A Post-Apocalyptic Interview with Joseph S. Walker

Our next anthology, Tales from the Ruins, is going to be a cataclysmic one! It will be released on the 25th of February but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just 99c instead of $3.99. To celebrate the imminent publication of the first Black Beacon Books anthology exclusively dedicated to post-apocalyptic fiction, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Behold the maniacal workings of their troubled minds!

Hi Joseph,

Let’s make the first question a lighthearted one...hmm...okay, got it! Is your story simply an entertaining piece of fiction or are you giving us a peek at the terrifying fate tomorrow will unleash upon us?

Hopefully “Cast Upon The Water” is more of an entertainment than a prophecy. I don’t actually specify in my story exactly what caused the evident catastrophe, but it involves devastated land and rising waters. I don’t think you can read the story without thinking of climate change, and if it leads to a single reader taking that problem more seriously, great. For the most part, though, I just wanted to put a few characters in a terrible situation and see how they dealt with it.

What is it that makes post-apocalyptic fiction so appealing? Would the world be better off if more people read this genre?

The world would be better off if more people read, period. What they read is obviously important, but secondary. Unfortunately, post-apocalyptic fiction probably is popular right now because so many people do have an impending sense of doom. This is nothing new—Mary Shelley wrote a novel about a global plague that wipes out humanity hundreds of years ago. The most important moment for the genre, though, was certainly the introduction of nuclear weapons, which suddenly made the end of the world something more than hypothetical. Now we have to worry about the bomb, about pandemics, and about the climate. These are all, by the way, problems made much worse by widespread, determined stupidity, which brings us back to people needing to read more.

Do you have a favourite post-apocalyptic author? 

He obviously doesn’t always write in this genre, but I think the single greatest post-apocalyptic book I’ve read is “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. It’s probably the text that was most influential on how I wrote my story.

Some people like to listen to music while reading. Which song can you imagine providing the soundtrack to your story? 

Is Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” too obvious?

If you woke up in your story tomorrow, what would you do? 

Cry some, I imagine, then try to find a library or someplace else with a stash of books where I could read away my remaining time. I’m not delusional enough to think I’d suddenly develop survival skills!

There are no firearms or ammunition. You have to choose an everyday object from the home or garden as your weapon of choice—what’s in your hands? 

The obvious choice is a kitchen knife, but truthfully my preference would be a baseball bat.

Time to get more personal. Tell us three interesting facts about yourself. 

-I didn’t begin publishing fiction until I was in my 40s.
-I’ve been to games in 21 Major League Baseball parks and hope to see all of them in my lifetime.
-During the pandemic I became obsessive about building Lego sets.

What do you aim to give your readers? 

Hopefully, a diverting and entertaining experience that will stick with them for a while. I hope most of my stories include a line, or an image, or a character that the reader will find themselves thinking about days later.

What are you working on now?

I write exclusively short stories, and almost all of them are in the mystery/crime genre. I usually have a few stories in different stages of development at any one time. By my count, I’ve had 85 stories published. I’m hoping to get to 100 by the end of the year! 

Where can we find you online? 

I have a website (https://jswalkerauthor.com/) and I’m on Twitter @JSWalkerAuthor. Among other things, the website has links to several of my stories that can be read online for free, so it’s a great way to get a taste of my work.

Thanks for playing along. Good luck in the wastelands!

Thanks. I’m honored to be part of Tales from the Ruins!

An Interview with Joseph S. Walker

Our next edge-of-your-seat anthology, A Hint of Hitchcock, will be released in time for Halloween, and is available for Kindle pre-order today for just $1.99 instead of $3.99. While the suspense is building, we're interviewing the contributing authors so you know a little more about what makes them tick...

Hi Joseph, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Let's get started!

The first question is inevitable...which Hitchcock film is your personal favourite, and why?

I have to go with Rear Window. I love the way the film creates a rising tide of suspense without ever leaving this one, very confined setting. It’s a small world, but a beautifully detailed one. And of course, the performances are all great and the story holds up—it sucks me back in every time.

Which actor or actress do you think was the best he worked with?

Jimmy Stewart. In every one of his Hitchcock performances he’s a character with levels that we don’t perceive at first, depths that emerge as the story develops. He does an amazing job of slowly revealing everything that’s there.

What is it about Hitchcock's films that makes them so timeless, or is it just the opposite, that the appeal lies in that bygone era?

The surface details age, of course, some more so than others. But the essential stories and emotions retain their power, and there are a lot of factors contributing to that, starting with the fact that Hitchcock was an exceptionally talented filmmaker with an understanding of how to exploit the medium’s potential. I think the most important thing, though, is that we can still identify with the way his world is saturated with dread. All of his films have moments where the everyday suddenly becomes terrifying.

Do you have a favourite director, other than Hitchie himself, of course?

The Coen Brothers—who, obviously, know their Hitchcock!

Without giving too much away, how did you come up with the idea for your story in A Hint of Hitchcock? 

When I head about the anthology, it was shortly after my wife and I had watched Suspicion as part of our pandemic movie binging. It was the first time I’d seen it, and I was immediately struck by two things—the way the ending feels so forced and artificial, and the presence in one scene of Phil and Izzy, two women coded as a lesbian couple in a way that was very unusual for the period. Doing a little reading about the film, I learned that it was released just a few weeks before the attack at Pearl Harbor. I started to get an image in my head—two characters, in a world newly at war, talking about these strange elements in the movie they just watched. The story grew from my investigation of who these two characters were, and what brought them to that conversation.

Time to get more personal. Tell us three interesting facts about yourself.

I met my wife in high school, and we’re together thirty-four years later; Harlan Ellison is the writer who made me want to be a writer; I have been to Major League Baseball games in twenty-one different stadiums.

What do you aim to give your readers?

If I’m doing my job right, an emotionally engaging experience that makes you want to read straight through to the end. If I’m really doing it right, something that will still be remembered in a week, a month, or a year.

What are you working on now?

I’ve always got a couple of stories bubbling along at some stage in the process. I recently finished a novella about car thieves and blackmail that should see publication next year. Among my recent publications, Hitchcock fans might also be interested in Black is the Night: Stories Inspired by Cornell Woolrich, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. Woolrich, of course, was the originator of the story that became Rear Window. My story in the volume is A Shade Darker Than Gray.

Where can we find you online?

On Twitter, @JSWalkerAuthor, though I take frequent breaks from Twitter for the sake of my mental health. I keep an updated list of my publications at https://jsw47408.wixsite.com/website