Victor Piñeiro

Victor Piñeiro is a creative director and content strategist who's managed @YouTube and launched @Skittles, creating its award-winning zany voice. He's also designed games for Hasbro, written/produced a documentary on virtual worlds, and taught third graders. Time Villains is his first novel.

Twitter: @VictorPineiro

Instagram: @VictorPineiro

What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?

Comics were my life up through college, and I still read them regularly, so it’s embarrassing to put Watchmen at the top. Saying Watchmen is your favorite graphic novel is like saying Citizen Kane is your favorite film or Ulysses your favorite book. But it’s not just the comic’s storytelling I love––it was my experience reading it.

I was thirteen and my father was driving us through a snowstorm for six hours, heading to a special hospital where I’d eventually have major surgery. It was late at night and I remember the snow being so overwhelming that there was nothing to see outside the car. Dad was quiet, concentrating on getting us there alive, and Watchmen was the gift he’d bought me for the trip. There was already such a mystique around the book, it was like a rite of passage for comics nerds. I read it in one sitting, amidst a raging blizzard, with Tears For Fears’ Elemental on repeat. It was one of the most immersive reading experiences I’ve ever had, and to have had it with such an incredible piece of fiction...I still think back on it fondly. 

Is there a work of art that you love? Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

I was exploring the MoMA in 2004, right after their big redesign. As I walked between exhibits I passed a dark and mysterious doorway. Was this part of the exhibit? After scanning the area for security guards I took a few tentative steps into complete darkness. Was I allowed to be here? Where was I? And what was that glow emanating ahead? Curiosity took over and I felt my way through the darkness, almost running into a wall in front of me. On the other side of the wall I was met with red. A vague red glow in the distance permeated the entire room. How far away was it? One moment it seemed ten feet away, the next I swore it was miles in the distance. There was something comforting and simultaneously terrifying about the situation. It felt uteral but also a bit infernal. And because everything in the room was so ambiguous–no forms or lines or objects to be seen–it became harder to trust my senses.

That was my first experience with James Turrell and I’ve since hunted down his works at other museums. I’ve always loved exploring art museums (my mother was a docent at the National Gallery in DC) but I’ve never experienced art so viscerally.

Favorite non-reading activity?

It’s only very recently that I found out my favorite activity had a name. For most of my life I would explain it as getting lost in the woods. Then I learned about the concept of Shinrin Yoku, forest bathing, and realized how perfectly that described it. Any excuse I can get, I’m usually running off to a forest. In 2019 I read The Overstory and my forest obsession went overboard. I wanted to know everything about the trees that surrounded me on my walks, and I checked out endless tree identification books. To balance out my woodsy side, my second-favorite activity is playing video games. Go figure.

Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?

I’ve always been fascinated by 80s fantasy films like Return to Oz, The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, Labyrinth and Willow. There’s something so unapologetically dark and almost nightmarish about them, and seeing them as a kid half-traumatized, half-inspired me. Those movies feel similar to original, undiluted folk tales like Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. There’s something that feels so much truer and more human than the diluted kids films and shows we often get these days. I don’t write overly dark books, but I do try to write them as honestly as some of those movies felt.

If you could create a museum exhibition, what would be the theme?

I’m endlessly fascinated by the Period Rooms at The Met, where they meticulously recreate a room from a specific house, building or palace from different moments in history. If you visit the museum very early on a weekday when it’s near-empty, stepping into each room feels like you’re teleporting through space and time over and over again. I’d love to blow that concept out and create a museum that’s just period rooms, where you’re crossing continents and centuries, stepping into someone else’s life time and again. Eventually, I think the virtual reality version would be pretty phenomenal too.