Really looking forward to this, Mark.

Great to see this is coming together for you Mark .

Mark kindly shared with me his routine Getting to Know You from memory. What can I say... It's brilliant. I enjoyed the idea of Memoria but never felt like I would perform it. Marks take on it makes it become a very workable routine. I love the thinking. Someone chooses a card that describes them. They associate the card with a memory they have. You proceed to give someone a very sound reading. You can end by describing the exact memory they are only thinking of. It's really great thinking to make a good routine great.

He also share with me his Thought Stacking Principle. This is fantastic! It is a principle that enables you to read two minds at once in a very clean way. He showed me a use for it with branching a******* it allows you to read two minds (tell them their star sign, etc.) without ever getting a miss. You just continually tell both of them bits and pieces of their word. I love this idea. It's this kind of thinking that can make you come across as the real deal.

After seeing these two little previews, I am looking forward to the book even more. Can't wait for its release!

Mark often comes up with good ideas, we often have skype sessions and he usually shows me something new each time. He seems to be able to think differently to most of us.

Thanks for the kind words Maddy. The Getting to know you from memory routine owes a huge amount to Pete Turner, Fraser Parker and Art Vanderlay. All I have really done is combined some fantastic ideas of theirs into a cohesive whole with a few touches of my own. However without such giants giving me their permission to use their shoulders as a platform that routine wouldn't exist. Likewise for Michael Murray who owns the rights to memoria (and who's very clever thinking has added a touch here and a touch there to add the cherry to the top of some of the routines.

A lot of the focus in this book is on the why rather than the how. Yes the effects in the book are generally strong, practical and workable but for the most part the effects serve as demonstrations of the concepts and principles. If you fail to properly consider the why the how can be far less effective. In many cases if you understand the why the how will be easy to come up with. My aim with this book is to go some way to teach critical thinking. Magicians thinking or thinking like a magician have become derogatory terms of late. Mainly because too much focus is put on the how and often none is put on the why. Many magicians (and Mentalists) judge an effect or method on its ability to fool when in reality "fooling" should never be the end goal.

One of the other things I shared with Maddy was the core of the "Making sense of it all" chapter. This focuses on moving procedure out of the method and into the effect. Both the Memoria routine and my kioku presentations demonstrate this concept. Watch the way Atlas performs a BA for another example of making procedure invisible by structuring the effect in such a way that the procedure makes perfect sense. I clever and fooling method is wasted if it requires a process that makes no sense in the effect. Sure you could use something like telefoto or SS2.5 to code yes/no answers but if the only answer to why is "that's how the method works" then the spectators may not understand how you figured out which hand the coin was in but they will have a fair idea, that which hand they put the coin in is telling you yes or no. You may as well just do a which hand routine, or a telefoto drawing dupe. Those that are in the Iunlock pro group will have already seen how I use the thought stacking principle in my Iunlock routine to completely cancel out any info keyed into my phone as well as how how I structure the routine so that it makes sense to follow the phone unlock with a birthday reveal before unlocking two participants phones. The routine in in the book to demonstrate those principles and those that think Iunlock is transparent may have their minds changed.

So those looking for effects will get some good ones. Those that read deeper will get the tools to help them structure effects and make little tweaks here and there that will make a big difference.

Oh and George it is a two way street, you also have great ideas and I always gain something from our conversations. In fact Push owes something to you and your name is in the book as a result.

Mark

Where will this be available? Thanks.

Mark, not sure why but when I try to skype you it doesn't ring, not sure why, give us a call when you get time.

Jaizon,
Initially it will only be available directly from me but I will see if I can convince any dealers to stock it.

George,
Not been logged into Skype lately, I will log on and call you later.

Mark

This seems like it will be a great read. Very interested.

-Dustin

Been getting a lot of enquiries about the status of the book so I thought I'd give an update. The simple answer is that it will be done when it is done. It has taken a lot of time to do the research to make sure that I am not reinventing the wheel. In the cases where I am using ideas that have already been explored by others I have spent a lot of time getting all of the required permissions. This has been a long process but I firmly believe that when you stand on the shoulders of others you have an obligation to try and keep your shoes as clean as possible.

Just to give you a little background, I am a full time single parent and I work full time. I'm also still in the process of building my own stage show and so when I get home from work between feeding the kids, washing and ironing school uniforms, helping with homework, and picking up after the kids, I have limited time (and energy) to write. I'm not willing to rush this out of the door to make a quick buck, I want to produce something that I am proud of and that people will feel that has a worthy place on their shelves next to the works of guys like Bob Cassidy, Richard Osterlind, Michael Murray, Pete Turner, Atlas Brookings and Looch.

Several people have expressed a desire to purchase the hard back edition and to those people I say thank you for your confidence in me, it truly is humbling. For you I have both good news and bad news. First the bad news, the hard back will take a while to produce after the soft back is released. I am extremely lucky to have some wonderful friends who have offered to contribute to the book. However each of those friends has a far greater reputation in this industry than I do and in each case it is hard earned and deserved. I am immensely privileged to call these people friends and again humbled by the fact that they are willing to honour me by allowing their work to be included in my book.

The last thing I want to do is take advantage of those friendships by selling my book off of the back of their hard earned reputations by using the quality of their work to prop up an average book, my work MUST be able to stand up and be valuable on it's own merits. The contributions from my friends should be the cherry on the top of an already well baked and tasty cake. Therefore I want all of the contributors to see the final soft back, and my own contributions to the hard back before they provide any contribution.This is so that they can make a final decision as to whether the book is worthy of their name being associated with it before contributing. As a result it will probably mean the hard back won't be released for a few months after the soft back.

Now the good news, I realise that for those wanting the hard back, waiting for so long while the soft back is already out is going to be a pain, particularly if the book receives the good reviews that, my confidence in the material leads me to hope for. So I have made the decision that those who want the hard back will be able to order it as soon as the soft back is released and they will receive a copy of the soft back straight away, the hard back will then be sent as soon as it is released. Let me be clear though, this is currently an intention not a promise. Right now I know it isn't a great business decision because it will increase the cost to me of providing the hardback and it will also reduce sales of the soft back because everyone that buys the hard back will end up with a spare softback to sell. Likewise the sudden volume of copies going onto the second hand market may give people the impression that the book isn't a keeper. So when I properly run the numbers it may turn out to a nice idea but not economically viable. I can't run the numbers until everything has been paid for, artwork printing etc and the hardback has been costed up.

Like most I am not a lover of pre-orders but one thing that would be useful would be for people to register their pre-interest in either the soft or hardback via pm. Even if that intention is "I will get it if the reviews from people I trust are good".

Mark

Had the very great pleasure of meeting Mark for the first time at Michael Murray's 'Minds' convention.

I have followed and read Mark's posts here in the Café and enjoyed the way he calls a spade a spade. My biggest surprise was learning he is actually from Essex of all places with a London wide boy accent.

A great guy and extremely approachable. He was kind enough to share some of his ideas and methods from his up and coming book.......... his coin switch is one of the slickest and natural I have witnessed.

Rasp.

Here is a little teaser video of melt. This isn't the best example as I was concentrating on holding the camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS5JY4_I2jw

Mark

In case you are wondering that coin bend is relatively easy and only requires a fairly basic coin sleight. There are no edits on that video and nothing is happening outside of the camera view.

Mark

That coin bend looks very nice.

Glad someone likes it, there have been 120 views but yours is the only comment.

Mark

Shandy pants (In my head that what your name is now) - this looks good and fooled me although I don't do bends. Also, if you haven't settled on a name for your book I say, "A book appropriate for downstairs..."

The coin bend looked even better in person when Mark showed me at Blackpool. It looked Osterlind-esque!

Had the pleasure to spend some time with Mark at Michael Murray's 2MINDS convention up in Newcastle this past weekend (and we came third in Mark Elsdon's mentalism related pub quiz).

Mark shared something from the book with me that he now uses my Cerberus Wallet for. It was awesome. Cerberus owners will find the full routine in the Facebook group soon.

Mark has now shared a few things from the book with me and everything is shaping up for this to be an excellent release. Some people might not recognise the name Mark Chandaue outside of the Café. I think they soon will, and the name is becoming synonymous with excellent thinking and routining.

Flawless!

Here is the Chandaue switch in action as just a switch. I've used two slightly contrasting coins because otherwise nobody would believe I had actually done a switch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnNL540LI9g

Mark

Wow that looks incredible!!