Interviewing Joshua Phillip Johnson

Helloooo!!

Today I reviewed The Forever Sea by Joshua Phillip Johnson which was a standout fantasy tale that delivered on a sense of wonder with such an unusual concept. Joshua very kindly agreed to talk to me about the book and what comes next!

Thank you for The Forever Sea, I loved the sense of wonder it gave me!!

Thanks so much for having me! And I’m so glad you enjoyed The Forever Sea!

How do you like to book tempt The Forever Sea?

I’m terrible at this, but I normally say something like: it’s like the aesthetics of a Studio Ghibli movie packed with the action of Pirates of the Caribbean! 

A Five Mile deep sea of plants that ships sail on top of? How did that idea grab you?

I live in a place that used to be covered in tallgrass prairie, and although it never grew to five-miles high, it would grow 10 or even 15 feet tall! I love the literalizing that happens to much in fantasy, and so I just took a thing that has been talked about as a metaphorical sea (I’ve seen people refer to the prairie as the “inland sea”) and just made it literal! And once I’d made it a literal sea, it was an easy leap to add ships and monsters of the deeps and high adventure!

Magic is often in fantasy either a complex ordered magic system or something wild and unpredictable. You appear to have gone for a mix? Was that intentional?

Definitely! I know this is totally a taste thing, but I’ve just never loved magic systems that are too ordered or ruled. Magic seems to me to be a thing that is, fundamentally, unpredictable and wild, and I wanted to capture some of that here. That doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be used, of course! Just that the gap between cause and effect is filled with mystery! In The Forever Sea, I tried to use these two ideas (magic as ordered, scientific and magic as wild, artsy) together. I have characters who use and embody these two different approaches as a way to dig into some bigger ideas of nature as a ruled, ordered thing or nature as a wild, unpredictable thing.

How have you found the road to your first novel – especially after 2020?

It’s been challenging in all sorts of ways. I think publishing a novel is probably always hard, but so much of the process, for me, requires focus and attention, and both of those have been in short supply this year. However, I’ve been lucky to have incredible teams with both my US and UK publishers, and my agent is fantastic as well. Hard times are always made easier by good relationships, and that’s certainly been the case with publishing this first book in the worst year in a long time!

What else lies in store for the next volume?

So much! I’m really excited about the second book. It features a language war, a spoken sickness, an answer to what’s really destroying the Forever Sea, and a new POV character!

Where can we find more news from you?

I’m active on twitter at JohnsonJoshuaP, and I have a website: joshuaphillipjohnson.com. I promise to be better about updating the website! J

If you had one book (not your own) that you could get everyone to read what would it be?

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She’s an incredible, thoughtful, brilliant writer, and I’d love everyone to read and reread that book.