  Mystery
This week: "Magic" Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: S.E. Hinton based her classic novel The Outsiders on actual people she knew and the gang rivalry they experienced at her high school. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that she wrote it while in high school, and had it published her freshman year of college. Her publisher suggested she use her initials in order to avoid unfair criticism from reviewers who didn't think a young girl could accurately write about the experiences of adolescent boys. Since it was first published in 1967, the book has sold over 14 million copies and - now that it's a classic and recommended reading at many schools - still sells upwards of 500,000 copies per year.
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"MAGIC"
And no, I'm not talking about the spell casting or swords and sorcery type magic. Today I want to talk a little about modern "magic" where illusions and tricks are employed to give the appearance of something miraculous happening.
There are a few different categories of tricks/illusions/magic:
Production: The ability to make something appear as if from nothing. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat or your cheesy uncle pulls a coin from "behind your ear," they're utilizing a "production" technique.
Vanishing: The opposite of production is making something disappear into thin air.
Transformation: When the magician turns one thing into another; water into wine, that Ace of Spades you thought you picked turns into the King of Hearts... that kind of stuff.
Restoration: When something is broken and fixed again. A woman being sawed in half and put back together is a classic example of restoration.
Teleportation: Moving an object instantaneously from one location to another. For anyone who's seen Christopher Nolan's excellent movie THE PRESTIGE, this is the talent that both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale try so desperately to master.
Escape: Houdini's specialty; the ability to escape from chains, handcuffs, coffins, tanks of water, and all manner of other confinements from which most people should be unable to extricate themselves.
Levitation: Raising something up off a surface and giving it the appearance of floating in midair.
Penetration: When a solid object passes through another. The most familiar example of these types of tricks is the "stick a bunch of swords in my assistant" classic magic trick.
Prediction: The magician seemingly guesses the correct answer to something that seems impossible to tell. A random person's birthday, or the amount of money in a stranger's wallet, or the card you've drawn from a deck and have been told not to show to the magician.
Learning the skills necessary to become a magician requires years, if not a lifetime of study. Some magicians choose to specialize and excel in one area, while others attempt to master a variety of these skills and employ them all to create dazzling effects for their audiences. And each of these types of magic requires drastically different sets of skills. To practice escape magic, you need to have an understanding of how the human body works and ways to manipulate your movements to create enough room to create an escape. For example, those escape tricks where someone is put in a straight jacket, chained up, and submerged in a tank of water, they have to know how to pick a lock, move their torso to create the wiggle room necessary to loosen the straight jacket, and manage to accomplish both of those tasks in the span of a single breath. By contrast, a magician who specializes in production or vanishing tricks must master sleight of hand and misdirection in order to keep his audience from discovering just where that coin was stashed before he made it appear behind your ear, or where that bunny actually went when he put it in the top hat and it disappeared.
Not too long ago, I was at a graduation party where a magician was hired to perform. He did a little bit of everything... he made coins disappear from a table by just passing his hand over them; he correctly guessed the serial number on a random twenty-dollar bill that a party guest had in his wallet; and he managed to make a static drawing on a whiteboard actually start to move. After the show, people gathered around and asked him how long it took him to learn all of his tricks, and he told us that each skill took him several years to master to the point where he could perform them without the audience catching on as to how he did it. Like all good magicians, he never actually told us how he did any of his tricks, but he did show us the kind of manual dexterity it required to be able to pull off these kinds of illusions.
Since nearly all magic techniques require an advanced level of dexterity, he showed us the first two things he ever learned how to do. One was rolling a coin across his knuckles, and the other was trick shuffling a deck. For anyone who wants to try this at home, take your hand and hold it palm down so that the backs of your fingers (knuckle-side) are facing up. Now balance a large coin like a quarter or silver dollar on the back of your index finger and, by moving your fingers up and down try to flip the coin over each knuckle, end over end, until it's balanced at the far end of your hand across your pinkie. Then try to move it back the other way. It's not as easy as it seems!
The magician at the party said it took him a little over two years of practicing for about an hour each day, every day, to get to the point where he could effortlessly roll the coin forward and backward across his knuckles. In order to manipulate the deck of cards with fancy shuffles, it took him nearly four years. 
And magicians are always trying to come up with the next trick, the next illusion that will make audiences' eyes pop as they applaud and murmur "How did he do that?" Magic is a wonderful field for those of us who enjoy a good mystery because there's always that sense of wonder about how they managed to do something that your eyes see, but your mind may not even believe is possible. But even if you know there's a trick to it... what's the trick? How did they do it?
Magic is sometimes ridiculed for being cheesy or fake or something for children. But take just a moment and really think about what it entails to pull off a magic trick; just how hard it is - not necessarily to impress a room full of kids who think it's real - but to impress a room full of adults who are skeptical and looking for the catch. And think about how what they're doing is not so different from what we do as mystery writers... they communicate through physical performance the same thing that we communicate through our words; a series of misdirections and calculated deceptions in order to give our audience that "wow" factor by the end of our performance. 
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
Grey fog swirled all around making visibility almost not existence. Bria knew she was lost, yet couldn't make out anything that might give her a hint as to where she was. A strange noise came from the engine, followed by a puff of smoke. The car shook violently as if a giant had snatched it off the road. Another weird sound and the engine died. She guided the vehicle to the side of the street.
Damn! There's no bars on my cell phone. Now what?
My mother and I live in a small basement apartment. It is all that we can afford. My mother is very poor. I don't mind. At least we are together. Our apartment is small, but very clean. The worst thing about where we live is the location. The apartment is at the end of the alley. It used to be an old bookstore until the owner decided to rent the space and increase his profits.
During the day, I don't mind walking the alley. The tall, brick walls on either side provide a comfortable fortress against the city noise and traffic. After rainstorms there are puddles that I can dance in. Sometimes, I pretend that the alley is a lane of tall oaks leading to our mansion.
But, at night, I don't like to walk the alley. At night, there is more darkness than is kept anywhere else in the world. No streetlights can penetrate the narrow tube between the buildings. Windows in the apartments above cast their lights straightforward and across, allowing little of the light to fall downward, where it is sorely needed.
Waiting like a snare for unsuspecting souls
Underneath the forest floor hidden by its leaves
With the show of empty faith
Lurking around like a wondering wraith
It is the 11th of November 2012; I've decided to write what happened inside this notebook I found. I fear if they return this will be my best chance to tell my story.
After a hard day of work and like every day here I am, in a bar I barely know after five in the afternoon. Just relaxing, today looking at the people around me. I am trying to forget my bad luck and yes, I am trying to get drunk and live my life forgetting all my worries and keep on. Having one glass of scotch, for now, just a sweet alcoholic drive straight to forget Ville. You know how it is, right? A job that you do not like, an ex-wife that does not let you see the kids because the child support is late. Same old stuff of an ordinary man who had made some bad decisions. I am here, just wanting to know where all went wrong and wondering if tomorrow is going to be any different.
"This better not be one of your tricks, Garry! I still have Mom on speed dial!", said my little brother Scott while he was waving his cell phone around and before I turned around and said, "If I were you, Scott. I wouldn't bother using that speed dial."
You see, I became suspicious about what our mother was doing on this particular Tuesday night.
So, I had to drag Scott out of the house and follow Mom in order to find out.
The light crept through the window; he saw it coming but didn't want to acknowledge it. Morning couldn't be here already. He had just made it to bed, only several minutes ago. Damn he thought time to get up they would be here soon. Clef didn't like these types of mornings not because of the lack of sleep but more because he disliked jumping into character, constructing a facade of smoke and mirrors that his neighbors had grown to love and in fact admire. In the late hours of the moonlit nights Clef had found a new hobby; one that he was determined to keep to himself. The door- bell rang as the mud and dried blood had just finished swirling down the drain. Clef raced into the room One Second he shouted, rushing to put on his pants and button up his shirt. One last quick glance in the mirror to ensure he hadn't left any incriminating evidence on him or in his hair and down the stairs he flew.
The vacuous sound of traffic on the interstate filtered into the lobby of our hotel. It seemed like a gushing tide of loss. I imagined the people in the cars as losers at the gaming tables of Las Vegas, twenty miles up the highway from our abode. They were running home after losing their bets in the city of sin. Lurid neon lights lit up our hotel's sign.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about how publishing money works:
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Thank you! 
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Yeah, when you're talking about artists, whether it's musicians with their labels, authors with their publishers, or screenwriters with the movie studios, it seems like the companies always get to keep the lion's share of the profits. I suppose that's fair for taking the lion's share of the risk and expense of putting the work out there... but it'd be nice if things evened out after they broke even. Just sell those 20 million copies of your book and then write your own ticket!
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Mystery: November 20, 2012 Issue [#5379]
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