By way of introduction…

Greetings! If this is your first time visiting I Saw That!, let me tell you who and what it’s all about.

Early beginnings

I used to be a young, hotshot cardman. You know the type: a deck of cards permanently glued to our hands, and more likely to show each other the latest tricks and moves than to talk to girls. Except for girls who actually like to pick cards, of course. At least, until they tire of it. Which they invariably do. But I digress.

I left magic for a while. When I came back, my interests had changed: I hung up Marlo and started reading Burger instead. Eugene’s books got me interested in presentation; now I just had to find my own direction. I found it when, after reading everything I could find on the topic, my friend Tom Baxter lent me his copy of Punx’s Magical Adventures and Fairy Tales. Punx, a very famous German magician, performed magic with story presentations. This was perfect for me.

Birth of I Saw That!

I wrote stories for my tricks. After some testing and refining, I wanted to share what I had learned, so I started I Saw That! and wrote and published my book, Card Stories. It got terrific reviews (and even — get this — an endorsement from Eugene himself!) and made a bit of a splash in the magic world, encouraging magicians to rethink the way they present card magic.

I started I Saw That! not just to publish my own work, but to popularize and promote all those important things that go into a magic performance beyond the tricks themselves. If you look through my catalog, you will find that this is true of all the books I publish. Wit and Wizardry, as the name implies, is as much about clever presentations as it is about tricks. Once upon a time… (now out of print and removed from catalog) is a new edition of Punx’s Magical Adventures and Fairy Tales, the book that inspired my whole enterprise. Performing Magic for Children is a complete manual on the philosophy, theory and practice of kid shows, whose authors are both magicians and specialists in early childhood education. On the other side of the mirror applies story presentations to easy- and self-working card tricks. And so on.

Equally important is the I Saw That! website, which has always been an integral part of my vision. The Magic section contains articles and other writings on the subjects dear to my heart, and even has some tricks, either my own or contributions from readers. The main purpose of the Magic section is to introduce some of these ideas to magicians who may not have encountered them before.

Enjoy your visit!