The Writers of Wales Database

FREDERICK, ROGER

c/o Interstate Publishing, PO Box 45, Kilgetty SA68 0XE
Email: rogerf@interstatefiction.com 
Website: www.rogerfrederick.com  

Roger Frederick was born in La Jolla, California in 1966. He grew up in Berkshire, and has lived in Pembrokeshire for the past 10 years. In a varied career, Roger has worked as a journalist, copywriter and web designer, not to mention stints as a careworker, a van driver and a blood sample unpacker in a genetic fingerprinting lab! He currently works in environmental publishing.

During the last decade, Roger has written five novels and numerous short stories, which are published through Interstate Indie Fiction. Roger’s fiction is predominantly set in Westingshire, an imaginary county along the M4 corridor, and Cymllynion a remote Welsh county just across the 'third Severn Bridge'.

Recent titles include the novels Flesh and Wood (2009) and The Shrewdness of Apes (2004) and a collection of short stories entitled Of Lemonade Lizards and Other Brief Trips into Post-punk Fiction (2006). A 700 page collection of Roger’s early work The Casino Kid and other stories was published in 1999. This featured: two novels, The Casino Kid and Fishing for Angels; a novella, Walking by Water; and a collection of short stories Shorts and Dresses. These earlier titles are currently out of print, but complete e-book versions are available for free at http://www.interstatefiction.com.

Selected Publications:
Walking After Midnight (Trilobite, 1994)
Fishing for Angels (Interstate Publishing, 1996)
The Casino Kid (Interstate Publishing, 1999)
The Shrewdness of Apes (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2004)
Of Lemonade Lizards and Other Brief Trips into Post-punk Fiction (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2006)
Flesh and Wood (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2009)



The Shrewdness of Apes (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2004)

Newton Driftwood is a dope-smoking college drop-out. While temping as a ’cage rat’ in the warehouse of Westing’s largest department store, he develops a crush on Sophie the prim young manageress of soft furnishings. After rashly challenging a ‘sales whale’ from sportswear to compete in the Hellathon - the cross-country triathlon from hell - he decides to turn his life around, get fit and win Sophie’s affections. And that’s when the shit really starts to fly…

Set against a backdrop of shopping centres, bedsits and council leisure facilities, this new novel from Roger Frederick features the author’s customary mix of black comedy and sharply sardonic reflections on contemporary suburban life. Fresh, funny and thought provoking, this is original fiction with real attitude!

To purchase this title from www.interstatefiction.com please click on the cover
 

Of Lemonade Lizards and Other Brief Trips into Post-punk Fiction (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2006)

Based around an independent pub, the Daffodil Lion, and its eccentric patrons, this selection of short stories are set in the post-punk era of the 1980s. The collection starts with ’Dancing to the Dead Kennedys’, about the last chaotic gig of battling local punk bands, and ends with ’The Five Commandments’, the poignant story of a young mum forced into homelessness.

In between, retired insurance executives cross paths with travelling potters, a pie salesman mysteriously melts away into a blizzard, a hippy gardener makes friends with an ageing porn star and her telepathic cat, an unemployed ironmonger goes berserk at a nuclear protest, and a drunk alpacca runs amuck at a surreal country wedding. All in all, anyone who’s ever danced berserkly to a New Order twelve inch will enjoy this alternative take on a desperate decade that has inexplicably become fashionable again!

To purchase this title from www.interstatefiction.com, please click on the cover



Flesh and Wood  (Interstate Indie Fiction, 2009)

Jemma is in IT sales, living only for her next deal. Rushing to meet a new client in her boss’s 5 Series she skids off a bridge and into a tree. She’s lucky to be alive the neurologists tell her. Yea, she thinks, aside from the dent in my forehead, the facial scars, the terrifying hallucinations, the PSD and the partial paralysis...really lucky. With nowhere else to go, she moves to a seaside chalet in the remote village of Nant Llwyfen to recuperate. Walking on the beach one morning she finds a lifelike wooden hand and decides to discover where it came from. More wooden body parts start to appear. Who is leaving them for her? A murderous stalker? One of her psychotic exes? An eccentric villager? Or were they conjured up by some malevolent spirit in the woods that border the cove? Prepare to be sucked into the latest whirlpool of a novel by Roger Frederick - a brain-injured trip into Welsh magic realism featuring his strangely compelling mix of the suburban and the surreal. Take a deep breath and submerge...

To read sample chapters from this title please visit www.interstatefiction.com/faw.htm