Who the fuck's Vincenzo Bilof? He's a man with unique visions of apocalypse, a passion for hockey that matches any Canadian people I know and he has a novel out on March 30th. He's also part of this new direction of horror/bizarro I want to add to the site, so it's probably why some of you don't know who he is.
I'm going to review his upcoming release VAMPIRE STRIPPERS FROM SATURN tomorrow, but he was kind enough to drop by and answer some questions in order to introduce himself and give you some perspective on who he is beforehand. Without further ado, here's the sit down I had with the Detroit native. It got quite creative at some point.
I always enjoyed writing when I was a young lad, so I have fond memories of my writing experiences. I can recall one time when I was about seven I was writing a story in a coloring book that went along with a page that included one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My mom came over and remarked that I had spelled the word “suddenly” right, and was very happy.
Any film that features Noomi Rapace will typically prompt me to begin writing a novel after I finish watching it. I don’t know why.
What piece of your own writing are you the most proud of, why is that so and where can we find it?
In around 1992 or 1993, Mario Lemieux, captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease. I thought he was an awesome hockey player, because he and Jaromir Jagr were on the cover of a record book that I was given for Christmas after their first Stanley Cup championship together. Don Cherry, on one of his Hockey Night in Canada segments, suggested that Mario Lemieux would love to have the support of his fans, and we should write him a letter. My mom and I sat down and wrote Mario a letter. I have no idea what he did with it.
What was the single best writing advice you were ever given? What was the worst?
Someone once told me to quit.
Who are the five authors you would recommend to someone who wants to familiarize himself with what you do?
I am a huge fan of Gregorio Gionvanni, father of the cannibal mafia genre. Sadly, his work has been out of print for about sixty years, but you can see his influence on such television shows as American Idol and American Ninja Warrior.
Vilma Popovich is one of the best Russo-Mongolian authors alive. Her work includes the highly controversial novel, THE TRUE STORY OF SOVIET QUEBEC. If crime thrillers are your thing, I suggest picking that one up.
Lionel Anglo is the bestselling author of the award-winning horror novel POMPOUS GENRE WRITERS ON FIRE. I shouldn’t have to state the obvious: if the book has won a major literary award, clearly, it is good.
Of course, INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace is required reading if you ever want to be a genre fiction writer.
Finally, I think you should just pick up any bargain book you see on sale at Barnes and Noble that involves moon landing conspiracy theories.
Hardboiled, Crime, Noir, Gun Porn, Fairies, Whatever. Should genre label matter? Yes or no and why is that so?
As long as your book is nominated for a major industry award, presumably something sponsored by a bestselling author who clearly knows how to make money as a writer, I don’t think genre is important. You pick a genre to pick your readers. You pick a genre to pick the award you want to win. You pick a genre to help decide which section of the bookstore you want your book in. But they don’t have many bookstores now, so I don’t know if that matters.
I don’t see why VAMPIRE STRIPPERS FROM SATURN couldn’t be in the historical fiction category, or even dinosaur erotica. Whatever genre is selling the best right now, I think that’s where the book belongs.
If I worked at a bookstore and a customer came in and asked me where they would find a book called VAMPIRE STRIPPERS FROM SATURN, I would ask them why someone would write such a stupid book, and then explain to the customer that vampire strippers come from Mercury, not Saturn.
What are you going currently working on and what can we expect from you in the next year or so?
I am working on a bunch of different projects. I don’t know what any of them are right now, but I think one of them involves gargoyles and another is a rewrite of every Tim Burton screenplay mashed together with Nicolas Cage playing all the parts that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter played—even the movies that didn’t include them. The book is heavily inspired by all the hardworking, professional authors out there who are just fed up with the independent writing world and want some “real quality” to separate the wheat from the chaff. After the book is published, there will only be three authors who write genre fiction who don’t work for Amazon.com. I like to think that I work as hard as Joe Dumars did when the Pistons drafted Darko Milicic and gave him free tickets to all the Detroit Pistons games.
* BONUS OVERTIME QUESTIONS *
The idea of writing about vampire strippers from Saturn can seem silly, but it's the only theme that remains constant throughout the novel. Everything else is torn to pieces. Was there something you wanted to express through that particular image?
I think it’s difficult to talk about the novel without seeming presumptuous or pompous. I’ve often heard that if you can’t pitch your novel idea to an agent in one sentence, or you can’t talk about a book excitedly and maintain someone’s attention for ten seconds, then you shouldn’t have bothered with the book in the first place, or maybe you just suck when it comes to explaining stuff, in which case, it would stand to reason that you suck at telling stories, and probably blow chunks when it comes to writing, since you’re telling a story when you’re writing fiction, or maybe, just maybe, you’re not telling a story at all but are rather presenting yourself as the avatar for a story that you have discovered, a story that wishes to have itself known, and can’t sell the idea to anyone.
Vampires don’t exist.
In all seriousness, I am very thankful for Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing for picking up this manuscript. I think people who don’t read it because of the content are different than people who won’t read it because of what the title says. People still get pissed about TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but the book gets taught at school, despite the low fatality rate of actual mockingbirds in the novel. I feel like talking about this novel will ruin anything that was written inside of it, and though I have a couple theories about the themes that may pop up throughout the book, I prefer that others read it and totally trash it before I try to figure anything out.
How would you define VAMPIRE STRIPPERS FROM SATURN, aside from the all-encompassing term "bizarro" ? Would you say it's rooted in a particular narrative tradition? Jodorowskian, perhaps?
I don’t even know if bizarro is an all-encompassing term. I suppose it is. I think maybe it’s a bizarro version of TAXI CAB CONFESSIONS and MEET THE FOCKERS with a tribute to Star Wars fan fiction thrown in somewhere.