https://amzn.to/3RSGMA1
Write what you know. Live what you don’t know.
Whenever I write horror stories, I always think about how to make the story feel as real as possible. To do that, my method of writing involves me getting as close to whatever it is I’m writing about and learning everything there is to know about it. For example, for my first novel, KAI, I went to Japan for the very first time in my life in order to immerse myself in Hiroshima culture. KAI’s main character is a young Japanese girl living in Hiroshima who wants to destroy the world. I grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in America. I had never been out of the country before, so going to Japan was a really big deal for me. However, I felt it was really necessary to live in Hiroshima for a few months and connect with the locals there so that I could research and find out the little details about Hiroshima that tourists would never see or know about. And I did just that. I met a young woman who grew up in Hiroshima and had lived there all her life. She allowed me to live with her and showed me so many things that helped me depict a real Hiroshima in KAI. True. Honest.
Of course, in KAI, many of the horrific elements are supernatural in nature. Yet, readers can accept these supernatural elements because everything else in the story is not fiction, but based on facts and truth. This approach to writing seems to have worked, as KAI went on to win many awards and was a bestseller on Amazon in 2016.
When I finished writing KAI, I jumped right into researching the story that would eventually become my second novel, POA. What I didn’t realize was how crazy my life would become as a result of doing research for POA. The whole writing process took a decade. By the end of it all, I had interviewed Japanese porn stars, drunk with a yakuza drug lord, and sat down face-to-face with perhaps one of the most dangerous men on the planet. I flew to Japan six times for research purposes, and eventually, ended up moving to Japan so I could finish writing POA.
The interesting thing for me is that the inspiration for POA came to me after I had a discussion with a Japanese woman one day, about twelve years ago. We were talking about family, and how much she loved her father, in particular. This woman said she would do anything for her father, as she truly loved him with all of her heart. So, half-jokingly, I asked her what she would do if her father asked her to bomb Shinjuku Station—would she do it? The woman thought about my question seriously, and with a straight face and with no smile anywhere to be found, she said she wouldn’t hesitate to kill everybody inside of Shinjuku Station for her father. If there is such a thing as feeling ice sliding down your veins, I experienced such a chilled sensation in the moment she said this to me. I will never forget it. Even after I pressed her harder on the subject, she didn’t back down from her conviction that no matter what her father asked her to do, she would do it without question. Even murdering millions of innocent people.
This kind of blind devotion of a daughter to her father intrigued me. So, I then started to think about how I could use this idea as a basis to write a story about a Japanese woman obsessed with a Japanese male porn star, and the lengths she would go to to make this porn star belong to her in every way possible.
Through a Japanese interpreter whom I hired who had amazing research skills and connections, I was able to set up a meeting with Japan’s number one male AV actor (in Japan, porn is referred to as “AV”). Actually, he’s not called an “AV actor,” but is known in the Japanese AV industry as an “eromen.” This is a type of male AV actor who is known for looking exceedingly handsome, much like a Japanese male idol singer, and is also kind to women in AV movies. There are many eromen, and they almost all perform in special types of AV films that target women, not men, as their main consumers. These types of AV films aren’t like normal AV films either, as there is a lot of story and very little sex. And the sex that there is in the films tends to focus on the pleasure and happiness of the female AV actresses. These eromen are usually polite and respectful archetypes, and the actors playing them assume these roles to perfection. As such, the actors themselves have legions of female fans who treat them like they are rock stars in real life.
Setting up an interview with Japan’s number one eromen actor took over a year of negotiations with his agency to arrange. It also took a lot of money. When I was finally able to interview him, we had a very long discussion about his life, shooting eromen films, and what it’s like to be an eromen as compared to his normal, regular life. I learned so much from him. I also remember when the interview was over, he asked me if I had ever considered becoming an eromen. I reminded him that he didn’t need to charm me like he does his female co-stars, but I could see why women consider him to be the cream of the eromen crop. He even tried to make me feel special, and this was after the cameras had stopped rolling!
Fast forward a few years later, and I needed to understand how the flow of illegal items takes place in a strictly regulated country like Japan. There is a certain section in POA where the main character gets involved with something highly illegal and extremely dangerous. Who better to teach me about this type of thing than a yakuza member? They are the notorious gang members of Japan who, historically, have controlled things like the drug trade and prostitution that take place in cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and smaller cities as well. If I needed to know about anything illegal going on in Japan, talking to a yakuza member seemed like a good place to start.
Somehow, it was easier to set this interview up than it was with the eromen actor. The yakuza member, after doing a brief background check on me, agreed to meet with me. He was reluctant at first to talk about his gang’s current business activities, but after a while, he loosened up. He was really curious about my tattoos. I have 98 hours of tattoo work all over my body. This was my way in with him, as yakuza are known for their tattoos. I eventually learned about acquiring illegal items in Japan. What items I’m referring to, or the method I learned, I can’t discuss, but this information helped me really put together a viable story of destruction that happens in POA. In other words, I pretended as though I would be the one committing the horrific acts that take place in POA’s later chapters. I pretended right up to the point of actually doing these horrible things I’m talking about. Of course, I didn’t, but knowing that I could get away with the things I was researching with relative ease both scared me and motivated me to proceed with writing POA. I felt that by the time readers reach the end of POA, the consequences of the main character’s blind devotion to another will be scarier after realizing that what she does could really, in fact, happen in Japan. I am frightened myself just thinking about it!
Perhaps the craziest thing I did to achieve the level of horror that is reached in POA happened because I sat face-to-face with one of the most dangerous men not just in Japan, but in the entire world. I can’t say who it was, but let's just say he was part of a dangerous group of people who completely altered the history of Japan in a terrible and tragic way. This man did not go to jail nor was he executed for what the group he belonged to did, either. I was quite shocked to learn this in my research, as POA’s story is glued to the history and fate of this man and this dangerous group.
Somehow, after three years of tracking this man down in Japan and arranging an interview with him, I found myself talking to him inside of his apartment. He spoke fluent English and was, surprisingly, very open and forthcoming with me with his answers to my questions. Well, I really had only one main question I wanted to ask him, as he was part of an event that, historically, does not have a lot of documentation available online to fact-check. When he confirmed what I had suspected all along about what really happened with this event, the discussion between us became personal. I asked him about his life, and he told me about his father leaving his mother when he was young, and how this paved the way for him to join this dangerous group that was led by a charismatic father-figure type—someone who could replace the absentee father in this man’s life. The problem was that this father figure was a murderer who drove his followers to commit the single worst act of terrorism in the history of Japan. Maybe it’s obvious who I’m talking about, but I prefer not to even mention this man’s name, as it’s stained with the blood of many innocent people.
I am not sure why I didn’t feel scared for my life sitting across from the person whom I interviewed who belonged to this dangerous group. We talked for nearly three hours. I have a degree in a psychological field, and I found our discussion to be utterly fascinating from the perspective of sociopathy. To not feel anything for causing the deaths of so many innocent people, and to feel as though these deaths were justified in order to cleanse the world and cleanse these people who died of their bad karma and sins… all this played into the motivation for what this man and his group did. And that idea of justifying horror for devotion to a belief, or in the case of my main character, another person… this is really what POA is all about. What will a person do for love, or belief, or both? Attempting to answer this question in my story scared me way more than talking to this dangerous man.
I’m being intentionally vague because I don’t want to ruin the surprise plot twist in POA. I’m sorry for that. I also feel like, in the decade I spent researching POA, I experienced what madness and sociopathy look like up close and personal. I don’t regret doing this, though, as this is my writing style.
Write what you know. Live what you don’t know.
-----
ABOUT POA:
Her love is a virus: quiet, invisible, and perfectly patient…
Ayano is a predator.
While the world sees only a woman of flawless beauty, her perfection is a calculated front maintained through ascetic yoga and a deliberate immersion in the sex trade. She did not become a prostitute for money, but for an education in the mechanics of human intimacy—learning about the desires of men while mastering the art of manipulation. She is a woman obsessed, sculpting herself into the only shape capable of catching the eye of Taka Yoshino, Japan’s most adored eromen idol.
After meeting Ayano at a DVD release event and later an arranged fan date, Taka—a professional at selling a gentle fantasy of love to the housewives and lonely women of Japan—believes he has finally found a fan he can truly be himself with. He is impressed by Ayano’s beauty and feels they have a rare, genuine connection.
He was wrong. Dead wrong. Because for Ayano, Taka is only the first step into total, absolute madness.
In the tradition of Ryu Murakami’s Audition, the curated grace of the "perfect woman" is merely a shroud for a horror that defies comprehension. But where Murakami’s nightmare was an intimate betrayal, Ayano’s is a global contagion. Indeed, her devotion is to a vision far more sinister and devastating than a simple obsession. Everything she does is for somebody who has shaped her entire being since she was a child, molding her into an instrument of destruction that will bring about the end of the world—in order to save it.
But can she save herself?
----
Book Details:
· Title: POA
· Genre: Horror /Cult/Japanese Horror
· Word Count: Approx. 85,000 words (334 pages)
· Release Date: June 25, 2026
· Content Warnings: Graphic Sex, Graphic Violence, Suicidal Ideation
ABOUT DEREK VASCONI:
Derek Vasconi is an award-winning horror novelist, filmmaker, and game designer based in Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of the bestselling, award-winning novel KAI (winner of the National Indie Excellence Award for Best Horror Book) and its highly anticipated psychological follow-up, POA. Deeply embedded in the underground Japanese music and subculture scenes, Derek also founded the international e-commerce platform IdolUnderworld.com and wrote and directed the theatrical documentary series Flowers of Passion. When he isn't writing twisted dark fiction, he can be found designing narrative-driven retro RPGs, playing guitar, or uncovering the hidden, gritty realities of Tokyo's neon streets.
Derek Vasconi
www.derekvasconi.com
@DerekVasconi (x.com)
Poa is currently available for pre-order on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GWMHQNWR
No comments:
Post a Comment