Welcome, friend! I am so excited to bring you this conversation with Auston Habershaw, author of If Wishes Were Retail that I shared about in my last post. Let’s welcome him and learn about the book.
Get to know the author: Auston Habershaw
Hi Auston! It is a pleasure to have you on Armed with A Book. To start us off, can you tell my readers a little about yourself?
Hi! I’m Auston Habershaw! I’m a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. My day job is as a Literature and Composition instructor at MCPHS University’s Boston Campus. I’m also an avid gamer, an elder nerd, and have worn a whole lot of different hats through my life.
What drew you to writing about a genie selling wishes at a mall?
Well, I’ve long been interested in the idea of mythical creatures living alongside us but not in any kind of sinister or secret way, but rather as fellow people trying to make their way in this absurd world of ours. I’ve written stories about dragons needing to downsize their homes, internet trolls who are actual trolls, teenage vampires trying to dodge bullies and get a date to the prom, and so on and so forth. This book began as a short story in that vein, but it just kept growing and growing until it eventually became this book.
How was the first draft different from the final one? You mentioned in your note at the end of the book that at one point the genie was the point of view. Would you be able to share a snippet of that?
Well, I should clarify that the genie wasn’t the point of view, but rather a point of view (and for one chapter). The first draft had multiple point of view characters, had a lot of characters who no longer exist, and it was substantially longer (and notably less funny, to be honest). The genie’s POV chapter was a different version of the chapter (SPOILERS) where the genie brings Alex along to show her how he sees the world. It’s more or less the same as that, except from a different POV.
Alex is so sharp and headstrong. What were some of your influences or inspirations when shaping her voice?
As a college professor who teaches primarily freshmen at a school that has something like a 2/3rds female-to-male ratio, I have spent a lot of time around 17-18yo girls. Many of them have strong opinions and aren’t shy about voicing them! While Alex isn’t based on any specific person, she represents what I have come to identify as the voice of the younger generation who is so very tired of the nonsense their parents have left them to deal with.
What role does humor play in how you explore themes like capitalism, labor, and consumer culture?
That is a very large question, so I’m going to answer it very generally: humor is a way to slip past someone’s defences. It is hard to criticize huge things we take for granted in a direct way – you come off as strident or scolding or even just crazy – but when you can make those things into a joke, when you can show how absurd they are, you can have an easier time getting people to reflect on the world with a little more honesty and somewhat clearer eyes. You know, sometimes.
What does it mean to earn a living in this world? How have your thoughts on this changed over time?
There’s a lot to unpack in that question, so lets start with the basic assumptions inherent in the question: why do we have to earn a living at all? We all have a right to be alive; we don’t need to earn our right to be here. And yet, oddly, that is what work makes us do. If you want to be safe, if you want to eat, if you want to have respect, you need to work for money, which buys all those things. It’s what makes you worthy of survival. Or, you know, that’s how we’re taught to think of it.
What I prefer to think instead is that “work” is the labor we undertake to help the community and world around us. Any job in which you don’t help the community or the world is, essentially, wasted effort. The money involved is also secondary (or should be). Money is supposedly meant to be a stand-in for our value to society. You are supposed to get paid because you are making the world better. At some point, however, that idea—value to society—got decoupled from money. Now you can earn tons of money without actually doing much of anything at all, and at the same time you can work yourself to the bone and barely make ends meet. That’s messed up and strange.
The genie is not the only magical creature in If Wishes Were Retail. There are hardworking gnomes and, if I remember right, some trolls. How do they come to inhibit the contemporary world?
I’m glad you asked that, because it is a question I am very intentionally never going to answer. One of my gripes with the Contemporary Fantasy genre is that the fanciful beings always needs to justify their presence here in our world in various ways. There’s always some invisible world, some ancient curse that gets undone, and so on and so forth. But I’m not writing that kind of book here. In this book (and other things I’ve set in this world), fanciful creatures exist just because they do. They exist in the same way as Irish people or Haitians or Buddhists. They do not have to justify their presence, nor do they have to explain it. Any explanation would be vast and complicated, anyway. The real world resists easy explanations for people; so, too, do the fanciful creatures in this book. Where do genies come from? It’s complicated, and anyway the genie’s got a business to run and he doesn’t have time to talk about it.
I want to know more about gnomes. Why were they working for free at so many places?
The gnomes are just doing what they’ve always done—they are helping out their hosts. Just like in the Grimms’ “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” they are creatures accustomed to hard work and who, as reward, are allowed to live in people’s homes. The thing is, though, such hard workers who have such low expectations for themselves are rife for exploitation here in 21st century America.
Almost like certain real world people who do much the same thing for us, every day, all over the country, and who are treated just as badly.
If Wishes Were Retail made me nostalgic about malls, especially how they used to be pre-COVID. What is one of your favorite memories of going to the mall?
I used to love the mall at Christmas time, waaay back in the 1980s when I was a kid. The decorations, the mall Santa (who I was convinced was the real one, because he had a real beard!), the toy stores breaking out all their best stuff. Throwing pennies in the fountain to wish that you’d get the things on your Christmas list. The smell of popcorn and Orange Julius. Man, those were the days.
I liked your comparison of the genie and artists. Can you tell my readers more about this?
When preparing to write this book, I went around asking people “what would you wish for and how much should it cost,” and a lot of people would wish for outrageous things (world peace, ending world hunger, ending global warming, etc.) and then offer up paltry sums (five bucks!). Their rationale was “but it doesn’t take any effort on the genie’s part to do this, so why should I pay.”
If you are a freelance artist of any kind (writer, musician, illustrator, graphic designer, etc.), this sentiment should be VERY FAMILIAR TO YOU. Everybody wants art for free. Hell, probably right now somebody is out there pirating my book and telling themselves they’re the good guy. There’s this weird disconnect in our society – we recognize that art is immensely valuable to our lives and yet we are pissed off if artists demand an equal share of the money for creating it. Creating art requires years and years of dedication and practice and labor so that they (the artist) can make it look easy, but it isn’t. Most people can’t do it. No robot can do it either. So, artists should be paid, and handsomely. And we should thank them for it. Just like somebody would have to pay the genie a kingly sum to erase the carbon buildup in our atmosphere.
If you were to visit the genie’s wish kiosk in the mall, what would you wish for?
I have been an extraordinarily fortunate man in many, many ways and so I have relatively little I’d wish for myself. I guess the straightforward one would be good health and long life for myself and all my family and friends. Whether I could afford a wish like that would be something else entirely, not to mention if such a wish would even be within the genie’s power. Barring that, I guess I’d just like people to stop running the stop sign out in front of my house. I’d pay up to $500 for that one.
Do you have a favourite quote or scene in If Wishes Were Retail that is especially meaningful to you?
This is a lot like asking me to pick a favorite child—there are so many, and I love so many of them! I guess the one on my mind lately has been the genie sending Alex home on the Fourth of July, in which he says “Go. Celebrate your nation’s independence from the whims of a king. It is a greater gift than you know.”
What do you hope readers walk away with after reading the book?
I hope people enjoy themselves, first and foremost, but then also I hope they remember that they are not alone, and that all the good things we want in the world can be accomplished if we simply work together and support one another—even the people we don’t personally like.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
That’s about it from me! Thanks so much for having me!
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and share with my readers.
I hope you will check out If Wishes Were Retail on Goodreads and read my review on the blog.
Many thanks to Tachyon Publications for connecting me with Auston and providing a review copy of the book for an honest review. Connect with Auston on aahabershaw.com.
Thank you for reading the interview! 🙂 See you tomorrow at a buddy read discussion.
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