Joel King

Oyster River Pages: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?
Joel King: In terms of the world for “After the End,” I would be greatly interested in exploring how this new world operates, say, five years down the line. The implication there is that the people who were turned are mindless for a while, but slowly regain their “humanity,” so to speak. What’s society like, both in this ambiguously American setting and across the rest of the world? Has the status quo—or an approximation of it —managed to impose itself back on the survivors, or have the dynamics completely changed? Was humanity set back, or did it advance? Maybe the timeline’s a little too short for that question, but I would enjoy diving into the future of this world in an epilogue, to follow the thread a little further.

ORP: What do you hope readers of your story take from it?
JK: I think this story has been pretty thoroughly reframed by the pandemic we’re living through, given that it was written in July 2019, long before any of this occurred. What I would like for readers to take from it is that it’s a story of resilience. The world in the story is pretty thoroughly ravaged, but the people in it weren’t destroyed—they were changed, pretty dramatically, and in a catastrophic manner, but they survived, to an extent. Even after everything he’s gone through, Jonas still recognizes his love, demonstrating that he’s still in that beat-up, zombified body. There’s something to latch onto, to use as an anchor to start over and move on. As cheesy as it sounds, it would be nice if people could read this story and think “we will be alright when this is all over.”

ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?
JK: It’s made it way harder! My productivity has plummeted since March 2020, despite being home almost constantly since then, and being fortunate to retain my job remotely this whole time. I’ve found that the vastly increased background radiation of stress has sucked up a lot of my ability to generate ideas, and I’ve sort of just stumbled around a couple of different projects I’ve been working on since late 2019, hoping that I can salvage at least one of them. As for consumption, it’s easier to have a steady stream of content—podcasts, YouTube videos, streams, music—going on in the background as I work, both at my day job and on writing, but I’ve gotten less out of it as a result, because I’m not focusing nearly as much on what I’m watching or listening to. The situation we’re in has made it much harder for me to absorb anything.

ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?
JK: I think the value of hope depends on the person and the situation to which it’s being applied. Hope can be a huge motivating factor for a person, but it needs to be applied sensibly, and you need to have a strong grasp on it in order to avoid blinding yourself to truths that stand in front of you. Take a job interview, for instance—having hope that you will secure that job can be a comfort, but too much of it could result in taking your foot off the gas prematurely in your search, which could leave you in a bad spot if that job you thought you’d get doesn’t actually take you. Hope is an essential, fundamental feeling for people, and it’s deeply important to hold onto hope and avoid cynicism, but you need to always keep your eyes open, and stay aware of the reality of the situation in front of you, because that same hope can be manipulated if you aren’t paying close enough attention.

ORP: What do you think is the most essential advice that most writers and artists ignore?
JK: I think, in recent times, a lot of artists and writers have hammered on the idea that creativity is work. And this is true - when you’re pursuing a creative act as your livelihood, whether it’s actually supporting you or you’re just working towards that goal, it is work, in the sense that you have obligations you’re beholden to, and that you may be writing for a specific audience, or overseer, which could hamper your creativity. But I think what gets lost in that lately is the fact that you need to enjoy it, too. Working on commissioned art, or sponsored work, or writing prompts and subjects that were given to you by an editor or a publisher means that you have guidelines in place, sure, but it’s extremely important to ensure that it’s still fun and fulfilling to do that kind of work, or that you’re finding an outlet for what you want to work on, beyond what you have to work on. If art becomes nothing but work, eventually you won’t be able to manage it as work at all. I lost sight of that when I was in college, and I was desperately scrambling for ideas that were publishable first, and fun or interesting much further down the list. It resulted in me losing my creative drive entirely, and I couldn’t find it again for years after the fact, all because I lost sight of why I enjoyed writing in the first place. The balance of work and fun is essential for ensuring you don’t fall into that trap and lose all of it.

Joel King is a graduate in Journalism from the University of South Florida, currently living in Tampa. He has been writing regularly since high school, primarily in the realm of science fiction, with a deep fixation on artificial intelligence. He has previously written feature articles for Halftime Magazine, and “After the End” is his first professionally published work. He can be found on Twitter at @youmustbejking.