Q&A with Josh Denslow

 

 

 

Josh Denslow is the author of the new story collection Magic Can't Save Us. His other books include Not Everyone Is Special. He is the Email Marketing Manager for Bookshop.org, and he lives in Barcelona.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in Magic Can't Save Us?

 

A: The very first story I wrote for this collection, "Luck," was published in wigleaf on January 30, 2017. At the time I didn’t know it was the beginning of a collection. The editor of wigleaf, Scott Garson, was the first person to encourage me to write more of them! I don’t think I would have this collection today without his very early support.

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Once I knew I was writing a thematically linked collection with a different magical creature appearing in each story, I began to set up rules for myself.

 

And I knew pretty early on that each story would feature a relationship that was falling apart and when a mythical creature was introduced, it actually made things worse.

 

And then as with most great ideas, the title for the collection just appeared out of nowhere when I wasn’t even trying to think of a title. Magic Can’t Save Us. And I knew that was it. It was glorious.

 

And as I continued writing stories over the years, they were always grouped under that title, but no story in the collection actually takes the name. The title is a container for all of the stories as a whole.

 

Q: How did you choose the order in which the stories appear in the collection?

 

A: I experimented with many different orders over the years I have been toying with this collection. But as with the title, a stroke of inspiration changed everything.

 

Since every story dealt with a relationship, I decided to lay out the stories in relationship order. Meaning that stories which featured couples early in their relationship would appear first, and then couples with some years behind them appeared later in the book.

 

This proved the collection with an overarching timeline of a relationship, and it allowed for some nice tonal shifts along the way. The darker stories appear at the end and a few of the “fun” ones at the beginning.

 

Once I settled on this order, it had a really neat side effect: It revealed places in the collection where I needed a new story to bolster that section. A handful of the stories (arguably some of the best!) wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t trying to fill in the gaps of the overarching relationship timeline established by the order.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope that readers can find something of themselves in one of the many relationships included. Though strange things occur, I wanted the human aspects to feel real. I also hope they find the humor in the midst of these fraught situations!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on two things now.

 

The first is a departure for me. It’s a middle grade book, also full of magic but in a much different way than my collection, because I promised my children that I would write a book they could read. I’m on a fourth pass of it now, and I think it will finally be ready this summer for my toughest critics: my three sons who are ages 11, 9, and 8.

 

Also, I finished a novel for adults last year that is 540 pages, and everyone is scared of the length so I decided I would start a new novel. I have half of a page so far.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Magic Can’t Save Us is my wife’s favorite thing I’ve ever written.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb