Author Bio:
Born in Sharon, PA, in basically what amounts to a town with no future, Derek Vasconi decided to set out to not be a writer but a musician. So he started the band, From a Second Story Window, and didn’t come back to PA for a really, really long time.
When Derek did make his way back, he attended Penn State and got a degree in counseling, then proceeded to counsel people of all shapes and sizes and afflictions. Doing that for a few years convinced him that he never wanted to do that kind of work ever again, so naturally, he became a writer. Oh, and somewhere along the way, he taught himself how to code websites just for fun.
Derek spent some time in Japan after leaving the world of drug addicts and screwed up, depressed souls, and went to Japan, which is arguably the weirdest place on the planet to live and experience, but in a good way. It was there that a lot of ideas sprung to write about. Specifically, about girls who want to destroy the world, yakuza who want revenge, and homicidal cults that want the end of the world to come through any means necessary, all of which can be found in abundance in Japan. Seriously.
Today, Derek lives in LA, another place full of the aforementioned (except maybe yakuza), and he lives there in the shadow of the rich and famous, quietly spitting at them when they aren’t looking in his direction, which is always the case. Oh, and he is trying to raise a daughter there to not be anything at all like him, but rather, he hopes one day she’ll become a Japanese pop idol so that she can finally help him afford their pet cat’s voracious appetite for hatred of all things in existence.
What inspires you to write?
Mostly about corners of the world that haven’t really been explored fully, or about things that have been talked about to the point of ad nauseum, but maybe not quite in the way that in my mind these things are explored. For example, my latest book I’m working on, which is actually a trilogy, deals with the end of the world. Now, before you vomit in your mouth because of how trite the end of the world has become as subject matter for every book ever written since 1977, my thinking is that the end of the world isn’t going to be from a nuclear bang, or at the mouths of hungry zombies, or because of some plague, or robots, but rather, the world is actually going to wake up, which will technically be its end, but actually it’s a beginning. I think this might make people actually like the apocalypse again, right?
Also, I enjoy writing about women who love ikemen adult movies, girls in Hiroshima who like to torture people without them even realizing they are being tortured, and otaku culture. If I’m really inspired by something, it’s usually stuff that probably wouldn’t inspire most people, but my challenge is to take what I love and give it my own spin, and that’s what inspires me the most… this process of improving what already has been a narrative for all of us for so long. That’s about all any writer can do in this day and age, since mostly everything has been written about. Mostly, but maybe there’s still something out there that hasn’t been talked about yet. For now, I like to just stay in places that allow me to feel familiar with what’s there, but I like to inject the way I see the familiar with the unfamiliar, and that’s where, I think, something new becomes part of the narrative. Or so I hope.
Tell us about your writing process.
My writing process is kind of horrible, and kind of awesome.
I am horrible at procrastinating, so I tend to write in spurts that come out of nowhere, but those spurts tend to come after long weeks of not writing. That sucks, I know.
At the same time, I’m a method writer, so I guess that means those long weeks of inactivity are actually filled with a lot of research I like to do about whatever it is I’m writing. I feel like I can’t be honest with what I’m writing about if I don’t know every single thing about it. So like one thing I’m currently doing right now is writing a part in my new book that deals with ancient Chinese poetry. This means I am trying to learn how to do five character, monosyllabic poetry that at the same time fits with my story but has an understated, more implied feeling to it than a direct image I’m trying to paint with my words. So to do this, I’ve spent the better part of a month learning all about this kind of Chinese poetry, and even more specifically, how it was used during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, and even more specific than that, how a famous poet named Cao Zhi used the poetry, as one of the poems I’m trying to come up with could’ve been one he actually wrote back when he lived, which was quite a long time ago. Keep in mind, I’m white and don’t know a word of Chinese. So that means usually I write about only stuff that I can truly deliver with truth and actual research to back it up. And that means my writing process is horribly skewed at times, but when I’m on, I’m really on, and that is when I think I can write like the type of disciplined writers out there who get up at 5am every morning and write for an hour. Most nights I’m just going to bed at 5am, so….
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
They are my best friends, my lovers, the people I’m trying to kill, the people I cry over because their stories move me deeper than the real people in my life, and most of all, they are often my only friends I talk to for months at a time. Writing is a lonely profession, maybe the loneliest creative pursuit, and that’s because you have to go deep inside your head and not come out for long periods of time in order to find the words these people you are writing about want to have put on paper. That means I am constantly thinking about my characters, what they are feeling, thinking, wearing, talking about, and wanting to do next. I’m with them always.
Who are your favorite authors?
Haruki Murakami. This is the guy who can make me want to finish a 900 page book in one night. Believe me, I’ve tried. His book, 1Q84, is my favorite book, and it’s about two people trying to find each other that live in parallel universes. The way he writes this story makes you believe it so deeply and you feel it so much inside of your bones that I can practically see and feel and taste everything these two characters experience in the course of their epic journey towards each other. That is the kind of story for me. That and of course stories about the darkness inside all of us, which Murakami isn’t afraid to talk about either in his books. I love him for this, and all of his books go someplace most people can’t go to because they aren’t imaginative enough. I love that he fills that gap in creativity for us all.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
Well, I actually founded the independent publishing company, Sakura Publishing, and I did that for awhile. I learned a lot about the publishing industry while working for over 30 different authors in helping them sell their books all over the world. Sakura Publishing started out as a vanity press, though I didn’t even know what a vanity press was at the time. I moved away from that quickly and started working for authors the way I think publishers should work for their authors, i.e., be selfless and tireless in helping spread their books to the masses without charging authors a dime to do so.
At the same time, I always wanted to self-publish, but when I decided to query publishers, I kind of knew in my heart that I would end up self-publishing. I did get offers from two different publishers to put out my first novel (KAI), but in the end, because I had done so much already in terms of publishing the books of other authors, I realized that I shouldn’t have to share my royalties with publishers who are essentially going to do all the things I can do for myself. So I ended up going the self-publishing route, and it feels right to me in every way.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think publishers need to stop publishing their friends, or just what is popular and trendy, or stuff that isn’t well researched. They need to not make publishing such an exclusive club that nobody can join. Thankfully, Amazon has made it possible for ANYONE to publish and actually do well for themselves, thanks to their KDP program, but at the same time, it’s still very much the early 1900’s in terms of how major publishers and a lot of indie publishers think in regards to treating authors with the respect they deserve. Many of them simply don’t give any respect to authors out there, especially the good ones.
Not trying to be mean at all, but I recently read a book that won a Nobel Prize, yet after reading about how the author wrote the book, lets just say it involved the author visiting a country for an extremely brief time and thinking that qualified him to talk about very controversial topics regarding that country. I was disgusted that this guy not only got a publishing deal for what he did, but one a Nobel prize for his work! And yet, that just screams to me that he knew somebody in the publishing industry and that’s how he got noticed at all. The book was terrible, almost to the point of being offensive to citizens of that country, and yet he was honored by our publishing industry. I think that means there is a huge distance between what publishers think is really good writing and what is actually really good writing. I know it’s subjective when you talk about what is good and what isn’t good in terms of what is written, but I also think when you attach a contract, pay royalties, and give prestigious awards to what somebody has written, subjectivity goes right out the window. We are being told by publishers that something is good and we should buy it, and we are being told this by people who have supposedly spent their lives reading books and telling people about books and putting books in bookstores. But do you see the problem here? If those people in charge only like, for example, books about zombies, guess what gets promoted as “good” and “essential” and we “should all read?” It’s what THESE PUBLISHERS think is good, and not what the world thinks is good. And in doing this, a TON of exceptional writers never get noticed, or are forced to remain on the lower rungs of extremely small, indie presses who can barely afford to pay the two people who work at their offices, let alone score a contract with a big bookstore chain and get their authors a window poster at those stores or front cover placement on the shelves of these big bookstore chains. I think if all this continues, the future of publishing will be bleak and dismal and help foster an entire new generation of books that are pure garbage and only put out because of who these authors know, instead of paying attention to those authors that are truly unique in their voices. I can only hope that won’t be the case, but we’ll see I suppose.
What genres do you write?
Horror, fiction, more horror, Japanese and Asian literature, and really brutal horror
What formats are your books in?
eBook, Print
Website(s)
Derek Vasconi Home Page Link
Link To Derek Vasconi Page On Amazon