But she's, she's spunky, you know, she's, I'm married to a Tom, a Tom, a former tomboy, I guess you'd say, you know, who wanted to go out for the football team kind of thing, you know, but, and, and so Allie, you know, you know, she likes to climb things, she can run faster than anyone in the neighborhood, and she's not above punching people.

Someone in the nose who's given her about. And Jane's a totally other side of that. Right. I mean, Jane is very, you know, one of the most educated people.

young ladies in England of the time and would much prefer to read a book than to go hunting with their parents. And so it's a little bit of a yin and a yang there. But I wanted Allie to be Tom's friend and confidant. As the story goes on, she's the person in the neighborhood that he really tells what's going on in his complicated life.

And she gives them a rule. She says that try to figure out how you would deal with these people if they weren't royal, if they were just normal people. And so I tried to make her, I'm glad you liked her because I tried to make her real. And Katie Holman said that she really liked my portrayal of Jane.

And so, yeah, I am glad. It's so much so that my second book, my main character is a woman. Oh, wow. All right. And I was willing to even take that leap. So anyways, so thank you. I think she's interesting. I like her a lot. I tend to like my characters. Well, that's helpful if you're spending a lot of time with them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

What's the, can you share what your second book is on? Yeah, it's totally different. It is historic, but it's mostly based on my grandmother's life. So it takes place in the 1920s and 30s in a phrase my grandmother at the... Out here, it's not only the amazing views, but the way time stretches out a little longer, how laughter bellows louder among friends, and how the breeze hits just right at the summit.

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19-year-old mother of two leaves her abusive husband and doesn't go back and then spends the next 10 years trying to make a go of it. That's hard enough to do in 2025, never mind 1926.

Um, so, uh, so that's the story, you know, and my grandmother didn't talk about her life that much. My mother was like the happiest person I ever knew, you know, and then I learned her young life was not that easy. Um, so I wanted to, you know, so I, I took a few words my grandmother said about her life and then wrote a 300 page novel. Okay. All right.

That's very cool. I'm sure that was an emotional journey as well. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. There's a, well, so also I want to say one of our guests is watching from Paris. So hello to Paris. And they ask, I do love historical fictions. I couldn't find a French translation online. So do you have any plans to translate your book into French or anything like that?

I do have a foreign agent. That sounds more intrigued than what it means. But I have a woman who contacted me who's trying to line up translation and foreign rights. So, you know, I hope so. There is not a French translation available.

But but maybe we'll keep our fingers crossed. Right. Yeah. All right. Very cool. There's a scene that stuck with me when Tom realized that he never asked Edward how he was doing. And it's like this emotional shift in it. Do you remember writing that? And tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that part. You know, I was thinking about.

sometimes in our lives, and I've been around a bit, you know, and you meet people who are noted or for some reason, you know, and not the king of England, but, you know, and Tom realizes that he didn't, you know, the king asked him how he was doing, you know, but he didn't ask the king how he, not like how his

things in Scotland going on or, you know, what are you doing about France? You know, none of that stuff, but just how do you feel, you know, you know, what's your favorite color? You know, what do you, you know, what do you like to do? Do you, you know, and do you like music? Do you like, you know, these kinds of things. And he decides that if they're really going to be friends, and this is me delving into what friendship means,

he has to ask those things, you know, he has to get more involved in what's going on with Edward and to get into more of that life. I think I also, there's a bit of it where he says one thing that he realized is that what, you know, what Edward needs is an expert in being, you know, an 11-year-old boy, you know.

And he says, I'm an expert in that, you know, and so they start playing chess together. He comes in with a few jokes every time, you know, and it's just 11-year-olds hanging out, you know, and eating all the snacks that, you know, the king can bring.

Yeah, very cool. So my final question is, if you could sit down with Mark Twain and show him this book, what would you want him to know about your take on his character, Tom?

Yeah, so as I said, you know, Tom is probably, you know, not as central a character in Prince and the Pauper. It's probably more Edward, you know, and the adventures and misadventures he has out in the London slums, you know.

So I wanted to, you know, since I decided I was going to tell this story from Tom's point of view, I wanted to be true. You know, you know, when you write a novel, you know, you're writing a lot of lies to tell a greater truth. You know, I wanted it to be true to what into the character that Dwayne had. But I wanted to figure out where is he?

five years later, you know, where is that, where is that young, that young boy five years, you know, five years later and be true and be reasoned in this could be a reasonable, you know, extrapolation of that. I tried really hard to find why Twain wrote this book because, you know, Prince and the Pauper came out

between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. And I know he traveled a lot, you know, and went to England a lot. And he, you know, he has also, you know, Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court. But why did he write this down? What I did find in his autobiography, and I've written a little thing for my newsletter about it, is his daughter loved this story. The Prince and the Pauper is her favorite story.

Oh, interesting. So, you know, and so that was interesting. Twain comes back from the road and they say, oh, we have to go to the neighbor's house. And they go over to the neighbor's house. He said, oh, can I just stay home? And, you know, they drag him over and they've set up a stage. And her daughter and her friend, they're like 12 at the time, put on a play of The Prince and the Pauper. Right.

Oh, fun. Oh, how fun. That's so cool. What a good story. Yeah. It's very cool. So I would, I'd like to see, I'd be happy that if he thought that I, you know, that who Tom was is who he imagined Tom could be years down the road. Awesome.

Well, Fred, it was lovely to meet you in your book, The Scoundrel's Son. It was a very fun read. So thank you for taking the time to talk with me about it and share your experience. Where can people find you and your books? Plug your stuff. So you can probably find my book on the internet.

you know, almost any place that you can buy books, you can, you know, find it, you know, if you go to your bookstore, it may not be on the shelf, but they certainly can order it. So, you know, my publisher does go through Ingram. So it's, it's pretty available, but certainly, you know,

You know, the e-book is only available as Kindle, you know, so only through Amazon, the e-book. And then if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, it's part of your subscription. You can read it as part of your subscription. But you can also check out my website, which is FrederickFahey.com and find things from there as well.

Awesome. Any parting thoughts you want to leave me with anything? You don't have to, I'm just wondering if there's anything I missed that you want to add. Yeah. People have asked me if it's going to be more, you know, like I said, Tom lived to be an old man and people have asked me if there's going to be more stories. So I'm working on starting out as a short story, but I don't know where it's going to go. As I said, Twain said he lived to be an old man, you know? So yeah,

In the time after the prince and the pauper, there's a lot of interesting people. Yeah, there are. Definitely. All right. Well, we will stay tuned for that and see what happens. So that's one of the things that's out there. I'm working on a little short story now that I think I hope is interesting. Okay. Well, Fred, thanks for taking the time. Heather, thanks for the invitation. I really appreciate it. This was really fun. Awesome. Go to VogueScandinavia.com slash summer.

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