Afterhours By Lewis Le Val

In all my years attending the Blackpool Magic Convention, I’ve gained more real value and inspiration from late night conversations at The Ruskin bar than from anything in the dealer’s hall. The best secrets aren’t on the shelves, they’re shared after midnight, between great minds, over a drink. There was a time I stood on the edge of those conversations, listening closely, hoping to absorb something valuable. Now, I’m fortunate enough to find myself at the centre of them.

Afterhours is a collection of the routines and ideas I’ll be sharing at Blackpool in 2026, set down in writing for those who can’t make it, can’t find me, or prefer to join from a little further back… as I once did.

What’s Included:

The Intuitive Touch

Business cards. A pen. Nothing else.

A participant draws a picture on the back of a card and places it, face down, into the middle of your stack on the table. You introduce a simple intuitive game from your childhood, something playful and harmless, which at first appears to fail.

But you were never wrong to begin with.

What follows is a clean, direct drawing revelation built around a billet peek so cheeky and bold you’ll struggle not to grin and think, “How on earth did I get away with that?”

It’s simple. It’s practical. And you’ll want to perform it immediately.

Also included is a link to a brief video tutorial to ensure that no details are missed.

One Line Miracle

You ask a participant to think of a question about their life that they’ve never asked out loud.

They write nothing.

They say nothing.

They do nothing.

You take their hand and “intuitively” touch their question. After a moment, you lean in and whisper a single sentence into their ear.

Your words send a shiver through them.

The line lands far closer than it has any right to, and despite never telling you a thing, they’re left stunned by the hard truth you’ve just delivered.

Once you understand how and why this works, that one sentence becomes an incantation. Used correctly, it can elevate a mentalism performance into mythic theatre.

One Card Tarot

How to provide accurate, detailed and meaningful readings with a single tarot card, and zero memory work.

You place one card face down into your participant’s hand and barely utter a word.

Within minutes, they’re uncovering insights about their own life, and thanking you for your accuracy.

No cold reading systems and no memorised meanings required. One Card Tarot relies on structure, psychology and framing that allows people to reveal themselves.

Recommended For You

On your phone (or on a slip of paper), you show a list of movies that have been recommended to you.

Your participant glances over the list and mentally selects one.

Immediately, you begin describing the world of the film; its tone, its genre, its lead character, its imagery, before revealing the exact movie they chose.

No anagrams.

No strange procedures.

No nonsense.

It’s as direct as it reads, and built for real-world performance.

The Missing Piece

This alone will change how you reveal information forever.

You deliberately “miss”, but in doing so, create the opportunity to hit harder than you ever planned.

The Missing Piece is a thinking tool. A method that allows you opportunities to reveal more than you could ever have expected.

And in the absolute worst case scenario? It still looks like intuition unfolding in real time for all to see.

The Missing Piece is a mindset shift that will upgrade everything you already perform.