Author Interview: James LePore

Hopping in today is James LePore, author of the revenge driven thriller Blood of My Brother, to answer a few questions about him, his book.... cake. The usual.


If you were to find yourself in Jay's position, left in the aftermath of a best friend's murder, how do you think you'd handle it?

I would leave it to the authorities, but, if I thought they were not acting in good faith, for example if they were ignoring obvious evidence, I would do some private investigating. I don’t know how much courage I would have if I ran into the likes of the Feria brothers, but I suppose if I did, I would find out.

Is there anyone in your life that you have a bond as deep as that between Jay and Dan?

Aside from my wife—and that’s a different kind of bond—no. However, I can tell you that when I was five, I moved into a new neighborhood in Newark, a very rough one, where I knew no one and was lonely and isolated until I met a boy, also five, I will call Tony, a brash, super-confident, hardnosed kid, who was not afraid of the characters that ran our streets. He liked me for some reason. We became friends and because of that friendship I was able to survive and even thrive. I lost Tony in circumstances I cannot discuss out of respect for his family’s privacy.

If you could pair Jay and Isabel with any character from any book, who would your picks for them be?

I would pair Jay with Lizbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo.
Isabel, I wold pair with Nicholas Urfe, from John Fowles’ The Magus.
As to both pairings, let the fireworks begin!

Of the characters in this book, which was the most interesting for you to write, learn about, and develop?

Isabel was the most interesting because she was the hardest for me to understand. I began to get a sense of her as an adult when I wrote the flashbacks to her days in the orphanage. That child pierced my heart and that piercing made it easier for me to know and write about the bitter, despairing adult that Isabel indeed was when she entered first Danny’s and then Jay’s life in 2004.

If Jay could tell readers one thing going into his story, what would it be?

He would recite this quote from C.S. Lewis: "God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. We think our nursery and all our toys are the whole wide world. But something must drive us out of our nursery into the world of others. And that something is suffering."

What is the most private thing you're willing to share here?

I dedicated Blood of My Brother to my parents, whose life was not easy. Now that it’s too late, I think sometimes, late at night, with regret, of all the things I might have done to show my love, to ease their path.

What kind of cake/confection would you describe yourself as?

Dark chocolate.


Thank you, James, for those answers! I need to find myself some dark chocolate cake now....

Anyhow, make sure you guys check out Blood of My Brother, out now!