Joseph Wallace Interview

Slavemakers is the follow up to Joseph Wallace’s post-apocalyptic thriller Invasive Species. We have talked to him about the new book.

For the benefit of those not familiar with the first book, can you tell us a bit about Invasive Species?

I decided to give myself a challenge in Invasive Species. I had to end the world in a new way, without using nuclear war, the rise of machines, or a rampant global disease epidemic. At the same time, I had to make it scientifically plausible, something that could actually happen someday.

So that’s what readers will find in Invasive Species: the story of the last weeks of our civilization and the creatures that bring it crashing down. (Wielding that phenomenal cosmic power as an author was a lot of fun!)

Slavemakers is set 20 years after Invasive Species, what can your fans expect?

Having taken on my Invasive Species challenge, I wanted to try something a little different in Slavemakers…and that meant letting some time pass between the two stories. What would our earth look like two decades after most humans are gone? Is it possible to stay human when all the familiar trappings of humanity have been stripped away, when you are no longer a member of the dominant species?

What new challenges did you set for yourself with Slavemakers?

One of the biggest challenges—and biggest joys—in telling a “before and after” story was the creation of such different universes: The stressed urban world we all know so well in Invasive Species and the emptier, far more mysterious one in Slavemakers.

I had a blast imagining Slavemakers’ new, post-apocalyptic earth. Growing up, I always thought I’d been born too late or too soon: I wanted to be one of those explorers who headed out across a planet (either our own or some far-flung one) whose map was filled with blank spaces labeled “Here Be Monsters.” In Slavemakers, I got to build such a world…and then populate it with monsters out of my own nightmares.

What would you say is unique about your take on the post-apocalyptic genre?

There have been a slew of real-life scientific discoveries in recent years (many so new they’ve barely been published) about the way species can control others’ behavior through chemical means, through harnessing the power of viruses, and even through methods we don’t yet understand. We live in a world filled with actual slavemakers, and most of us don’t even know it. It’s a fascinating—and scary—branch of scientific research, and one that I relied on to tell my story.

With this series you have strayed quite some way from your young-adult historical baseball adventure, Diamond Ruby. You’ve also written for many magazines and publications. How has all this experience played into writing in a post-apocalyptic setting?

As you mention, I wrote nonfiction articles and books for many years before I started publishing fiction. One of the subjects I focused on during that stage of my career was baseball history, which led me to write Diamond Ruby, set in 1920s Brooklyn.

But my most intense focus was always on the real world around us, its bizarre creatures and the way they interact with our lives and health. I have an overstuffed attic for a brain, and I kept finding out fascinating–and often horrifying—new details about life on earth, and storing it in my “attic.” When I sat down to write this novel, I had a treasure trove to draw on.

How did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?

I’ve wanted to be a writer for nearly as long as I can remember. Growing up in a solid middle-class home in Brooklyn wasn’t the exciting life I dreamed of for myself, and writing stories—many of which were science fiction—was one way for me to take the journeys my real life didn’t provide.

What has been most surprising to you in your writing and publishing career?

I think the most surprising thing for me has been the fact that my childhood dream came true. I wrote constantly, but I never imagined I’d succeed in getting anything published. (As a teenager, I’d send stories and queries to magazines; every time I got a rejection slip, I’d tape it to a “wall of fame” above my desk. Eventually I covered the wall.) The fact that it’s possible to make that transition from “no” to “yes”—and that I eventually made it—still seems amazing to me.

What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?

I read all kinds of things, but I still most often turn to genre: mysteries, thrillers, sf and fantasy. As a young reader, my favorite authors included Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe was so cool!); Robert Heinlein (especially his earlier novels like Tunnel in the Sky, because his heroes got to have all the adventures I dreamed of for myself); and John Wyndham, whose concept of a “soft,” non-nuclear apocalypse in The Day of the Triffids and other novels was a big influence on Slavemakers.

Of course there were, and are, countless other books and authors I admire as well.

Most writers have some other thing they’re passionate about, what’s yours?

I volunteer extensively in my community as a writing mentor, working with local students who want more chance to write creatively than the math-and-science-heavy school curriculum gives them. I love working with young writers, and would do that every day from dawn to dusk if I weren’t obsessed with writing itself so much.

What’s next? Do you have more exciting new projects you’re working on?

I have a lot on my plate right now. (And that’s something a freelance writer doesn’t often get to say!) I’m currently working on a book about evolution, writing the text to support images by a brilliant National Geographic photographer named Robert Clark. I’m also hoping to use my experience as a writing mentor to write a nonfiction book about storytelling, and how we can bring it back into children’s lives. I think telling stories is an inborn skill, a birthright, and when it gets stifled—as it does so often—we all suffer from the loss.

And then I have this idea for one more book in my series, starting just after Slavemakers ends…. ☺

Thanks for having me on your terrific blog.

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