In a new interview on Blazing Minds I got an opportunity to ask critic, presenter and social media’s King of Geek Marshall Julius about his upcoming book book ‘Vintage Geek’. With over 1000 intriguing questions and fascinating facts Vintage Geek is the ultimate quiz book for pop culture trivia fans.
Q. Your new quiz book, Vintage Geek, is released on October 10th. What can people expect from the book?
A proper challenge, for starters. While casual fans should be able to answer a fair few questions, this is a book that rewards deep-down love and lifelong obsession! Knowing all the answers isn’t really that important though. You can read this book, if you like, as a trivia primer. A fun, detailed guide to geeky knowledge that covers everything from Roger Moore’s Bond and Tom Baker’s Doctor to classic Star Wars and early Simpsons. It covers a lot of ground! It’s also deeply nostalgic, with personal introductions to each chapter that I hope evoke fond memories from older readers and paints a vivid yet warm and fuzzy picture for younger ones.
Q. How did the idea for the book come about?
I turned 50 this year. When I was younger, pre-Internet, you couldn’t just look up everything. There was value in knowing stuff. And though I’ve never been good at remembering important, real-world information, I have this insane capacity for remembering facts about films and tv shows, comic books and videogames: all the things in life, I’d say, that are actually important. Because of that, I’ve always loved being quizzed, and enjoy quizzing too. This book is something I’d wanted to write for years and years. Because, although we call this sort of information trivia, to me it’s not really trivial at all. It’s all very meaningful and important and evocative and I wanted to get it down, and share it, and have fun with it.
Q. You cover a range of genres and ask over 1000 questions how difficult was it to come up with so many unique questions?
I started each of the 20 chapters with a love of the subject matter and lesser or greater knowledge of each topic. I read piles of books, lots of old and out-of-print volumes from my collection, and also trawled the Internet, of course. It’s an amazing resource, but you have to be careful. There’s so much bogus information out there. Sources have to be checked, double checked, triple checked… But once you’ve done your reading, spent endless late nights watching films and TV shows, and made notes, endless notes, like your life depended on it, you have a vast stock of information to draw questions from. It wasn’t easy, but it was the best kind of challenge. Thrilling, honestly, and very satisfying when, at the end of every week, I’d polished off another chapter.
Q. How long did it take to bring the book together?
Once September Publishing gave me the thumbs up to do it, I spent about three months easing into the process, reaching out to celebrities for questions, deciding on the format, making endless lists about everything I’d cover, and so on. Basically, lots of faffing around, followed by three months of more dedicated work, and finally three final months of intense, single-minded labour. That was my favourite time. The most satisfying three months of my entire career.
Q. Did you find it more difficult trying to create questions for some genres more than others?
Some of the chapters were definitely more challenging. Star Trek, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Action movies… Those things I know inside out. But writing 50 quality questions about, say, the Atari 2600, was tougher, as I didn’t know quite as much about its history, and also, a classic videogame system is very different to a movie genre or tv series. Crafting questions about something like that requires a different approach. But it was a fun challenge and a great learning experience.
Q. What was the hardest part of writing the book?
Stopping. You just never want to quit polishing. Never want to stop checking every last detail. Saying, “OK. It’s done. Send it to the printers…” That was easily the hardest part.
Q. The book includes a forward from Simpsons writer Mike Reiss and has 50 questions from celebrities such as Mark Hamill, John Carpenter, George Takei, Sam Neill, Mark Millar, Tom Savini, Pat Mills, Yeardley Smith and Sam J. Jones. How did they get involved in the book?
That was something that came about after I’d been commissioned to write it. I have a healthy Twitter following. People seem to like my nerdy nonsense. I avoid politics, so I’m sort of an oasis of nostalgia and geeky fun. Many of the actors and filmmakers, writers and artists, musicians, designers and developers I tweet about have ended up following me themselves, and so I figured, why not reach out to them? Ask if they’d like to contribute a question, either about something they had a hand in creating themselves, or something they’re a fan of. And many of them responded. Enthusiastically! You know, it’s possible to be famous, successful, geeky and nice. Everyone who helped me proved that.
Q. The book uses the term Vintage geek. What does this mean and when it comes to being a vintage geek, what is your specialist subject?
Vintage Geek is a play on the phrase Vintage Chic. It’s stylish, it’s nostalgic, there are dad puns… The book focuses solely on 20th-century fandoms, from the Universal Monsters of the 1930s and 1940s to Batman’s animated adventures in the 1990s. It’s a title that instantly captured the vibe I was aiming for.
Q. Do you have any other projects that you are working on?
Honestly, promoting a book is as full-on a job as writing one. It’s my main focus right now, though I also run the social media for @FarOutToysInc, whose gorgeous Marvel and Star Wars Pulp Heroes toys were designed by Steve Casino, who created the incredible question mark art for my book. I’d like to write a follow-up to Vintage Geek. I’ve already settled on the chapters. We just have to wait until this one sells a million copies.
Q. If someone wanted to write their own book what advice would you give them?
Focus. Most days, my attention is so divided, I achieve lots of little things, but complete almost nothing. If you want to write a book, it has to be like falling in love: nothing else matters. You need to throw yourself into the maw of your obsession. Wake up thinking about it. Go to sleep thinking about it. You have to be a mad, selfish bastard during the week, but then spend the weekends apologising and acknowledging your loved ones. Do that for a number of months and, provided you can write, and have good ideas, you’ll have a book at the end.
Vintage Geek wil be released on 10th October and is available to pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon US
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
