WK: What motivated you to write “Tangled Web,” and why was the time right to release the book?
EM: I did not sit down and write "Tangled Web" in a traditional way. It is a collection of tricks and essays I had written over a long period of time and covering various stages of my career as a magician.
I've been writing-up original tricks and essays since my teenage years, but until now they have mostly sat unread in my notebooks and computer files. When I was invited to perform at FISM in 2003 I wanted to bring something to sell to help offset the cost of traveling around Europe a little bit with my wife. So I took some of those unread tricks and essays and made three small manuscripts from them--one about close-up magic, one about stand-up and stage magic, and one about mentalism.
The material and essays already existed in a raw form and all I did was gather them together, clean them up a bit, and give them a graphic treatment for publication. I took it mostly as a design project to continue a serious education in software and the graphic communication of ideas.
Stephen Minch got a set from me and said he thought they'd make a nice book if bound together. Having long been an admirer of Hermetic Press and the quality books Stephen publishes, I jumped at the chance to do a book with him. That's how “Tangled Web” came about.
We did take the time to update the essays a little bit, changing some of the references and putting them into a context that makes more sense with the book as a whole. But we didn't change the attitude and opinions expressed at the time they were written, which means that some of the essays reflect my thinking from 10 or even 20 years ago.
It's interesting, I think, to be able to look at the evolution and maturation from a cocky "young turk" of a magician into a more serious and thoughtful performer. To do that though you'll have to read carefully because nothing in Tangled Web is chronologically ordered, and after some consideration we opted not to date the material. It stands as a "tangled web" of ideas and tricks and the reader is left to sort it all out if they choose.
