FAQ

What age is appropriate for this book? Is this book suitable for Children?

The roll model for my writings is the early James Bond movies which would give me an unoffical PG-13 rating. I think what I write is suitable for any mature (old child, young teen and up) reader with parental guidance.

Do you believe in magic elves, etc?

What do you mean by magic? I think sunsets are magical. I notice there have not been a lot of dragon attacks in New York City of late and I expect that trend to continue. I'm an open minded skeptic. If you are on TV telling us about how you talk to the dead every Friday at 8:00pm , I probably think you are a fake. I think anything resembling 'real' magic is a very, very rare thing and you are only going to hear about it from your closest friends after they've known you a while and have had a few drinks. On the other hand, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet Act 1 Scene V Truer words were never spoken.

Can you tell me how that trick is done?

Can I? Sure! I’ve taught magic before. Should I? That’s the real question. The legendary secrecy of (stage) magicians is to protect you, the audience member, not me the magician. Think about it. Magicians go to magic clubs. Who do we perform for there? Other magicians. Every magician you’ve ever seen has done many performances in front of audiences who know exactly how the tricks are done, so it’s not really a problem for me as a performer.

Speaking as someone who knows how the tricks are done, however, I can tell you that this knowledge does change the way you look at stage magicians. I’ve been a magic student since I was born, so it’s hard for me to just sit back and enjoy the illusions. I see a magician perform and I tend to think. Hmm nice variation on the double lift, and not, Wow! He pulled that card out of nowhere! Sad in a way, but I compensate by learning from watching others in my craft, and I get joy from creating illusions for others and making them happy.

I think what you should get out of watching any magician is a sense that there are more possibilities in the world than you’ve ever dreamed of. Don’t waste time thinking about how a magician did something. Think if there aren’t things in your life that you thought were impossible, that you really could do yourself.

Magic is a great hobby. If you want to learn how to do tricks, go find your local magic shop or magic club and start learning how to create your own illusions. Just don’t blame me if I ask you to go on this little quest before I start imparting ancient secrets to you. I create illusions and I teach others to create illusions. I’m not in the business of shattering illusions.

How long have you been working on this?

Hard to say exactly. The first sketches of Tiberius came to me in my college days, back around 1980. I wrote the first "Tales of Tiberius" short story in 1989. I know the date, because I remember the moment the first story really came together. It was when I was driving home from seeing the movie "Kickboxer". The movie had nothing to do with the story (Maci wasn't in that one). I wrote the first draft of "Path of the Magi" in a couple of weeks, but that's very deceptive because I could only do that because I had already been working with the character for years and the mental work had already been done. Even so there were some chapters added in later drafts.

You write about life in a pre-industrial world. Are you some sort of crazed anti-technology Luddite?

Dude, you're reading this on my web page. No. My first published work of fiction was pure science fiction. It's part of the genre, and swordfights are cool. I'm just following in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Now why did THEY write about mythical pre-industrial lands? The answer to that, I've learned, is pretty interesting. Back when they were writing we started getting a lot of very useful new inventions, like electricity and Penicillin. Some people got it into their heads that anything new was good. Indeed, a certain political party today still likes to call themselves "Progressives." Tolkien and Lewis wanted to call attention to the fact that new things are not always good things. In particular it should not be assumed that new social institutions are better just because they are new. e.g. the Heaven's Gate UFO cult was "new". Modern cruise ships are better than thousand year old passenger ships, but the fourteen hundred year old Rhodian Sea Law probably makes more sense than anything the UN has come up with today. There are technological examples as well. I can make a good case that the M-14 rifle is better than the M-16 rifle that replaced it. Has anyone really improved on ancient Greek statues? I love rockets, but I'm comfortable writing about a pre-industrial zone.

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