From the Writing Desk of Josh Denslow
PICTURED
1. The standing desk I created from two IKEA bookshelves and an IKEA kitchen tabletop.
2. The ergonomic keyboard and mouse that make me the butt of quite a few of my wife's jokes.
3. A bookshelf turned on its side that serves as a monitor stand and an additional place to shove books. It currently contains research books for my new novel and a bunch of novels I wish I was reading right now.
4. A Futurama poster along with a rotating cast of Futurama characters randomly placed around the desk.
5. Two white high school locker-looking things that if you open them, paper and crayons and portable harddrives and last year's W2 and loose pens and extra computer cords and phone chargers for phones I no longer have and a box of checks and a pair of headphones all come spilling out.
6. Oh, and two of my boys! Aged two and three. They are standing on our craft table/step stool so they can build Legos on the far side of my standing desk while I write. We have a pretty great system that involves me stopping a lot to attach Lego figures to Lego cars but I'm able to write so I'm the big winner! And I love having my boys there with me. They do an amazing impression of me typing.
7. Bluetooth speakers that have been known to play Godspeed You Black Emperor, the My Little Pony Movie Soundtrack, Converge, the Sofia the First Soundtrack, Fugazi, the Lion Guard Soundtrack, Colin Stetson, the Trolls Movie Soundtrack, St. Vincent, the Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack, Nils Frahm, and you get the idea. My Spotify Top Songs playlists each year are nuts.
8. A stack of books on that floor that were in a to-read pile by my bed for awhile, then in my bedroom closet under some unfolded jeans, and now they live by my feet to remind me that I literally have no more space for books and that this to-read pile is actually a to-not- forget-about pile while their position has been supplanted by dozens of other books.
9. A door into the back yard that is unable to be used because of all the things listed above. It is now officially a window.
NOT PICTURED
1. All my family's musical instruments including my drum kit, a kid-sized drum kit, a PA and speakers, my wife's two-tier keyboard set-up, a piano, an electric cello, an upright bass that was built by my brother-in-law, a banjo, and more amps than we actually need.
2. More books.
3. A closet behind me that is overflowing with every Futurama action figure licensed by Moore,
Toynami, Kidrobot, Pop!, and many more. Also a two-foot tall Bender, every Futurama Comic-Con exclusive, the entire run of comic books, and a bunch of even more random Futurama stuff that I have been collecting since 2000. A source of great pride for me and a source of great embarrassment for my wife. If Split Lip ever does an obsessive Futurama collector blog, I'd be happy to contribute.
4. More books.
5. A massive playpen created with interlocking, multi-colored fencing that we affectionately call Azkaban. It has a circus tent inside plus bins of large Legos, toy cars and busses that play inane songs, a bean bag chair, an inflatable ball, and a plastic slide.
6. More books. No one ever wants to help us move.
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Josh Denslow's debut short story collection, Not Everyone Is Special, will be published in 2019 by 7.13 Books. For more, visit www.joshdenslow.com/.