I’m writing this as I sit in one of my favorite tea houses in Ashville, NC. Sometimes you need to step away from everything to finish a long awaited project. Completely Out of Order is packed full of real world, practical, and fooling material. Part a book that focuses on strong material with a shuffled pack of cards, part memorized stack focused, and much of it takes advantage of a prearranged but not memorized order (often able to be obtained on the fly right under the audience’s noses). I believe this book will appeal to all card workers regardless if you’re a fan of stacked deck work or not. This latest installment in my “Out of Order” series is unique in that I wrote the majority of this book over five years ago. Much of the material covered has been with me since I was a baby-card-bat in my teenage years exploring with cards. There’s a chapter that draws from the unpublished notebooks of Robert Stencel. There’s also an incredible chapter with some incredibly strong contributions from select friends (some of which are sadly no longer with us). The most incredible detail about this book is that it has become a memory exorcise for me. Just over two years ago I was in a car crash. I was plowed into by another driver while I was stopped at a red light. This affected my memory and I found myself with odd gaps that I struggled (and in truth some of which I still struggle) to remember. I lost the Redford stack entirely and had to relearn it.
I developed a different system than I first wrote about in Temporarily Out of Order and quickly relearned the stack (this system may be found in the Redford Stack Memory Trainer in our online store). Reading my own words as if they’re written by a stranger is such a bizarre experience. Reworking the material with cards in hand I found some of it came back like it was never gone, some of it benefited from being reworked, and some of it stays new. I’m very thankful for the handful of folks who helped re-write, edit, and worked on learning this material over the last five + years. Some of the material in a already huge book was removed (because I simply couldn’t make sense of my own write-ups when it went to the editing stage) that will be saved for another time when it may be properly reconstructed and coherently written and taught.
Two weeks ago we shot two different performances of some of the material from the book that will launch along side it. Getting that material performance ready was a satisfying journey that made me fall in love with magic all over again.
I’m incredibly proud of this project and our pre-order page will be going up at the end of next week with a delivery to those who choose to support the project early next year. Like all of the books in this series it is a stand-alone project. In other words you don’t need to have my other two “Out of Order” stack books as they are each meant as an all inclusive teaching tool so that the reader may pick up any of the three volumes and consume them in any order – or simply choose one that most appeals.
Thank you to everyone who’s joined me on this crazy card journey.
Sadly, I won’t be vending at Magi-Fest this coming January, 2026 in Columbus, Ohio so the only way to grab a copy will be through our website or from me personally.
If you find yourself in Chicago near the end of February (19-22), I’ll be performing some of this material at the Chicago Magic Lounge during my short run there. Come say hi and join us for the lecture and soft book release!