Weyburn magician Richy Roy will hold a magical celebration to help launch the release of his children’s book, “The Amazing Magician Richy Roy”, on Saturday, Sept. 23.
The book release party will be held in the Sun Room at the Weyburn Leisure Centre from 3 to 5 p.m., and there will be games, food and balloons, and a contest draw. Roy will have copies of his book available, and he will do a book-signing for those who are interested.
Roy wrote the story, featuring the character of himself as a magician, with illustrations by long-time friend and former local resident Nathan Binns.
The book, which is written at about a Grade 2-3 level, tells the story of who the magician is, how he puts on a magic show for a classroom of children, and after running into difficulties, enlists the help of the children to pull it off.
Roy noted that he and Binns worked very closely to develop the book and the illustrations for it, using the finished manuscript of the story as a starting point. The art process took about 10 months, progressing from sketches to drawings and then to the final works of art for the book.
“It was one of those things where we didn’t have much guidance, so we wanted to make sure we did it right,” said Roy, noting they looked at many examples of successful children’s books to see how they were laid out and how and why some concepts worked better than others.
As the two worked on the book, they passed ideas by their children. Nathan has an eight-year-old daughter, while Roy has three children aged three, six and eight, and they were able to get their reaction about what did or didn’t work well.
“His drawings aren’t cartoonish, but more realistic. He took photos of me in various poses,” said Roy. “I was really impressed with his colouring schemes. It just jumps off the page. He nailed it.”
This book is 26 pages in length, and includes a page at the end showing children how to do a magic trick on their own.
If this book is successful, Roy is hoping to grow his idea into a series of eight books, developing his character and having him go through a variety of circumstances, with a different magic trick in each one.
The whole concept for doing a book arose as he looked for children’s storybooks about magicians, and he really couldn’t find any that were suitable for young children.
“Most people who write books about magic aren’t magicians themselves,” said Roy, adding of his book, “It shows kids how fun it can be, it’s fun for all ages.”
If he is able to develop the series, Roy thinks that children will want to keep reading to find out how the character develops and gets into different situations.
One of Roy’s aims is to try and promote a love of reading amongst young children, and hopes through his magic shows he will encourage children to pick up a book and read it, including one of his books.
He laughed as he recounted what one boy told him after a magic show where he talked about the coming book release. “A kid came up and asked if there was a movie that he could watch instead of reading a book,” he said.
In developing his first manuscript, he had to go through a few versions of the story, starting with about 1,200 words before he whittled it down to around 500 words. As a part of this process, he talked with teachers and with other children’s writers to find out what might work or not work in a children’s story.
Roy also set up his own publishing company, Prestige Publishing, and talked with people at Sask. Books, through which he found out there are around 40 publishers in Saskatchewan.
“They were very helpful,” said Roy, noting he’s been able to network and find out a lot of information about what to do, including how to get his book registered with the Library Archives of Canada by sending them two copies of his book.
The publishing venture was helped with a crowd-funding initiative through Kickstart.com, through which he was able to raise about $3,000 towards helping get his book concept off the ground. In his book, Roy dedicates a page to thanking those people who contributed to that fund to help him get going.
Roy has been busy as a magician, currently doing around 100 shows a year, including putting on 62 shows just this past summer. A highlight of this summer was taking part in “Regina-cadabra”, a five-day magic festival, where he was able to headline a family show.
Organizers of the Regina event are hoping to make it an annual one, with plans to host the national magic festival in a couple years time.
“I’ve been working as a professional magician for about 10 years now, but I’ve never been to a magic convention,” said Roy.
His book will be available for $20 a copy at the book release party on Sept. 16, and afterward will be for sale at the Void, through his website, saskmagic.com or through his Facebook page.
