Trip to Toronto

Family Time:
This time of year is a crazy time in the Stone house. Thanks for your patience with the delay in the newsletter. Everyone else had everything done on time. I’m the only one who missed the deadline.

Anyway, in May and June, we have 3 birthdays plus holiday (Memorial Day) and family gatherings. Not to mention, the last week of May I was out of town. Now that I’m back, my daughter’s a teenager, my son is five and my other son hits double digits (10 years old) next week. So it’s back to work!

Trip to Toronto:
The last week of May was spent in Toronto filming my next DVD project. I spent two days hanging out with Jay Sankey and his family. The more I get to know him and his family, the more I realize just how blessed I am to have such a friend. He’s a great example of a true family man. His wife and kids are his life and his priority.

After two days of hanging with Jay, it was a 12 hour day filming! Yuck! I used Sankey Magic’s crew and studio to do all the filming. I just got the raw unedited footage this week. The next step will be editing, so we’re still on track for releasing in the late summer/early fall.

As time goes one, I’ll keep you informed, but let me just say that there are some killer ideas on here that are really going to change the way you think about your magic.

New Blood:
If you’ve been following the newsletter, you may remember that last month in the No Stone Left Unturned article I mentioned that I was shifting my life’s focus to be more on magic than it has been recently.

Because of that, I’ve been spending a lot more time brainstorming again along with a lot more time re-reading my magic journals. I’ve got some groovy new stuff on the horizon that is starting to move into the performance phase of my creative process. As I develop ideas, I practice them in the mirror, practice the patter, brainstorm with other magicians regarding presentational angles, etc.

Once that’s nailed it’s off to performance, and I’m at that point on some of these ideas. Once I’ve tested them with real people I begin to fine tune the presentation and performance along with the handling and routine. Ultimately we end up with either a polished routine or a piece of crap. The crap gets thrown out and the polished stuff goes into my repertoire.

Some of that repertoire ends up as a free trick in the newsletter, and some of will end up on a DVD project in the future.

Thank you all for the support and readership. More is coming soon.

Jeff Stone