Featured Interview With Derek Vasconi
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Sharon, Pennsylvania, which is basically a place you go to die and you do this by being bored to death there. So for anyone seeking assisted suicide, the city of Sharon will take care of ending your life for you one depressing day at a time.
I now live in LA, which means I’m going to die waiting for something… whether it’s waiting in traffic, waiting at CVS to buy cough drops, or waiting in a line for another line to go to the ER, but at least there’s celebrities here you see randomly every once in awhile. Meh.
I have a pet, Gachapin, who is a cat that hates everyone and everything. Even me if I leave her to go on vacation and come back after four days. She pretends like we aren’t friends or I don’t clean up her crap in her litterbox everyday and proceeds to swipe at me the second I walk in the door. I also have a beautiful baby daughter who is the love of my life and who I do all my writing for. Though I hope she doesn’t read what I’ve written anytime soon, being that I write horror stories.
Oh, I guess I should say I was in a kind of famous band for awhile? We were called FROM A SECOND STORY WINDOW and played grindcore/metalcore music. Good times.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Since I could read my first words, books have been my absolute escape in this world. I started writing probably sometime in elementary school. Can’t remember when, exactly. I actually never wrote a huge story or any kind until six years ago. However, I’ve written countless essays, blog posts, and letters to friends that probably could qualify as novelettes. So in a sense, I’ve been writing my whole life.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Haruki Murakami is the best, simply put. I can’t get enough of his weird, insane take on the world we live in, and the worlds he creates for those who don’t want to live in this world and accept everything they see and hear. It’s the Japanese version of magical realism that Murakami is so best at, and it’s my favorite place to stay in while I’m reading any kind of book.
I think other authors worth mentioning are Natsuo Kirino, Ryu Murakami, of course, Stephen King, and I am also a huge, huge fan of Banana Yoshimoto. All these authors are so frickin’ famous I don’t need to really go on about why I like them…pick up any book by these guys and you’ll see for yourself their ability to effortlessly transport you into another world, another perspective, another life entirely. They are also all my inspiration for my writing, though I think I also inspire myself because when I find something that really excites me, I want to write about it, but using my own filter, which means it usually comes out horrific and distorted and just… not what you might think about initially. Like for example, I love Japanese idol music. So I have an idea right now for a book that will deal with idols, but the opening scene of the book will be the biggest Japanese idol getting stabbed to death and then her idol group all fighting over her position as the number one idol. And it only gets weirder and scarier and messier from there.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
KAI is my first book, but definitely not the first book I’ve been part of writing or publishing. I’ve done publishing for many other authors out in the world, as I had founded Sakura Publishing. We’ve been very successful in the past 8 years of our existence, having put out over 30 titles and several of them becoming best sellers. Anyway, not to digress, KAI is about a young girl in Hiroshima who wants to destroy the world because of something terrible that happens to her. At the same time, it’s also about an adopted Korean girl who has mysterious things happening to her while being a counselor living in Chicago. The connection between the Korean girl and the young girl from Hiroshima is at the center of the book’s plot, and the question I hope you’ll have when you’re done reading KAI is, what if your whole life was a careful, choreographed act?
Confused? Don’t be, just have an open-mind, and a penchant for the strange and scary. If you can do this, you’ll hopefully love KAI.
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