CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
How would you shelf our Magic Words: A Dictionary? Someone didn't like where the Hennepin County Library placed it: "This book has been shelved with the Pagan/Wiccan sections within the Library. Seeing this, I thought it was a book of a different nature. Instead, it is a book listing all of the words one might use in slight of hand and parlor tricks. Not at all related to where it was shelved." Indeed, our book seems to need its own special shelf in between two sections; as Library Journal said, "Despite its undeniable appeal to New Age audiences, Conley's (One-Letter Words: A Dictionary) book of more than 700 words and phrases is just as relevant to the linguist and language enthusiast as it is to Occult followers."
An urging from someone named Pussy-Foot: "'You can't feed an army on a herring!' 'You can make it into fishcakes and try,' urged Pussy-Foot Shannon." From Ambition magazine, 1915.
Mentally predicting the Ace of Spades, on either side of the veil, from Facts in Mesmerism by Chauncy Hare Townshend, 1843. We explain exactly how the scanners at Google Books very literally fix actual ghosts in time and space in The Ghost in the Scanning Machine.