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[music] -He's a first-generation Mexican-American and first-genera..

He's written for a national TV show, acted on TV, and hosts a gospel program for children.

Coming up next on Tennessee Writes, we're sitting down with Julian Vaca.

As we see how he is taking on all this media, books, TV, film, we'll find out what inspires his stories.

Stay with us.

-Books about Tennessee.

-Books that come from Tennessee authors.

-Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

-West Tennessee PBS presents, Tennessee Writes.

-My name is Peter Noll, and I welcome you to this edition of Tennessee Writes.

The show that takes you into the world of Tennessee books.

Grab a cup of coffee, your favorite comfy chair, as we sit down with authors that have a Tennessee connection.

Some are from Tennessee, others have moved here, but they all have a book with a Tennessee twist.

Today, Tennessee Writes welcomes author Julian Vaca, who grew up in Southern California and moved to rural Tennessee when he was 13.

Now he's writing for TV, film, and has a series of young adult ..

Please welcome, Julian Vaca.

-Hey Julian, welcome to the show.

-Hey.

-Thanks for having me.

-Julian, so you grew up in Southern California.

At age 13, you moved to rural West Tennessee.

Paris, Tennessee.

What was that like?

-It was a huge culture shock.

Tennessee has so many incredible, beautiful things going for it, just in terms of the environment, the seasons.

Didn't anticipate the humidity smacking me in the face like it did.

All these years later, I still feel like it catches me by surprise every summer.

I think one of the things that I was just immediately struck by was just how beautiful the environment is.

We lived on 300 acres, and so seeing lightning bugs for the first time, hearing cicadas for the first time, just being out.

-Getting bit by mosquitoes for the first time?

-Getting bit by mosquitoes, having my first tick.

That's, I feel like, a rite of passage.

That every kid should have to experience.

Yes, just the pace of life was just immediately just so noticeably different.

-Thirteen, giving up all your friends in Southern California and coming to a very drastically different town, where probably most of the people didn't look like you.

How was that?

-Yes, it was very interesting, because I have a.. -Lots of cousins.

-How big?

-I have, my mom is one of nine, my dad's one of five.

You can just imagine the numbers in terms of cousins, and second cousins, aunts, uncles.

It was a massive, massive family, and really blessed to have been a part of that culture and that community.

Interestingly, never learned Spanish.

My parents, they were very, very adamant that if we were living in .. we were going to speak English.

Even though I left Southern California, and established friend groups and my cousins and everything, there was always a kind of interesting disconnect that I felt, where I wasn't able to fully embrace my heritage because of the language barrier.

Then so, moving to Paris, Tennessee, most of my classmates were white.

There was definitely a tension there of feeling like I was always in this in-between, where I couldn't really fully connect with my heritage, my culture, because of the language barrier.

Then also coming in sixth grade, middle school, that's a tough season.

Never mind being transported from another city and having to make friends.

It was a very, very unique, interesting time.

-How many years did you live in Paris?

-Did you graduate high school there?

-No, no, no.

We were only there actually for a year.

The back story, I'll make it quick.

My parents were invited to spearhead this organization, this ministry that took in boys who were between the ages of six and seven years old, all the way up to 17, who just needed a different environment because they were having issues or problems at home and at school.

My parents, to their credit, we only ended up doing that for just under a year, because they realized that they were spending far more time in this ministry and in the operations of this organization than they were with me and my sisters.

After having spent only a year in Paris, we then found our way moving closer to Nashville, -to Pleasant View, Tennessee.

-Okay.

-Yes, which is like Clarksville.

-Is your family all still in the area?

-Actually, we're now even closer to Nashville.

My folks and both my sisters and their husbands, they all live in Hendersonville, which is north of Nashville.

We all stuck around.

We all stayed in Tennessee.

We all fell in love with the state.

-Tennessee does that to people.

-Yes.

[chuckles] -Tennessee does that to people.

I think that's why you have this huge influx of people, and then people that just love.

Move here and never want to leave.

I count myself as one.

You went to school in there.

Where did you graduate and go on to higher education?

-Yes.

I graduated.

I was fortunate enough to spend my senior year at Nashville Scho.. which is this wonderful, amazing, vibrant high school that has an emphasis on visual arts, theater, media, music.

That was just really a transformative year for me, because I felt like for the first time I was really starting to feel -comfortable in my skin.

-At this point in your l.. what did you think you were going to end up doing?

-I knew that I was going to be storytelling.

I was going to be involved in storytelling in some capacity.

I just, I loved movies, I loved writing short screenplays, I loved reading novels.

I just, I loved the storytelling.

I love how storytelling is expressed in so many different mediums.

I didn't quite know what I was going to do, but I just, I had a feeling that storytelling was going to be involved, in some capacity.

-Let's fast forward.

You've written for a PBS program.

-Yes.

-Tell us about that.

-Yes.

That was really cool, because I didn't realize a.. that this program, Reconnecting Roots, which is on PBS, is produced and filmed in Nashville.

Somewhere along the way, a mutual friend of mine, we both worked on some acting projects together.

Nashville's got just such an amazing creative community.

-Songwriters, yes, but acting, for sure.

-For viewers who don't know -about the show, tell us a little -synopsis of what- -Yes.

The elevator pitch that I like to tell people is, it's like drunk history, but family friendly, because they'll tackle a different aspect of American history or something that's really integral to the American story or American experience, like jobs in America, or the history of American currency.

We'll have little sketches or segments that tie the narrative of the history, almost like a through line.

It's, I think, really fun and engaging and entertaining and family friendly.

An absolute blast to work on.

-You've been doing that -for two or three seasons?

-Just two seasons.

-Two seasons.

-Season 4 is actually airing right now.

I don't know if it's going to be-- well, because I don't know when this will air, but Season 4 is out right now.

-Okay.

Then you also are hosting a children's gospel type program.

-That was a year and a half project that I did for Lifeway, which is this very popular Christian curriculum that produces content for churches and private institutions.

They have this series called The Gospel Project for Kids.

It's a really, really interesting format, where there's a host who unpacks one interesting biblical story, and then it's intercut with animation.

It was a really interesting and dynamic program.

A lot of fun to work on that.

[music] -Julian, with such a fascinating background, how did The Memory Index come to be?

-Yes.

I have just always- -This is the first of a series?

-Yes.

It's a two-part series, a duology.

The story, it's a complete arc across the two books.

The Memory Index really came out of a couple of different places.

One, I've just always been interested in, and fascinated in the intersection of our memories and our identity.

How we see ourselves and how we identify.

-For viewers that have not Googled the book, it's not a memory self-help book.

-It is actually a science fiction book.

-Right.

-Give us a quick little synopsis of it.

-Right.

Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely.

It's intended for young readers.

The quartet of characters, the main characters, are all teenagers.

It takes place in a reimagined 1980s, where our agency over memory making is under attack.

The evil Skynet version in the book, Memory Frontier, develops artificial recall.

This technology where you can play back memories.

Before they release an advancement in the tech, they lottery students to a boarding school so that they can trial the technology.

Of course, when the main characters get there, they quickly discover that not everything is as it seems.

It's got a little bit of mystery, lots of science fiction elements in it.

It's definitely a love letter to a lot of my favorite '80s movies that I grew up watching.

-Which ones are those?

-Oh, gosh.

One of them is definitely The Goonies.

Even though The Goonies isn't science fiction, what I love about that is the cast of characters.

There's just an ensemble piece there with a group of friends pitted against this conflict.

You're following them through their journey, you're rooting for them.

I've just always loved narratives that center ar.. -Oh, what other movies?

-Oh, gosh, let's see, E.T.

E.T.

's a big one.

I grew up watching E.T.

a ton.

The original Tron, I know doesn't get a lot of love -because it's very dated in terms of its- -If you watch it now, but at the time- -Oh, it was a blast.

-the graphics were p.. -Yes.

-You grew up in the '80s.

The book really is authentic to the '80s feel.

-That was definitely the endeavor.

You always run a risk when you're writing something that takes place in a different decade.

Where, okay, is this going to feel too gimmicky?

Is this going to feel, and certainly the '80s, Stranger Things really brought it back in terms of- -That was very authentic '80s.

-Absolutely.

-Because there are some shows that are set in the '80s and you can tell somebody did Wikipedi.. and that's what we've seen.

This was authentic to me as I was reading through it.

-Thank you, yes.

I was definitely trying to stay true..

There's something decidedly atmospheric about a lot of those '80s movies when you're watching them.

They're just very immersive, and you feel like you're experiencing them.

I really wanted to push myself to make the novel, the story, feel immersive and atmospheric and true to that decade.

-It's two books, and so there's not going to be a third or a fourth, even if it becomes a New York Times Best Seller.

-[chuckles] That's right, no.

-Okay.

-No.

Yes, I think it's a contained story.

Obviously, every author has a different experience when writing a series, multiple books in the same universe.

For me, I told the story that I needed to tell in that universe, and it feels contained.

It feels like I did Freya and Fletcher's story justice, and it's time to walk away from the canvas.

-As I'm reading the book, I'm just wondering where this idea came from.

-Yes, so- -I just, where did this come from?

-Yes.

Again, like I alluded to earlier, I've always just been really interested in how memories impact and shape how we view ourselves.

I wanted to introduce a conflict that would threaten that.

Setting it in the '80s, in an analog world, meant that-- smartphones today are ubiquitous.

I think we've grown a little complacent and lazy with memory making, because we can video anything, take pictures of anything on our smartphones.

I was really intrigued and interested with a conflict like Memory Killer in an analog world, and how that would impact how we view ourselves and our identity.

-Yes, if you took everyone's phone away, I would have no one's number.

Literally, I would have no one's.

I can barely do my own number.

-Google Maps alone has been such a huge thing for me, and admittedly now, a crutch.

I used to print out MapQuest directions.

-Oh, I did, too.

-Yes.

-I don't know how I moved to cities like Houston without a cell phone and found an apartment.

The other thing that I found fascinating was there was like, it's almost a retelling of the '80s.

If this memory problem was going on, what would everything be like?

-Yes.

I was working on rewrites for Memory Index during the pandemic.

Interestingly, I was able to see how we respond as a society to something like the coronavirus, and how that impacted art, and how that impacted so many different facets of our lives.

It was definitely something that was top of mind as I was thinking through the impacts of something like rapid widespread memory loss.

-Are there things that if I went back and reread this again, that I could see some COVID pandemic?

-Oh, I don't think necessarily anything overtly.

It definitely subconsciously weaved its way in there as I was writing it.

It was all anybody was talking about.

It's what we were living.

It was impossible to not have that influence at some points in the story, but certainly nothing overtly like that.

Yes.

[music] -Now we come to the part in Tennessee Writes we call our Lightning Round.

Where we ask our authors a series of quick book-related questions and see how many answers they can get in two minutes.

If you don't have an answer, just say pass.

-Are you ready to play, Julian?

-Yes.

-Okay.

-I'm ready.

-The clock will start after the first question.

-Okay.

-Favorite book of all time.

-I feel like this answer is always changing, but I'm going to go with The Hobbit.

Tolkien's Hobbit.

-What book are you reading right now?

-I'm reading the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive.

It's called Oathbringer.

-Last book you finished reading.

-Oh, gosh.

What was the last book I finished reading?

Oh, pass.

-What book have you read multiple times?

-Oh, gosh.

Goblet of Fire.

-How many times?

-Three?

-What author, living or dead, would you most lik.. -Ooh.

Sanderson.

-Paper books or eBooks?

-Oh, paper books.

Paperback, yes.

-Who would you want to play you if your book or life was made into a movie?

-Oh.

Oh, gosh.

How do you answer this without sounding pretentious?

Andrew Garfield.

-Favorite place to read.

-Cabin.

-First book you can remember reading.

-Honestly, I think it was The Hobbit.

Cover to cover, Hobbit.

-On average, how many books do you read in one year?

-It's a criminally low number, especially for an author.

I think it's only like 20.

-First book you can remember reading.

-Oh, Hobbit.

-Hobbit, okay.

-Yes, yes.

-Oh, I asked that twice.

What book has most influenced your life?

-Gosh, there's so many.

Pass.

-How many books are on your nightstand right now?

-Four.

-What book took you the longest time to finish reading?

-[chuckles] Oh, man.

Pass.

-Do you own more paperback books or hardcover books?

-I think hardcover.

Hardcover.

-What's your favorite movie based on a book?

-Oh, favorite movie based on a book.

Oh, shoot.

Pass.

-What's the last audiobook you listened to?

-Thank You for Listening.

[music] -Julian, can we ask you to do a reading from your book, The Memory Index?

-I would love to.

-Thank you.

This is Julian Vaca reading from his book, The Memory Index.

-Yes.

We're going to just start with the prologue here.

November, 1986.

Emilia Vanguard hadn't considered that she might die until Mr. Lear said so.

"You might die," he said conversationally, as one might remark about the turning of leaves in autumn.

They walked in stride toward the massive hangar.

It was dawn.

The kind of cloudless, purply dawn that paints skylines and swaths of shadowy light.

Emilia thought that she would very much like to avoid dying, if she could help it.

"Does that frighten you?"

His questions always seemed like statements, especially when he talked of life and death, which was quite often, times being what they were.

"No."

Emilia answered.

Her tone sounded like a shrug, even though she hadn't shrugged.

"Of course not."

He put a steady hand on her shoulder as they marched toward the row of cars in the hangar.

"How could it?

You're special."

There's that confounded word again.

She rolled her eyes.

Special.

Emilia wasn't special, she was just Emilia.

I would kindly thank you to remember that.

Now, in the high-ceilinged hangar, they briskly walked toward a black 86 Audi Quattro at the center of the lineup.

It was a beautiful specimen, unblemished by fingerprints or smudges of any kind.

It's black sheen was supremacy-like, a boastful proclamation to the rest of the sports car that here lay, for all to behold, the superior vehicle.

Now, that's special.

Emilia clicked her tongue.

"The envelope's in the glove box," said Mr. Lear.

He reached for the driver's side door, but Emilia said thank you and opened it for herself.

Once seated, she turned the key in the ignition and the vehicle growled.

A great beast disturbed from hibernation and now hungry, starved, frothy at the mouth, for the road.

We'll get you there soon enough.

Emilia wondered if this was how cowboys felt before mounting their stallions and riding across the desert, the sun beating down on their leathery necks.

"You knw your route, yes?"

"Yes."

Emilia replied, shutting the door.

She caressed the steering wheel reverently, familiarizing herself with the reins.

Then she saluted Mr. Lear with two fingers, put the Quattro in drive, and shot out of the hangar and across the abandoned airfield.

She watched Mr. Lear shrink in the rearview mirror until, like an extinguished afterimage, he was gone, poof, out of sight.

The sun was a half thumb at the horizon.

One hour from now, Emilia would reach the interstate, where her path would turn perceptuous as it snaked through the mountain.

There, Mr. Lear's words would finally catch up with her.

"You might die."

[music] -Julian, thank you for sharing from your book, The Memory Index.

What's next?

There's part two.

There's a second book.

-That is called- -The Recall Paradox.

-The Recall Paradox, but that's it.

-Yes.

-The arc is done.

-That's right.

Yes.

It's a complete story across two books.

-Are they both available on audiobooks, too?

-Yes.

However you consume your books.

There's an eBook version, there's an audiobook version.

However you read your books, there's a format available.

-What other projects do you have coming next?

-Yes.

After I wrote this series, I took a total departure from science fiction and speculative fiction and wrote a coming of age contemporary story.

I'm really, really proud of that book.

It was a palate cleanser, if you will.

I've got that.

My agent and I are really excited.

We've got some potential movement with that one.

Then always writing.

I'm definitely hunkered down and in hermit writing mode.

Right now working on a new book.

-What does hermit mode writing look like?

-Honestly, just a lot of intentional time at the computer, back to just the craft, back to writing.

Book festivals and these kinds of things are a lot of fun, but it's really nice to just get back in the saddle and just actually writing.

-For our viewers out there watching right now that like, "I want to publish a book."

What would you tell them?

-Honestly, just write.

I think creative writing is such an interesting art medium because really, it's just you and a blank page.

Just figuring out that story, following the story where it takes you.

For me personally, I've always been intimidated by musical instruments, and just all these different visual art, but writing, for whatever reason, it just feels like there's an accessibility there, where anyone can get in on it.

-Have the movie rights and TV rights been sold?

-Not yet.

-Not yet.

-Hopefully soon.

-It's a popular genre.

-Sure.

-Your book, I just thought, .. because that's sort of hot right now.

-That would be the dream.

-I just finished watching The Purdy's or the Uglies.

-Oh, the Uglies.

Sure.

Yes.

On Netflix.

-It's that whole virgin- -Yes.

Dystopian.

-Yes.

I just felt, "Oh, this will be picked up.

I'll be seeing that on Netflix."

Either a movie or a series.

-That'd be amazing.

-Not yet though.

-No, no.

Not yet though.

-Okay.

Where do you prefer people to buy your books?

-Definitely local.

Most local independent bookstores order from the same index or catalog.

Definitely call up your local bookstore.

Locally for me, Parnassus Books is a great store in Nashville.

-That's in Nashville.

-That's in Nashville.

They do online orders.

They ship to anywhere in the US, so definitely local.

Buy local.

-How can people follow you?

Your website, social media?

What's the best way?

-Yes.

I'm on Instagram.

It's just my full name, @JulianRayVaca.

Then I also have a message portal, if anybody just wants to reach out and say hi, on my website, JulianRayVaca.com.

-Sadly, we've come to the end of this episode.

Julian, we want to really thank you for coming on and sharing about yourself, your journey, and your book, The Memory Index.

-Yes.

-Before you go, though, would you mind signing a copy for the station?

-I'd be honored.

-We would be so happy.

-Thank you so much.

All right.

Let's see here.

To Channel 11.

You guys rule?

We're going with rule.

You guys rule.

Then my pretentious author signature right there.

[chuckles] -Thank you.

-Thank you so much.

-For comments about today's show, or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@westtnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes.

On air and streaming now.

[music] -The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today, so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.

[music]