This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Auston Habershaw, author of If Wishes Were Retail.
About If Wishes Were Retail: Alex Delmore needs a miracle. She wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke and NYU seems like a distant dream.
Good thing there’s a genie in town?and he’s hiring at the Wellspring Mall.
It’d help if the Jinn-formerly-of-the-Ring-of-Khorad knew even one thing about 21st-century America. It’d help if he weren’t at least as stubborn as Alex. It’d really help if her brother didn’t sell her out to her conspiracy theory-loving, gnome-hating dad.
When Alex and the genie set up their wishing kiosk, they face seemingly-endless setbacks. The mall is failing and management will not stop interfering on behalf of their big-box tenants, especially the megastore ValuDay.
But when the wishing biz might start working, the biggest problem of all remains: People are really terrible at wishing.
About Auston Habershaw: On the day Auston Habershaw was born, Skylab fell from the heavens. This foretold two possible fates: supervillain or scifi/fantasy author. Fortunately he chose the latter, and spends his time imagining the could-be and the never-was rather than disintegrating the moon with his volcano laser. He lives and works in Boston, MA.
Auston is a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest (2nd place in quarter 1, 2014) and has published stories in Analog, Galaxy’s Edge, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Escape Pod, among other places. His fantasy series, The Saga of the Redeemed is available through Harper Voyager Impulse.
This week’s picks:

* Auston: AGON (TTRPG from Evil Hat)
* Tracy: Resident Alien (Netflix)
* Patrick: Murderbot (AppleTV+)

Links:

* Auston Habershaw on BluSky
* Tracy Townsend on BluSky
* Patrick Hester on Instagram
* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2025 Patrick Hester