Rose Petals

Hope all is well and that the New Year is starting off great for
you and yours. Last time I wrote to you, I said I was going to
make a concerted effort to practice magic more and look for
opportunities to perform more. To that end, when I get home at
the end of the day, I am now walking around with a deck of cards
or a stack of silver dollars, practicing my manipulation and
flourishes. Funny, how it's like riding a bicycle. My roll-outs
and one-handed shuffles are still pretty fluid. Now to do
something meaningful with it!

One of the churches I belong to has asked if I would do a magic
show at their next family event. That's sounded fun so I said,
"Sure!" Only problem is I have never performed for a church. If
any of you have some gospel or spiritual material you can share,
I'd love to know about it.

I have started to "invent" a series of simple but flashy
in-the-hands false cuts. I'm going to continue to explore this
area and then put it on video to share it. Maybe I have something
or maybe I am re-inventing something from long ago. So hard to be
entirely original when it comes to this type of stuff, especially
with all of the cardistry sites out there.

I went away this weekend to Branson for a low-cost couples
conference called Love & Laughter. It featured marital
counselor Gary Smalley, the pastor of the Woodland Hills church
in Branson, Ted Cunningham, and Paul Harris a local comedian and
entertainer. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get away with
the missus without the kids.

Friday night we attended the conference dance where they gave
away bags of rose petals and all of the tables were lit by
candlelight and had more petals scattered across the tabletop.
Very romantic. Of course, it's difficult to keep a good magician
focused. My wife looks at the petals and candles and thinks, "Oh,
this is so pretty!" I look at it and think, "Wow, what kind of
magic can I do with these?"

Immediately I secretly rolled up a rose petal into a small ball
and palmed it in the crotch of my thumb. Then I had my wife pick
up a petal from the table, hand it to me, and I tore it and
restored it. Invariably, I was asked to perform it a few times
for other couples around the table. Luckily, the wife was balling
up extra petals for me. She was a good assistant!

They also had playing cards distributed by a church organization
called Two Ignite focused on renewing and revitalizing marriages.
Each playing card had a normal card index but also asked an
insightful question, so the deck could be used to play cards or
also pose questions for discussion and exploration. Of course,
being the ADHD magician, I again started looking for duplicates
so I could do a torn and restored card, but had to settle for Card
Warp instead. But the concept of having questions on the cards got me
thinking about the possibilities of using such a deck for mind
reading. If the deck used marks, you could not only tell the
value of the card but also the question which would position you
for cold reading. What do you think of this idea?

I just put the finishing touches on an article for Stan Allen's
MAGIC Magazine. It should appear in your February issue. Last
year I wrote a thread of newsletters about the biggest mistakes
magicians make with their web sites. This two-page article goes
into more depth, and I know you will like it. If you are not yet
a subscriber to Stan's fantastic magazine, I urge you to visit
his site and subscribe today or to rush on down to your local
magic shop when the new issue comes out in a few weeks. Here's
his URL: http://www.magicmagazine.com/

Well, that's about it for now. Do write to me and let me know
how it's going for you.

All my best,


Steven