The Magic Memories (15)

Hello everyone!

Here we are, at the 15th episode of The Magic Memories, gone online on SUN, April 11th, 00:07 o’clock.

Today’s session will be short and sweet, the main reason being that Barbara and I are working (almost) around the clock to finish my upcoming book. I’m currently implementing all the corrections and suggestions I received from Max Pritchard, my second proofreader, who must have worked a week full-time to work through all the tricks and techniques, research sources and historical facts, checking literary references and making around a thousand annotations and suggestions of how to improve the text, a Herculean task. I’ve mentioned the work that goes around a book in my 13th post, but now I’m living it in a full immersion. Another full day and the content is ready to be printed on paper, then another 3 days at least to check everything from photos, to titles, layout, and of course the complete text one last time. After that we’ll tackle the covers (see below!), and in about 10 days it should go to the printer’s, in Florence, Italy, supervised by my good friend and publisher Francesco Mugnai and his Florence Art Edizioni.

However, we are still struggling with the title, and that’s were you can come in, if you wish. I will have a free copy of the book, duly signed to your name and shipped free of charge to any part of the world, to anyone who can come up with a title for the book that we will use. So, here is an open competition, and anyone can participate. These are some of the facts you should know:

• CLICK HERE to see our latest design idea – the PDF shows the front cover and two versions of the back cover. The current title-idea is “Of Secrets”, but I’m looking for a better title.
• Titles I had to eliminate are “Sleight-of-Mind” and “Beyond Secrets”, because they’ve been already used by others.
• Titles I have eliminated and which are therefore not eligible are:
  • 52 Secrets
  • Essential Secrets
  • Real Secrets
  • True Secrets
  • Of Secrets

As you can see I tend toward “Secret” in the title, but this can be changed completely or made part of a longer title.

The subtitle is fix (unless someone comes up with something really genial): “The 52 Most Important and Practical Strategies in Magic”

As for the content, here is once again the link to the current “Table of Content” that gives you a first general idea (CLICK HERE).

The idea of the book is to identify the most important “theories”, i.e. conceptual ideas in magic and describe them on one single page, on the left side of the open book. On the opposite right page I’ll have a trick, technique or other idea illustrating the practical use of the concept described. There will be 53 such double-pages, including dozens of tricks etc. Plus there will be several essays on the subject, various lists of the fundamental concepts in magic, a rich bibliography, a short chapter with recommended books on the subject, with my comments.

CLICK HERE to see an example for such a double-page, which forms the core-content of the book. When you open the PDF in your PDF-Reader app, use the double-page view  to see how it will appear.

You can send your suggestions directly to me at giobbi@bluewin.ch. I will very briefly answer all incoming mail – if you don’t get an answer within 48 hours, it means I did not receive your email, so please, send again.

OK, folks, that’s it for today. If all goes well I’ll be done with the book by next week-end, and I’ll be able to spend some time talking a magic trick or related subject. Until then, have a great week!