CoW Ep. 226: Wished (& ep 287 Staff Pick)

[danooli]

Episode 226: Wished by Amanda Helms

Episode 287: Wished by Amanda Helms - Staff Pick 2017

• Narrated by Dave Robison
• Audio production by Jeremy Carter
• A Cast of Wonders original!

Amanda Helms lives and writes in her home state of Colorado. In her younger years, she threw many coins into many mall fountains, but sadly none of them never became a wishing well as a result. She’s a 2014 graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop, and Wished is her first publication. You can follow her on her website and on Twitter.

Dave Robison’s voice work has appeared on audio fiction podcasts across the internet, including the Drabblecast, StarShipSofa, Tales to Terrify, and as a proud memeber of the Hat Trick Club, every single Escape Artists podcast. His production company, Wonderthing Studios, will be releasing the audiobook verionss of Tim Ward’s novel SCAVENGER: EVOLUTION and Terry Irving’s THE DAY OF THE DRAGON KING.

The wishing well discovered its meaning in existence only through a case of mistaken semantics. In point of fact, it started its existence not as a wishing well but as a decorative fountain. In point of another fact, it was sentient, all of which is most unusual for either a decorative fountain or a wishing well.

Click here to listen to Episode 226
Click here to read the text of the story

Tags: Amanda Helms, Cast of Wonders, Dave Robison, existence, fulfillment, happiness, Jeremy Carter, philosophy, pretzels, sentience, shopping mall, wishes, Young Adult fiction

[likeomg126]

This story led to happy crying throughout my whole commute to work (who am I kidding, more like happy sobbing). Not sure exactly why, but it hit me right in the feels - I still feel warm and fuzzy, as well as on the verge of tears hours later. Something about the cyclic nature of life and longing and small things sometimes being just as important as big things, and great, now I'm tearing up again at my desk! Maybe its just something about how magic could be real, but just uncommon, and when it touches our life, we chalk it up to a lucky toss of the dice vs a sentient fountain.

I'm always caught off guard by how emotional YA fiction can make me. I think the purity of the stories pairs with dual nostalgia for my childhood and hope for the future, I'm at the point in my life where I identify both with the kids and with the parents.

Also - to defend all of those people wishing insignificant things. I know for myself, I always want to give wishes wiggle room. If I wish for something important or concrete and it doesn't come true, then either magic isn't real or magic is a jerk. But if I wish for something small or something intangible, it gives me greater leeway to believe

[Unblinking]

This was delightful.  I enjoyed the wishing well's point of view, lots of fun and silly turns of phrase throughout, and how it got its own wish in the end (as granted to the mother). 

And what a toddler thing to do, to be given a wish at a fountain that you thought was a wishing well, and to spend that wish to wish it WAS a wishing well.

[TrishEM]

I loved this story, for reasons others have mentioned. I also liked how the well was judgmental at the beginning, partly because it didn't have much power, and partly because it just was, and then at the end it was giving out wishes fairly freely, just to make people happy in small ways -- and how that generosity end up being repaid forward into the future.
(happy sigh)

[Michael W. Cho]

Very nice story... the author made me care for an inanimate object.