59. VP ANDERSON: What if vampires played roller derby?

If you've ever thought about what the rules of roller derby would look like if vampires, fae, and other mystical creatures played it, then this book is for you. Blood City Rollers is a fun, middle grade graphic novel packed with action and some conversation starters for families. Author VP Anderson and I chat about the book, the illustrations, and the strengths of ADHD.

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Transcript

00;00;00;01 - 00;00;00;18
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome.

00;00;00;18 - 00;00;26;03
Speaker 2
To Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman. And today's author conversation is really fun, especially if you love graphic novels. If you love middle grade books, if you love vampires, if you love roller derby, then all of those things are about to combine into a really fun adventure book. And that is Blood City Rollers. This is written by VPI Anderson and illustrated by Tatiana Hall.

00;00;26;04 - 00;00;40;04
Speaker 2
I got to talk to V.P. Anderson at New York Comic-Con about flood city rollers, of course, and what is coming next for this series, because it is so much fun. We're covering all kinds of topics. So kick back and relax because this is about to be a good time.

00;00;45;27 - 00;00;55;27
Speaker 1
Welcome to Literary Hype. So exciting to have you on to talk about your graphic novel, Blood City Rollers. So for anyone who hasn't seen this at a bookstore online or anywhere around, what is this graphic novel about?

00;00;56;02 - 00;01;20;15
Speaker 3
So the initial pitch that I made for this book was What We Do in the Shadows meets with it. I think we eventually sold it as Buffy meets Roller Girl, which, you know, basically fits the art a little more because it's more middle Grady. But the shortest way of explaining it is what if a 13 year old aspiring figure skater was killed, recruited, not kidnaped, recruited by a all vampire roller derby team?

00;01;20;24 - 00;01;24;22
Speaker 1
At what point where you just like, you know what roller derby needs vampires.

00;01;25;13 - 00;01;40;28
Speaker 3
Basically, my whole life I've always been a huge fan of horror comedy. During the early pandemic, when everything was shut down and I wasn't able to play roller derby, which is my main rage outlet that I have, and also my therapy, I missed it so much. I decided to sit down and took a crack at writing my first graphic novel.

00;01;40;28 - 00;01;51;04
Speaker 3
And because I have a background in film and I've done a lot of horror comedy writing, it just kind of naturally kind of lended itself. And then I made up a lot of rules that are not real. To be fair, On top of that.

00;01;51;10 - 00;01;55;12
Speaker 1
OK, because I did want to talk about you do have that page with like the rules of roller derby.

00;01;56;20 - 00;02;11;07
Speaker 3
Loosely, loosely based on real roller derby, but with obviously you have to ask yourself, like, what if we played roller derby with a bunch of people had supernatural powers, right? So you have to come up with weird rules. Like if you get decapitated in mid play, like, is that a penalty or not? Well, that depends. Can you skate without a head or not, right?

00;02;11;07 - 00;02;12;00
Speaker 3
Stuff like that.

00;02;12;00 - 00;02;13;14
Speaker 1
It's a very important question.

00;02;13;14 - 00;02;14;02
Speaker 3
A very important.

00;02;14;02 - 00;02;15;05
Speaker 1
Question because it might.

00;02;15;05 - 00;02;16;29
Speaker 3
Happen. It might. It has.

00;02;17;08 - 00;02;34;13
Speaker 1
Roller derby is such a not as well known sport. It should be more modern. How did you finish? It's very neat. Yeah, that was the word I was going to use. And then I felt like that might be the wrong word. And I don't know Anyway, we're tired. It's kind of a con for whatever. I can't count math as hard.

00;02;34;13 - 00;02;34;25
Speaker 1
I've walked.

00;02;34;25 - 00;02;35;21
Speaker 3
So many steps.

00;02;35;27 - 00;02;42;07
Speaker 1
And honestly, conventions But. So how did you get into roller derby?

00;02;42;19 - 00;02;59;02
Speaker 3
So I started playing roller derby in 20, 15. I had just moved and I've lived, like, everywhere my whole life. I've worked in cruise ships, I've lived in islands, I've lived in the Caribbean. I finally got back to the US and I was, I've always wanted to do this, but I'd never been in one place long enough. So I moved to New Jersey and I was like, I'm going to find a roller derby place.

00;02;59;02 - 00;03;14;01
Speaker 3
And it took me like a year and a half to actually find a place and I started playing in Syracuse. The best thing about roller derby is that they train you so like you can show up and be like, I've never skated a day in my life, but the thing I learned is falling is my special skill. Like, I'm really good at falling fantastically.

00;03;14;01 - 00;03;28;10
Speaker 3
And in roller derby you're going to fall. It's not like figure skating where falling is a deduction. Falling is just a part of life because people are actively hitting you to the ground all the time. So I realized early on that even if though I'm not a perfect skater, I'm amazing. I like rolling out of a fall and getting right back up.

00;03;28;10 - 00;03;48;00
Speaker 3
And so that was how I basically got over my own perfectionism when it comes to sports and like kind of trying to look pretty because as you know, I'm sure roller derby is not pretty. It's not meant to be cute. And so that's that's for me, like, it was the perfect time in my life, you know, to basically get messy with it.

00;03;48;09 - 00;03;51;24
Speaker 1
What is the biggest lesson you've learned from roller derby about yourself?

00;03;52;16 - 00;04;12;21
Speaker 3
That's a good one. I think the biggest thing that I have learned from roller derby is the same thing. I try and teach like the youth that come in. Roller derby is like take up space, own your lane, recognize that like your boundaries are healthy and good and everybody has a purpose and whatever size or shape your body is, like there's a way for you to play this sport where you're killing it.

00;04;12;27 - 00;04;22;06
Speaker 1
We got to talk about these the players names because when I read that page of the lineup, I laughed so hard.

00;04;22;14 - 00;04;41;04
Speaker 3
I initially had way more characters, as I said, on a panel earlier today. And then I realized Oh God, someone's going to draw these. But all of the vampires, their names are all like loosely based on OG. It's like Bella Ghostly is like a Bela Lugosi reference. They're all kind of cheeky old style for like things like a Nosferatu type vibe.

00;04;41;25 - 00;04;52;15
Speaker 3
Yeah, I had a lot of fun with that. And as you know, in real roller derby, everyone's name is like the most special thing. And coming up with your name is like a very personal thing. So I wanted to make each one kind of tell you who the character is.

00;04;52;21 - 00;05;02;11
Speaker 1
I just died laughing at Salvador and Valhalla. Yeah. And even some of the the opponents names were really great to steal my friends.

00;05;02;11 - 00;05;07;24
Speaker 3
Yeah. Blessed be. That's a good one. Yeah. A classic hit. A lot of people. Weird because they didn't.

00;05;09;00 - 00;05;20;05
Speaker 1
So you dedicated this book to your teammates that got more than they bargained for. And you just talked a little bit about taking up space. Like, how can this book help younger kids learn to take up space?

00;05;20;10 - 00;05;37;10
Speaker 3
I think that's it's not just like physically taking on space. And like, you know, if someone tries to knock, you down being sturdy and stable enough to push back sometimes. Also, I think any kind of team dynamic, any type of collaboration you have, there's going to be really strong personalities. There's going to be people that say, no, don't go this way.

00;05;37;10 - 00;06;02;23
Speaker 3
I go my way. And I think learning to trust yourself and to be stable, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally and to be OK, messing up and laughing it off and rolling out of it and, you know, falling and being OK with that because falling is a learnable skill and not something to be ashamed of or something to even avoid I think that that is very metaphorical for how to like go through this world and be a more empathetic towards yourself person.

00;06;03;02 - 00;06;21;09
Speaker 1
And I feel like this book is a really good conversation starter for younger kids within the sports world of like the pressure versus the joy of it because it can easily go from being something you enjoy to something that is like obsessive and so much pressure, especially in like high school and college sports of like trying to keep moving forward.

00;06;21;13 - 00;06;27;22
Speaker 1
Yes. So how do you feel like this could help kids kind of navigate that waters? I'm working through sports.

00;06;27;27 - 00;06;43;20
Speaker 3
There's no grade in sports, right? But there are a lot of us treat it like it's like you're going to get a letter grade for me. There's a line in the book that is talking about how instead of trying to be the best, you try and be your best because your best is going to be very different than being like the star player on the team.

00;06;44;00 - 00;06;51;26
Speaker 3
And that's OK. Because in any given team sport, like being yourself and the best version of you is how you're going to know exactly where you fit in the team, and that's how you're going to find your people.

00;06;52;02 - 00;07;01;25
Speaker 1
When you were writing out the rules list, like how did you try to phrase these things to make sure that these rules were understandable to the middle grade audience?

00;07;01;28 - 00;07;17;21
Speaker 3
That's a really good question. It was a trial and error process for sure. I think we started with about five pages of rules and then kind of down from there, mostly because I wanted to make sure that I knew what the rules were and that they made sense. But we realized as we went that it didn't really not that it doesn't matter, but like the action kind of spoke for itself.

00;07;18;02 - 00;07;32;15
Speaker 3
And so because the art is so fantastic and Hill is absolutely unparalleled, amazing talent of just translating five pages worth of description of action into like panels, I think that that really helped us to where we can cut down on the nitty gritty a little bit.

00;07;32;18 - 00;07;40;14
Speaker 1
What's the process like working with an illustrator, especially in trying to capture the humor of the words into the pictures?

00;07;40;21 - 00;07;55;22
Speaker 3
So that's something that I'm really lucky because Tatiana is one of those people that can share a single brain cell. And I would explain kind of what it felt like to get hit, for example, so hard that you feel like your soul leaves her body. And she just immediately would translate that into you know, the images in the panels that are hilarious.

00;07;56;02 - 00;08;14;06
Speaker 3
It helps to have someone who kind of gets you, but also just having having like a creation ship that is very collaborative and that someone who's willing and able to talk you through and be like, you know, describe it to me, and then they ask questions. I think that's the best thing about this partnership is that we're constantly talking about what would be funny or what would be better.

00;08;14;06 - 00;08;21;20
Speaker 3
You know, how can we how can we show this in a way that's like fewer panels but more iconic type of thing? So I just lucked out, I think, to have an amazing team.

00;08;21;28 - 00;08;27;22
Speaker 1
How much input did you have on the characters looks and like the vibe of the art?

00;08;28;01 - 00;08;45;23
Speaker 3
I actually was the one that like reached out and found the artists. We had talked about. Like we sold the book without an artist, which is isn't very common. And it was very important to me that not just the team reflected the diversity of the story and the community that I'm telling a story about. But also I needed an illustrator that had some kind of skating experience.

00;08;45;23 - 00;09;05;28
Speaker 3
So Tatiana skates like parks, ramps and bowls and lives in L.A, which is like, you know, boardwalk skating is very much the thing so I literally was looking around illustrators, and by pure kismet alone, my roller derby league at the time was doing like a Christmas like shop. Small thing and they they showed this tarot deck that's a roller world tarot deck that was designed by Tatiana.

00;09;05;28 - 00;09;18;15
Speaker 3
And I saw it and I bought it and I was like, this is exactly the art style I've been envisioning in my head already. Like, I had never heard of her, but like, I slid into her. Diane's on Etsy and was like, Hey, man, like, you don't know me. This is going to seem weird, but like, have you ever thought of illustrating a graphic novel?

00;09;18;15 - 00;09;31;16
Speaker 3
And she had just graduated from animation and was like, No, but I'll give it a shot. And that's my favorite type of of cooperation is where it's like everyone kind of doesn't know what they're doing, but we're going to figure it out together. And that's what we we basically messed around and figured it out together as we go on.

00;09;31;16 - 00;09;38;24
Speaker 3
And it's been a fantastic process. And Book two has gone so much smoothly. Book three will probably go even more smoothly after that. Hopefully.

00;09;38;27 - 00;09;41;21
Speaker 1
I was going to ask about that to be continued.

00;09;42;01 - 00;09;48;12
Speaker 3
I mean, well, so book two will be out in next year. And then I have just between you and I, no one's listening, right?

00;09;48;12 - 00;09;48;22
Speaker 1
No one's.

00;09;48;22 - 00;09;51;08
Speaker 3
Talking. We've got to play it out for five books just in case.

00;09;52;16 - 00;09;58;10
Speaker 1
That's real fun to know. Yeah. Will that delve more into any of the other teams? Are we going to follow Nina the whole way?

00;09;58;13 - 00;10;16;16
Speaker 3
In a perfect world, we would get a spinoff like The Mavens, and I also have an amp and go spin off that I really want to do, like, kind of an Animaniacs style big way. Do crimes throughout history type of a vibe but that's a future conversation that we'll have to have publishing.

00;10;17;00 - 00;10;24;06
Speaker 1
So let's talk about you for a little bit, because your bio is very entertaining. You've had a lot of different kinds of jobs.

00;10;24;07 - 00;10;26;03
Speaker 3
I've had a lot of jobs. I'm like a dull Sakis guy.

00;10;26;06 - 00;10;37;04
Speaker 1
What of those very long list of job and like variety of jobs is your favorite and what have all those various careers taught you about writing that helped you out with this?

00;10;37;07 - 00;10;56;22
Speaker 3
Well, so I can't go through the whole resume. We're going to be here forever. Honestly, weirdly enough, my favorite is my newest job, which is being a firefighter and you'd think someone as chaotic as I am would not thrive in these circumstances. But because I have diagnosed ADHD, I love a day where I wake up and I don't know what's going to happen until it's like sirens start going off.

00;10;57;23 - 00;11;25;00
Speaker 3
And I've always been really good in a crisis. Like when I worked on cruise ships, you know, like there was always chaos happening I feel like for writing a writer who wants to write like me, if you want to write about a bunch of different topics, you have to have a lot of different experiences. And for me, like, I think my ADHD and my resume being so different has actually lent itself to like me being a more well-rounded person and having more expertize or like, let's not be, you know, like whatever is like the shallowest word for Expertize, right?

00;11;25;00 - 00;11;30;26
Speaker 3
Like, I know a little bit about a lot of things just enough to make me dangerous to myself and sometimes others.

00;11;31;16 - 00;11;43;13
Speaker 1
And one of those jobs is literary agent yes. I was a friend of the channel, Mr. Ryan Laszlo. What did you learn about that side of things that has helped you through this publishing process?

00;11;43;21 - 00;12;06;05
Speaker 3
I mean, so much the thing about publishing is it's always changing. It's a rapidly shifting landscape. Again, I think I excelled as an agent from the time that I was doing it because I am very fluid and able to kind of adapt. What we're seeing now in publishing is very similar to when I got started back in like 2012 time because it's the world doesn't really know what's going to happen next.

00;12;06;05 - 00;12;28;22
Speaker 3
And everyone's kind of like trying to hedge their bets and figure out like what's going to be big, what's the world going to look like. And so I think that one of the biggest things that I've learned about this is to just always be flexible, always be ready to like rewrite, pivot, you know, figure out what's working and figure out what isn't working, and then just constantly be reiterating and iterating to see how your process can kind of come up closer to what you're trying to do.

00;12;29;10 - 00;12;30;20
Speaker 3
And it's trial and error, honestly.

00;12;31;03 - 00;12;41;12
Speaker 1
Well, you touched a little bit on the the skater names having meaning. And your name is Scarlet five. Yeah, I'm remembering correctly. Yep. So how did that name come about for you?

00;12;41;21 - 00;13;00;03
Speaker 3
So Scarlet five is a straight up like Star Wars Marvel reference. So Luke Skywalker is callsign is Red five, so it's super nerdy. And then Scarlet, which was one of my favorite characters, and then my number was 55, and that's a Buffy reference for Faith Lehane's five by five. So it's just a big nerd grab bag of Nerdery.

00;13;00;13 - 00;13;07;26
Speaker 1
So you're in the perfect place. Yeah, have you seen any fun calls, plays that or gone to any other panels?

00;13;08;16 - 00;13;23;24
Speaker 3
I will say there was one child at our panel dressed like Medusa and had like a full on snake wig made out of rubber snakes that wiggled when they walked. And that was maybe the coolest thing I've seen. And I'm like, I'm going to do that for Halloween because it's awesome. Yeah. There's been I can't pick just one.

00;13;23;24 - 00;13;31;28
Speaker 3
There's so many. And we're surrounded by them right now. Like the amount of creation that goes into this is absolutely absurd. In the best possible way.

00;13;32;13 - 00;13;36;23
Speaker 1
So the last question we always ask, because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about?

00;13;37;00 - 00;13;53;11
Speaker 3
Honestly, after doing the signing on right next to Chuck Tingle, I'm really excited to read Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gaze. I've bought both of them and they are sitting at home waiting to be read as soon as I get back. So I'm stoked about that. It feels like the exact irreverent vibe that I'm in right now. So yeah, big fan.

00;13;53;19 - 00;13;57;22
Speaker 1
Well, thank you so much for taking time to talk the literary hype about Blood City Rollers. My pleasure.

00;13;59;20 - 00;14;18;19
Speaker 2
Thanks again to VPI Andersons for hanging out with me at New York Comic-Con to talk about the book Blood City Rollers. If you'd like to get a hold of this, the lengths to do so are in the show notes for you. If you enjoyed these vampire shenanigans in this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the literary podcast. Give us some stories and share it with friends.

00;14;19;09 - 00;14;22;08
Speaker 2
Thanks so much for listening. To the Literary Hype podcast.