The name Chris Mayhew might sound familiar to you.

But you’re mistaken. You are most likely thinking about Steve Mayhew. Which is a good thing, because that guy rocks!

Lots of people have asked me about the history of the Holes concept from my new booklet, A Clockwork Apple (available exclusively through this here Vanishing Inc. Magic). The concept has an interesting history, so I thought I’d share it here.

The idea actually pretty much started off as a joke about six or more years ago. Back then, I was going home every night trying to come up with some sort of trick that would fool the pants off of Tyler Wilson. I didn’t care what the trick was, or how ridiculous the method behind it was. Just as long as it would fool the pants off of Tyler.

Every night I would come up with something new, and every day he would stand there completely unimpressed. Then one night, I was playing around with the Holy POD plot and decided I wanted to do it in reverse. Instead of making a card vanishing from between two cards with holes in them, I decided I wanted a solid card to appear between two cards with holes in them. I came up with a ridiculous method, showed Tyler the trick, and waited for him to  once again stand there with a blank look on his face. Instead, he stood there with a shocked look on his face, and yelled out “What the hell did you just do!” I laughed, said “I finally got you!” Then I moved on. Tyler, however did not move on. What I thought, was a joke to get a rise out of a friend, he found to be nothing less than spectacular. We jammed out some ideas, and six years later, I now have a numerous amount of great routines utilizing the Holes Concept, two of which are published in A Clockwork Apple. You will find this and much more in the pages of the booklet, and hopefully you too, can come up with some great effects using the Holes Concept.

This story illustrates something important: if you love creating magic, then do just that: create. It doesn’t matter how dumb or ridiculous the magic you create can be (trust me, I have come up with some really bad stuff) the more you do it, the better you will get. And one day, maybe that piece of magic that you might think is stupid, may just turn out to be something more. Something that you can call magic.