Love something besides magic…

Those chocolate mice are so delicious. I’m reminded of this cartoon, which I used to have on a t-shirt:

Other updates:

Here’s a lovely write-up of last week’s signing at Pandemonium. Also, you can purchase THE RED HEART OF JADE as an e-book for $1.99, which is a great deal if you’ve never read my books and want to try one of them out.

A reminder from Boing-Boing: “Aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers have two weeks left to get their applications in to this summer’s Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego.”  I’m a graduate of Clarion (a six-week bootcamp, and unforgettable experience), and it’s an honor to be going back as one of the teachers.  Here’s the main website, if you want to take a look.

Here’s an an eight page comic from Liv Strömquist on Whitney Houston and domestic abuse, called “I Think About Whitney”.

I also have to recommend this book called YOU ARE THE CAT, which is for adults — but written in the same vein as those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that I used to love when I was a kid.  Remember those?  Here’s the description of this great book, written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia: Inspired by the gamebook fad of the late 80s, You Are a Cat! is both a parody and homage, focusing on a dysfunctional family, but told through the eyes of their cat. Fully a third of the book is lavishly illustrated from the feline first-person floor perspective. The different choices you make affect people and events! Even something as seemingly trivial as whether or not to purr can result in dramatic changes.

So. Much. Fun.

Finally, this gorgeous, inspirational post called “the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic.”  I’ve excerpted a great deal of it, but you should really read the whole thing for the full effect.

Here’s a compositional secret.  It’s so obvious and simple, you’ll say to yourself, “This man is bullshitting me.”  I am not.  This is one of the most fundamental things in all theatrical movie composition and yet magicians know nothing of it.  Ready?

Surprise me.

Here’s how surprise works.  While holding my attention, you withold basic plot information.  Feed it to me little by little.  Make me try and figure out what’s going on.  Tease me in one direction.  Throw in a false ending.  Then turn it around and flip me over.

Read Rouald Dahl.  Watch the old Alfred Hitchcock episodes.  Surprise.  Withold information.  Make them say, “What the hell’s he up to?  Where’s this going to go?” and don’t give them a clue where it’s going.  And when it finally gets there, let it land.  An ending.

Love something besides magic, in the arts.  Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor, composer.  You will never be the first Brian Allen Brushwood of magic if you want to be Penn & Teller.  But if you want to be, say, the Salvador Dali of magic, we’ll THERE’S an opening.

I should be a film editor.  I’m a magician.  And if I’m good, it’s because I should be a film editor.  Bach should have written opera or plays.  But instead, he worked in eighteenth-century counterpoint.  That’s why his counterpoints have so much more point than other contrapuntalists.  They have passion and plot.  Shakespeare, on the other hand, should have been a musician, writing counterpoint.  That’s why his plays stand out from the others through their plot and music.

Lovely, lovely, and lovelier still.