Close Up Magic: My Dream Come True & Contest!

Please welcome Michelle Garren Flye to talk about her dream magic book!

First of all, thank you to Zoe Dawson for having me on her blog! It’s so great to be here, meeting new people and talking about my new book.

I’ve dreamed about writing a good story about magic for years and this summer, that dream comes true. Close Up Magic will be available for reader consumption on June 1.
 

I don’t know why it took me so long to write a good story about magic. I’ve been trying most of my life. I wrote about things like unicorns and fairies when I was a child. I expanded to ghosts and vampires later on. None of that stuff was what I really wanted it to be…although I think I did come close with a werewolf short story once.

What’s different this time? What makes Close Up Magic what I consider good when everything else fell short?

I think it’s because I let go of the fantastic and wrote about the magic I know. Love. I just made the hero, Andre, a magician.

Last October, I got the opportunity to see David Copperfield’s show in Las Vegas. Another of my dreams come true since I’ve admired him since I was a kid. I probably watched every one of his television specials, and I think I fell in love with him when I was about eight years old. Of course, the age difference was a problem, so it never really worked out.

The funny thing was, I didn’t know I was going to see David Copperfield when I went to Vegas, and I already had Close Up Magic pretty much outlined in preparation for National Novel Writing Month in November. So I can’t really say he was the inspiration for the novel, but I can say his show inspired me. It pretty much lit a much-needed fire under me so I was champing at the bit to WRITE when November 1 rolled around.

And my story was born.

Along the way, I learned a lot of really cool stuff about magic. Like the origin of the old pulling the rabbit out of the hat trick was in the 1700s when a woman in England claimed to have given birth to a litter of white rabbits. Of course, she achieved a lot of notoriety for this (much as our own reality stars become famous), but was eventually charged with fraud and admitted to it. A local magician, however, capitalized on her story, advertising that he would perform the “Birth of a Rabbit”. And he did just that, borrowing a top hat from an audience member and producing a live rabbit from it.

I’ve been posting a lot of the tidbits I’ve learned on a Facebook page for Close Up Magic ( https://www.facebook.com/CloseUpMagicFlye), and the great thing about it is, if you like that page, you’re automatically entered to win a Kindle Paperwhite I’ll be giving away on my blog (http://michellegflye.com).  Also, I’ll enter anyone who comments on this page in the contest, but please leave me a way to contact you! If you want even more ways to enter to win, check out the rules here: http://michellegflye.com/2013/04/13/having-fun-with-magic-wanna-join-me-contest/ .

So tell me, do you believe in magic or is it all tricks? And even if it is a trick, do you care? Isn’t it worth it if the magician can make you believe in something beyond reality for a while?