The Wrong Magic

by Ken La Salle

Good relationships take a certain kind of magic to succeed, and what Alex Petroya seems to have is the wrong magic.After his wife Stephanie leaves, Alex has one place left to the pink house his parents left to him in Cambria, California. After moving in, he discovers a box filled with unfinished stories Stephanie had written during their marriage.Could finishing them win her back? Alex decides to try but finds writing is harder than it looks. With help from his brother-in-law, Conner, he learns a simple incantation to increase focus. As Alex writes the stories, they come true, creating strange, unnatural events. Then he gets another he will manipulate the stories further to make Stephanie return to him.With the incantation and the stories, Alex seems to have tapped into a magical combination. But in the end, he finds there is no magic stronger than that of the human heart.

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 24, 2014

About the author

For Ken La Salle, there never was a choice between living and writing. Even while building a marketing career, he wrote plays instead of marketing, which led him to writing novels, non-fiction, monologues, and eventually out of marketing completely. His non-fiction challenges readers to consider ethics, success, and the choices that define us. His fiction poses questions as well, filling the depth between vibrant dialogue and fascinating story. His Heaven series asks us how much we value love. Work of Art asks us how much we value art. The expansive, nine-book space opera epic known as The BreakThrough? Well, that’s just fun, which is a main ingredient throughout La Salle’s work. It is the dream of his life, and he’s determined to make the most of it.

Reviews

[histeriker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but not my cup of tea. I didn't like the ending, it spoilt the whole book for me.

[Charles Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Petroya is a man going through life just making the motions. He cares for little beyond repairing bikes—and, is content with what he calls life. Until, one day, he comes home from a ride and finds his wife, Stephanie in the arms of Martin, her boss, announcing that she’s leaving him.
Totally flummoxed, Alex returns to his late parents’ home, a place he’d always hated because it seemed to suck the life out of life. In the process of finding himself, he encounters a bunch of Stephanie’s unfinished stories, and for reasons he doesn’t understand, decides that he must finish them. That’s when the magic begins.
Wrong Magic by Ken LaSalle follows Alex and Stephanie as they endure the sometimes painful process of finding themselves. But, first they must find and understand the magic – the right magic.
LaSalle’s handling of this hard-to-classify story is masterful. He takes us from Alex’s sometimes fumbling attempts to develop something akin to human emotions to Stephanie’s efforts to decide with whom she wants to spend her life. At times achingly funny, and at times depressing beyond words, this is the kind of story you read when it’s chilly outside and the wind’s rattling the window panes. A story of magic—the kind you find in fantasy stories and the kind you find inside the human heart—it’ll keep you turning pages and chuckling.