I was first enthralled by the subject of hypnotism when I watched the Basil Rathbone / Sherlock Holmes movie "The Woman in Green" and saw the power of hypnosis, albeit in an unrealistic literary form. There is a certain sensual appeal to the hypnotic femme fatale as she wraps her subject in a silken web of hypnotic enchantment and entrancement by her eyes, her voice, her body.

However, when I investigated the subject through the local library, I discovered the appeal of the hypnotized female subject, because most of the books available at that time featured images of female subjects being entranced as illustrations. There is something sensual about how soft and passive their faces become when they are entranced, the gentle smile that graces their lips, the soft sigh they give as they slip into trance.

With said sensual interest in female hypnotists and subjects, it is no wonder that I, the Great Desmond, have taken to writing stories involving that interest.

And I think that anyone who thinks that hypnosis doesn't exist is a fool. Perhaps I should hypnotize them and make then cluck like chickens, or worse, make them characters in my next story who get hypnotized to cluck like chickens.

Hypnosis is a well-recognized psychological phenomenon, even to the point of being recognized on brain scans. Said scans also differentiate hypnosis and sleep, putting the lie to James Braid's mistake in naming the phenomenon for the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. I can personally attest to the acts of subjects under hypnosis that they would have found impossible otherwise, or so they thought: they always could do this, but they lacked some mental ingredient supplied through hypnosis that they could otherwise learn and employ themselves without hypnosis.

I take my name from the antagonist of the hypnotic horror movie "The Hypnotic Eye". The "The Great Desmond" was a stage hypnotist who was involved with the despicable act of savaging the beauty of women. Actually, he was the accomplice, under some form of guilt or domination of his outwardly beautiful assistant.

What makes this movie exceptional is that a prominent stage hypnotist was employed to instruct the actor who played "The Great Desmond" how to perform as a stage hypnotist and to hypnotize the subjects on stage so that they would be hypnotized on cue during the filming. Therefore, when one of the actors or (mainly) actresses are seen on screen in a trance, they really were in a trance, making them all the lovelier.

To answer these questions simply, yes, I am all three.

I am a hypnotist. I am trained in therapeutic hypnosis although I do not practice it professionally for reasons unrelated to my writing career. Suffice to say it would be something I would be equally excellent at as writing should I desire to concentrate my energies to that end. In addition, I am experienced in the practice of stage hypnotism although only for the purposes of demonstrations.

I am a magician. I am a magician both in the old ways of invoking the powers and commanding the elements and in the new ways of manipulating symbols and imposing my will upon reality through the application of computer software. My preferences for both involves applications and prognostications revolving around the Tarot.

I am an enchanter. Each time a person reads one of my stories, they fall into a trance which makes the story come alive to them. They are, in a word, enchanted by it.

I became an "indie" independent author to escape the confines of traditional publishing which would look quite askance at such taboo subjects as the combination of eroticism and hypnotism. Both suffer under unrealistic stigmas and the combination of them both only serves to multiply them.

Of course, my favorite author is myself, for I write for myself and trust that others will find what I write of interest.

As for other authors whose work I respect and admire, those would be primarily of the science fiction / fantasy fields. I prefer such literary luminaries as A. Merritt, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny, all poets of verse and prose; James Schmitz, whose works include many stories involving beings with psychic powers including hypnotic domination; Andre Norton, the belle dame of science fiction and fantasy authors; John Brunner, an author of terrifying perspicacity; and two of the Masters of the craft, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

I must name Chris Claremont, the comics writer who re-energized a minor title into a comics Juggernaut when he updated the X-Men. His entire comics work is filled with mind control stories.

And lastly I confess an admiration for Katherine Kurtz, herself a classically trained Ericksonian hypnotist whose works, especially her fantasy novels, contain several elements of hypnosis, trance and outright mind control.

Within this genre, there are two authors whose work I highly recommend: those are Jukebox and WiseGuy. Both are exceptional writers, well worth investigating.

She is a tribute to an author whose stories, including his most famous series, were rife with hypnotic control of the Yellow Peril and Oriental femme fatale varieties.

However, because of copyright issues, the identify of this character is left as an exercise for the reader. Simply remember that she is the daughter of someone of importance and that the mistranslation of her name is "Sweet Perfume" and work backwards from there.

She does not know it yet, but Amethyst is a forerunner of what Humanity will eventually evolve into.

She is, however, not alone in that status, only the most advanced one of her kind. She will meet others in subsequent stories.