Post by susb8383 on Mar 26, 2019 22:03:33 GMT -5
I don't know if there is a size limit for a post, but I've transcribed the podcast interview. I left out when they got off on tangents like parenting and Sponge Bob, but tried to include everything else.
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[intro stuff]
Steve: Now let's get started. Mr Stockwell, let's just start the beginning. Why don't you give us a little background of yourself where you come from, where you grew up as a kid, things like that.
Pel: Just to give a little sort of background on Fandango and myself and my brother who couldn't join us tonight (his name is Jeff): We would go up to Maine in the summers and this hunt is based in Maine. It's based in Mount Desert Island. It's the largest island in Maine. I believe it's the fifth largest island in the US off the coast. You can actually drive to this island for those who haven't been there. We spent a good deal of time in Maine, not on this particular Island but on a similar place and our grandmother would go up and spent her summers in Maine and one of the things she would do each summer would be to create these treasure hunts, largely in part to get us out of her hair so that we wouldn't bother her, and we would spend days trying to figure out where she had hidden her treasures. Now she knew we would be coming she would put these things together and we would go out and dig and look.
Steve: That's awesome. How old were you?
Pel: We were like 10, 12, and then on up. We have other cousins and whatnot and these were geared towards sort of all ages. The idea was 1) to get us out of her hair but also for us to go out and explore the area so that we would know the different references that were out there and that's sort of started our fascination with treasure hunting. That alongside when you're sort of spending time on Islands whether they’re on Maine or anywhere, there's a little bit of a draw to that sort of Treasure Island mysticism so that factored in as well.
Steve: And you say Island whether it be a rocky island or a beach/sand island in the Caribbean, the first thing that comes into my mind is Captain Hook and buried treasure. I think it's the whole island thing I guess because there's waves crashing all the way around and easy in/easy out type of situation for a pirate. And plus growing up with it, gosh you must have learned all kinds of fun techniques and whatnot from what your grandma did.
Pel: Well, exactly, and each summer her hunts were very different. Sometimes they were very complicated and only one person could find the treasure, other times everyone had a chance to find whatever she had buried and most stuff of what she buried was a bag of candy or some little item. It was the search and being the one to have discovered the treasure.
Steve: The thrill of the hunt.
Pel: Yeah, the thrill of the hunt.
[tangent: learning via treasure hunting]
Pel: That's one of the things we sort of learned as kids was sort of we'd all be competing to find it but we all realize that you know we need each others help sometimes to figure out what does this clue mean. We were all different ages so people would have different ideas and and that was part of the fun of it. Again, it was the thrill of the hunt and sort of sharing. And part of it was you could corroborate, figure out a clue, and then you could see who is fastest to get to the next one.
Steve: That's great and you know what I bet it wasn't always the oldest cousin who came up with the right solution either.
Pel: Exactly.
Steve: [tangent: corroborating as a team]
Pel: Well one of the things that we've come to realize, and we've spent quite a bit of time, and this is not something that happened overnight--actually a number of years to put this together, is that we discovered there were all these other hunts out there and these other types of treasure hunts and you've probably come across these and seen them as well, and I've been clearly influenced by Masquerade which I came across years ago.
Judy: Oh, of course.
Steve: Really? I would have never guessed.
Judy: You would have never have guessed it, right Steve.
Pel: And then we put together this hunt and then in the process of trying to pull this all together to make it happen, we’ve come across other hunts and a number of them were, as you mentioned, they missed the point because we're sort of like, wait how can everyone come together when these are not... I'm missing the correct words here but they're very difficult to come together on because they're a little too competitive sometimes.
Judy: Right.
Steve: [tangent: invisible lurkers giving nothing back]
Pel: Well you know I'm looking at it from a different angle because you're one team and there are other teams and they’re other individuals and so everyone's out there; there's competition out there and it's sort of like the show, that reality show Survivor where you watch it and everyone pretends to be each other’s friends but ultimately someone wants to be the survivor. And I'm not familiar with the different teams out there as you all are but I'm sure that's something you all have to be careful of because you're working as a team but you don't know if someone wants to shoot off on the side or something but I like the idea that there are teams out there and everyone's working together and everyone’s sharing ideas. For us to see that type of interaction, to see that type of enjoyment, is exciting for us.
Steve: That's great. and you know it's a different angle too. There are individual teams out there where it's everyone corroborating but you know whoever finds it, it’s winner-take-all type of thing. With us we're going to pool it all, everything is pooled.
Judy: Yeah because what we do is likeSteve: was saying we whack it out and we put money aside so that we can all meet. There's also an ultimate goal on this as well as winning the prize.
Steve: Right, our goal was actually to have a reunion. I would love to be able to do enough successful hunts where we can have our team reunion on Mount desert island taking it apart rock by rock.
Judy: That would be so cool.
Steve: I asked one time, do you think the fine folks of Mount desert island would be ready for us? Can I ask a couple of questions about the island itself?
Pel: Absolutely.
Steve: Is there an airport there?
Pel: There's not an airport on the island itself but there's an airport. You can actually drive to the island. It's separated from the mainland by a very small body of water and
Steve: That's on the map even in the book. in the book the map even shows where it's connected so it's close, there's a small bridge going across.
Pel: Yes you can actually...there's a small airport right across from that connection I mean it’s a very small airport. The other place to fly into his Bangor Maine which is about I want to say 30 minutes 40 minutes away from the island.
[tangent: planes]
Steve: Now the island itself you said it's very large and there is... I get it now there's one thing that I'm a little questionable about...you say that it's a physical treasure hunt which is real cool I've never been on one, again this is only my second full-blown treasure hunt that I'm doing and I'm really loving. It's a physical hunt except you don't need to be present to claim it am I missing something there?
Pel: No you've got it incorrectly. You don't need to be present to solve the riddle. You do need to be present to find the key.
Steve: Oh, okay so somebody can solve...wait a minute now...
Pel: So you can solve the riddle--you can figure out where the key is. You don't have to go there...in other words you don't have to be there to figure out where this is hidden.
Steve: Okay but in order to claim it, you gotta go get it.
Pel: In order to claim if you have to go get it.
Steve: So it'd be pretty senseless to say, hmm, I know where it is. I'm not going to get it.
Pel: Right and when you when you solve the riddle you should know that you've solved the riddle.
Steve: Okay. Very good. That's awesome. The same thing with Dar, when you solve it, you’ll know when you solve it. It'll be very clear and concise.
Pel: Yes.
Steve: Now there's another question on that. With the text and the pictures and everything like that, is the whole hunt contained within the book? And please, if I cross the line just say, listen I can't answer that.
Pel: Is the whole hunt contained within the book?
Steve: I mean it's not like a book and then you have to go to different websites--it's a web-based type of thing.
Pel: the whole hunt the is contained within the book. You don't have to do any internet anything; it's all within the book, yes.
Steve: Which is great too, that's a big help.
Pel: Yep. Yep everything's within the book.
Steve: Now your brother and yourself did this, and your brother obviously was doing some... I'm not a spy or anything like that, please, I'm a regular guy, but I looked it up and your brother’s a screenwriter in LA?
Pel: He's a screenwriter in LA and his most recent sort of film on the big screen was the adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia.
Steve: Right, right. That's pretty awesome, that's pretty great. And yourself is a great artist. I saw you in the Shaw Gallery.
Pel: Yeah the Shaw Gallery is a gallery up in Maine. Let me interrupt one second, I have a young daughter who I have to direct to a different room...
Pel: Sorry about that I'm back.
[tangent: Shaw Gallery]
Steve: Now where are you from originally?
Pel: I’m from the Boston area, just outside of Boston.
[tangent: accents]
Steve: Back to this whole island and everything. So you guys were on an island close by or a similar Island. What made you choose this particular Island? You say you took years to put this together. Was that part of your search criteria to find an island with the right lay of the land or whatever?
Pel: Well yes. And one of the things is that Maine has thousands of islands, all different sizes and one of the things that's important too is getting to these islands. Some of the other big islands in Maine, you cannot drive to, you have to take a ferry to so they're actually a little more difficult to get to.
Steve: So accessibility.
Pel: Accessibility and also they don't have quite the variation in landscape. Mount Desert has this fantastic landscape. It has we’ll call them mountains. They are large hills but you can call them mountains with some great hiking. There's lakes, there's ponds, and then there's this fantastic dramatic Maine landscape: beaches, rocks. There's a natural fjord the cuts sort of right up the middle of the island. So it's unique in itself, it's a very...it sort of encompasses...
Steve: A very diverse landscape.
Pel: Very diverse landscape and it encompasses so much of the rest of the Maine landscape. And it also has this great National Park...
Steve: Acadia
Pel: Acadia and it's a great place to go. One of the ideas was the hunt should be fun in itself but it should be a fun place to go regardless so you can go to Acadia and experience this great landscape. Now you have to be careful--there's a lot of fog on the Maine coast and you could go up there and never see daylight because the fog could roll in and cover the island for weeks but it's just a great place to go to so it was a fun place and this was a fun thing to do in a fun place.
Steve: [tangent: St. Croix.] So this island shows a lot and represents a lot of different landscapes and landscape features that the whole great state of Maine would have.
Pel: Yeah it's really, it's a great place, it's one of the great, I think, national parks.
Steve: The hotels and everything there to accommodate folks?
Pel: Well that's the other thing, there's all the infrastructure. There's plenty of places to stay with great hotels, there’s great campgrounds if people want a camp,so it has all that alongside this great park. It's an interesting spot. Historically a lot of wealthy people went up there and this is years and years ago and made it their sort of summer destination. And as more and more people gravitated toward the sort of unique spot, some of the wealthier people that were vacationing there decided that they wanted to protect themselves from it getting over developed and essentially they purchased a good chunk of the island which has now become this national park.
Steve: Which actually insures what they did and why they did it stays there.
Pel: Exactly. so they...
Steve: So now they don't have to pay taxes on it. Let the government take care of it.
Pel: Exactly to protect themselves, they made it available to everyone.
Steve: Which is actually pretty awesome in itself that they made it available to everybody to see the beauty that it holds.
Pel: Exactly. And some of these wealthy people did some neat things. They built...there's a whole series of these old carriage roads that go back to a time when people were up there and they had horses and carriages and they wanted to sort of be able to move back and forth and go to these neat scenic areas.And that's all Incorporated into the park now so you can go up and mountain bike, you can hike, you can actually... the park itself has a place where you can get horses and ride these trails. So it's very...
Steve: Is it guided or if you're an experienced rider you can just rent a horse for a few hours
Pel: You know I know they can guide you. I don't know offhand whether you can just rent a horse and take off on your own but that may be possible. I'm not sure on that. But I think if you are you probably could. It's that type of place.
Steve: Fantastic. Now how about the fire. You know some folklore of the island. Was that part of your, as you were looking for a site, you know to find some fun folklore, some place that had some, like, you know, and I don't want to get crazy in the book but the fire seemed pretty important.
Judy yeah it does.
Steve: Is there remains from the fire that are still there. I mean we all know..Rick you had showed us that there was a fire on the island back in 1945 or something like that. Now is there something significant that burned down? Is there remains that they keep there?. Was there loss of life, things like that with it?
Pel: Well one of the things we wanted to do in creating the hunt was to incorporate as much history as we could. And part of that was to not spell out the history per se but work that into the story itself. And there was a...after all these sort of wealthy people went up and created their summer homes and they built these fantastic mansions along the coast and they were largely centered around the main town there which is now called Bar Harbor. That caught fire and many of these great homes burned down. I don't know exactly how many survived but just a handful. And after that a lot of the summer residents dispersed around the island rather than be centered in this one place. So that was a big change for the island in that rather than everyone being focused in one place, everyone spread out. And part of that led to the creation of the park because as people spread out they begin to realize that if they didn't protect themselves, the whole island would get overrun. But that was a big event for the island itself. It nearly burnt down the entire Island. So that was a bit of the history that we incorporated into the story.
Steve: That's great. As I said, part of these treasure hunts are learning things. We're going to know all about this island before we're done.
Pel: Well the neat thing, I mean hopefully one of the neat things, and we actually didn't do this with the internet in mind but for those who want to learn more, they can go to the internet and they can learn more about the history itself and they will see as theylearn the history of the island, they will pick up visually things in the illustrations about the island such as the fire.
Steve: I’ve seen that place; I know where that is. And then you can pinpoint it on the map.
Pel: Exactly.
Steve: which is great. So that’s why I said we're going to know all about that island.
Judy: Yeah I learned about it a long time ago. I have a question. Were you interested in astrology along the way before you did this book?
Pel: Part of going to Maine as a youth in the summer, one of the neat things is, you’re away from all these big cities. Another thing my grandmother would do is as it got dark and as she wanted to sort of distract us and get us out of her hair she'd send us outside and lie us out on the lawn and look up at the sky and there we’d learn about the stars and such. And you can on occasion see the Northern Lights in Maine. And so that was another part of our youth that we incorporated in and sort of learning about astrology.
Steve: That's fantastic. That's kids having fun learning stuff.
Judy: Hey even adults. I even go out and lay out up on my deck and look up at the stars.
Steve: Yeah I live in New York City and I get the bright light wash and I get six stars in the night.
Pel: So much of what we do as adults is, I mean we're always learning but all those little things we might have done as kids or even thought about come back into our minds as we get older.
[tangent: Alchemist’s Dar]
Steve: Come on, when you were twelve, tell me you didn't have a wooden sword and a paper hat and you were some Black Beard or Red Beard or Captain Hook. I know we did that.
Pel: No and that's in part we're trying to recreate that for ourselves.
Steve: That's fantastic.
Judy: Well sometimes adults forget how it is to be a child.
[tangent: kids]
Pel: Ultimately the kid in us never leaves. The more we can rediscover that, the better.
[tangent: Sponge Bob]
Rick: I'd like to ask him how he come up with the name Fandango?
Pel: I liked the sound of the name Fandango. but part of it was to try to capture the image of a little bit of this is a dance. Go out and have fun, dance, enjoy it, but there are certain moves you're going to need to make. So the name just sort of, the name worked and it was sort of in line with that. It's a dance but it's not as random as some dances.
Rick: Well how'd you come up with the main character using a fox? How did that come about?
Pel: Well the fox is a very... one thing we thought is a very playful creature but a very clever creature, but at the same time, you can't always trust a fox. So we just like the... but a fox also is a little cuddly, it's not necessarily dangerous, it's an acceptable creature in that sense. It's not threatening but the cleverness of the fox was a key factor in choosing the fox.
Steve: Now I can agree with that. We kind of forgot to really give the whole audience if people don't know what the book is really about. Why don't you give us a quick summation basically. If somebody doesn't know what the book is about, do you want to tell them, hey man what's that book about?
Pel: Well, the book is essentially a fantasy. The basic theme is Neptune falls in love with the Lady of the Wind and the idea being that if you're on the ocean, the wind and the ocean are the two forces you always want to, are always working together or against each other. So Neptune and the Wind fall in love but Neptune can never leave the sea so he wants to deliver a token of love to the Lady of the Wind. But how does he do this? So he starts off by finding a creature that can be both on sea and on land and that would be the otter. To go deliver this token of love. And then the fox comes along and cleverly takes over this task, thinking that he'll be able to profit by doing this. So it's basically a love story that along the way employs a clever creature who might not have the best intentions. And the fox goes off to deliver this token of love but along the way loses it before he's able to actually deliver it and the quest of the hunt is to find where this treasure has been lost. Where did he lose his treasure?
Steve: And it follows his adventure. What he runs into. There's lots of colorful characters. The pictures are fantastic I will say so. If you don't mind, with artistic technique: when you guys do these type of drawings okay and use certain techniques and I'm not going to get specific but hidden letters or whatever, are you able to see another artist that does a very similar thing? Is it easier for you to decipher things?
Pel: Am I able to see other artists who do the same thing or...
Steve: Similar things, you know. It might not be identical but a similar thing. stop me if I'm out of line here but like say, in some of the clouds if you turn them a certain way they kind of make bubbly letters.
Judy: Yeah I saw that.
Steve: Now as somebody who wrote this stuff and I'm having a hard time reading letters, they could be done that way intentionally as a misleader or whatever, to misdirect you that I'm sure is part of the evil puzzle-making process. You know, there's got to be lots of dead ends, if you will, until you finally find the right one and it'll be real clear for you. But as an artist, as somebody who knows and utilizes these techniques, is it easier for you to see somebody else's work?
Pel: If you seen some of my other work, clearly from your references before in some of these other galleries. And it's very different than what's in Fandango.
Steve: Oh without question. You're using techniques in Fandango that you're certainly not using in your regular stills.
Pel: Absolutely. these are illustrations which in themselves are stories in themselves. Now even in my fine art you're doing an interpretation of a scene which hopefully is a story in itself but these are more specific in their makeup. In composing these illustrations there are techniques that I'm using that I don't use in my fine art. So in my fine art the stroke, how I take that brush and bring it across the canvas or the thickness, the layers, or the swirl I make are very important in terms the makeup of that painting. When you’re doing an illustration you're looking at what are the components of that illustration as opposed to the brush strokes and so on. So if you're looking at clouds, yes there are, and I can say this only because I think it's fairly clear, there are things in the clouds that are not results of random brush strokes; they’re intentional.
Steve: They’re deliberate. It’s deliberate to draw a picture, absolutely.
Pell: Yeah.
Steve: With the Dar book, you don't know me from a hole in the wall and maybe we should keep it that way, but I did some experiments if you will with the book.
Judy: He's our alchemist.
Steve: Well because it was The Alchemist Dar. So I basically created a lab and I did some with the same components that were available to this alchemist. Whether I spilled acid on it or boiled in oil or all kinds of these things.
Judy: He had me doing it too.
Steve: There was one page that you had to, without getting too much on a tangent, there's one page that you had to hold up to the sun to complete the picture. So what's an easy way for me to do this without having to walk around holding these pages to the sun? It was actually an accident where somebody else actually was cooking some french fries and got some oil on a page and all of a sudden it was, wow you can see right through this. So for me I'm doing the whole book. So I dip the book in oil. Boy my wife wasn't too happy about the smell.
Judy: What kind of oil did you use? I used virgin olive oil.
Steve: I don't know. I used some regular vegetable oil.
Pel: I will tell you this that pouring olive oil on this book will not help you in any way.
[tangent: puzzle books]
Steve: Now how about: what do you like to do? What are your hobbies?
Pel: Well I have a number of different hobbies. I'm actually, by day I'm a financial advisor which is very different from being an artist full-time so I'm always looking at different components of the world and how the world sort of fits together, which I guess in part goes together with putting together a treasure hunt. But right now I'm up in the hills of New Hampshire and just before you called I was sitting outside from where we are and an enormous bear walked by from about 40 feet away so I'm very much into the outdoors. I don't want that bear to come any closer but it's nice to... it was very cool to see that bear walk by. So the outdoors and doing outdoor activities is a lot of fun and I'm researching what I hope to be a couple of other hunts in the future so...
Steve: You definitely have the Son’s blessings and backing in that. for sure.
Judy: I was going to ask if there was going to be another book in the works.
Pel: Yes. We've got a couple of others in progress now and it takes enormous amount of time to put this all together and make them all work.
Steve: You’ve gotta figure, he works as a financial advisor, doing the hunt, and his fine art, and being dad. That's a busy slate.
Pel: Well they're all those factors too but even without those it takes a lot of time to sort of put these things together, test them beforehand, you know, put them all, make sure that everything sort of fits together. They're fun. they're a labor of love.
Steve: With you and your brother, is there a staff or anybody else?
Pel: No we don't have a staff.
Rick: Is there a movie in the works?
[tangent: Hollywood]
Pel: Oh, is there a movie with this? No there's nothing in line with us, no.
Rick: I have another question for you. If somebody does win the prize, is the hunt over? Do they get the prize right away or no?
Pel: Yes there's one prize and the first person to discover that prize, claims the prize, the hunt is then over.
Steve: So it'll be announced quickly at that point?
Pel: Yes that would be announced on the website. We’ll contact all the media we can and announce that. Anyone that has signed up on the website, there is a place there to sign up for updates. We're not that tech-savvy so it's not an interactive hunt. We do periodically update that but the minute the treasure is found, we will post that on the web.
Steve: Here’s a question about that: the location of the treasure: could somebody actually stumble upon it and if so when was the last time you verified that it might still be there?
Pel: Someone could accidentally stumble upon it, I guess. I mean that’s possible. It's not out of the...
Steve: Someone's out with their dog throwing a ball or whatever...
Pel: Yup, no it's all possible. I attempt to verify at least once a year.
Steve: When was the last time you did verify?
Pel: Last year. To claim the treasure, you need to notify Stockwell Publishing.
Steve: www.followthefox.com. Go there.
Pel: So if the treasure is discovered, we will know, we’ll post that. Someone will not be able to claim the treasure without us knowing that they've discovered it.
Steve: Meaning that if it's not there...Let's say hypothetically you verified it last year. I'm up there this week and I know exactly where it is. I go there and it's not there. I can at that point contact and say, listen here's my find, this is where I went, and there's nothing there. You would at that point say, we got a winner?
Pel: In the treasure hunt you're looking for a key. And that key goes to a safety deposit box. So to verify that the treasure is found, we will be notified when that safety deposit box is opened.
Steve: But what happens if, let’s say somebody goes to the location where the key is and it's not there? At that point, I mean, what do you do to make it right at that point?
Pel: Again we’ll go...Let's say for instance someone went and it wasn't there. If they notified us and said we've discovered the treasure, and I get quite a few inquiries on, I went here, and I will say that nobody has come up with the answer to the riddle, but if someone says here it is, we’ll verify that they have found the treasure.
Steve: even if the key is not there though?
Pel: Correct and I will go up and check to see if the key is there or not.
Steve: I'll be waiting by the rock. I'll be sitting there waiting for you, man.
Pel: I will take measures to look to see if you're waiting to watch. I will verify, I mean it's not something I can go verify everyday if the key is there but if someone were to find this key randomly, along with the key are explicit instructions on how to claim this treasure so it wouldn't be someone just coming across a random key. There would be…
Steve: Okay so there's more to the package.
Pel:There's more to the package. They would know that it's not something...
Steve: They'd have to prove to you that, how they got it, not by: I was just walking by dumb luck and that person would be disqualified correct?
Pel: No, technically if someone found this randomly, it's theirs.
Steve: Really, by happenstance?
Pel: By happenstance, absolutely.
Steve: What's the population of the island, you know, the full-time residents?
Pel: The full-time residents is about 10,000. There are a number of towns on the island. The island itself is about 100 square miles, maybe a little bigger than that. Which to put it in...I believe it's the fifth largest island in America. Now that doesn't tell you much but I think Long Island...
Steve: Hawaii's pretty big
Pel: Yeah Hawaii's pretty big. Well I don't know how Hawaii...if you break it up into the different islands but Long Island is bigger than Mount Desert Island but Mount Desert Island is bigger than say Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket.
Steve: How about Manhattan?
Pel: I don't think Manhattan is included in that. But about 10,000 year-round residents. In the summer that goes way up. There's a huge summer population. There’s about two to three million tourists that go there each year to the park.
Rick: We have some people that are calling in, they’d like to ask you a question. Would you care to answer them?
Pel: Sure, sure. As long as I can answer, I will go ahead and answer.
Rick:We got one on the line now. Taffy. She wants to ask a question.
Taffy: Hi everybody. I'm just sitting here mesmerised listening to Mr. Stockwell. Mr. Stockwell, usually authors when they write a book, they base their characters usually on people they know. I was fascinating about your grandmother and is she in your book?
Pel: Well I think she may be to a degree. I think if you looked at the...do you have the book?
Taffy: Yes I have it right in front of me.
Pel: There's a lady in a window drinking a cup of tea. She doesn't look like my grandmother but my grandmother always had a cup of tea and was sort of...
Taffy: Yes, typical grandmothers right?
Pel: That could be her but. Subconsciously that might be her.
[tangent: Wise Old Woman]
Taffy: I've also written a book, not like this, and you know you base your characters on people around those around you. Like the fox, did that remind you of someone that was foxy and clever in your life and that's why I wanted to know and but I got kind of off the track because you mentioned your grandmother and usually grandsons have a very special feeling for their grandmothers. You know they've done a lot with them. At least I hope so with my grandchildren so and my grandson so.
Pel: Yeah on that we've been clearly influenced by our grandmother. You know, her treasure hunts as kids so she there was a big influence on us.
Taffy: Thank you so much for answering my question, I appreciate it.
Pel: Thank you for calling in.
Steve: Rick do you have any more?
Rick: that was it so far, Steve. There's a lot in the chat room.
Steve: Oh I haven't been monitoring that at all. I'm enthralled here. So now with our fox Mr. Fandango going through and he seems to be running all over the island and obviously he's followed by this eagle who seems to be the henchmen of Neptune although I would kind of more think it would be the Lady of the Wind’s henchman and if he didn't deliver, this guy was overseeing it.
Pel: Well the Lady of the Wind’ doesn't know that she's been looked for so until the end.
Steve: But my for me I don't really put an eagle as somebody, more like the otter. The otter was a perfect guy to go to until Mr. Fandango decided to step into the picture and relieve Mr. Otter of his mission, if you will. You know looking at pictures and everything, is there techniques there where you're utilizing illusions?
Pel: Are there techniques where I'm utilizing illusions?
Steve: Well you look at that old Baroque painting of the two Lords and at a certain angle looking at this picture all of a sudden you see a human skull down in the bottom? Are you familiar with that picture, the illusion of that?
Pel: Yes if I'm imagining the same one, yes.
Steve: We're talking of the baroque period for certain, two distinguished gentleman and there's this blur thing down at the bottom and you're like, what's that? Then you look at the painting at a certain angle and now all of a sudden it becomes a very clear skull. Do you utilize techniques like that? I mean are you having a ball doing this stuff?
Pel: I'm having a ball doing this stuff. And you know everything in the... I think you have to look at everything in the illustrations and you have to at the same time you have to look at everything in the text. It's a... there's not... there's not any one sort of angle. In other words and I may not be phrasing this correctly but you don't have to be familiar with baroque art to solve this riddle. But I'm having fun putting stuff in the illustrations and we had fun putting things in the text and working everything together. So someone may come across something and find that to be helpful in their search and there are other things that people will find that might not be helpful so much in their search but might be amusing but at the same time confirm that they're doing something correctly.
Rick: We have another caller that has a question.
Magic Mom: It’s me, Magic Mom. Hi I do have a question. When you were creating the illustrations for the book, did you create the entire picture and go back and then add clues or do you use a method where you start with clues and illustrate around them? If that's not asking too much.
Pel: So did I start with the clues and illustrate around them or start with the illustrations and put the clues in?
Magic Mom: Correct.
Pel: You know it was... I don't know if it was either/or. It was everything that the text in the pictures and everything was...we plotted this all out together. So before we did the illustration we knew that we wanted that illustration to go along with the story at this stage and I don't know if that answers the question or not.
Magic Mom: It does. I'm always kind of always fascinated with these...I’m no artist myself but I'm kind of fascinated with how the clues are embedded into these pictures and trying to imagine if I was doing it. I would have to draw the whole picture I think and then go back and try to hide clues and I don't know if that would be an efficient thing so it's just very well done.
Pel: Well I think there’s what I call the so-called master riddle. And so you have that master riddle and how do you present this master riddle and then you go about creating the components of that.
Magic Mom: Correct. No doubt a lot of work.
Steve: How many hours do you have in each picture? They're so well-detailed and everything that these aren't something that are just going to be whipped up.
Pel: No I mean these... many, many hours and it's hard to see but some of these illustrations are quite large and they've been reduced down to the size of the page.
Steve: What's your biggest one?
Pel: These are, what, 8 and a half by 11 so the biggest one is probably 44 by 34.
Steve: Why is that? Is that because it's easier to put the detail and then shrink it down?
Pel: Yeah in terms of... I like to work big in part. In part it's just how I like to paint. I like to paint big. And when we were doing this I had no idea about how the whole publishing, how it all takes place. In creating in our future hunts I will not work so big. It's very expensive to reduce a large painting down to a book size format. Whereas if you could just duplicate an 8 and a half by 11, it's not so expensive.
Steve: Well on that note about the expense. Just remember folks out there if you go to www.followthefox.com and order a book...
[tangent: book order]
Rick: When the prize is found, the original paintings, will you sell them?
Pel: I've been asked that many times and I will not sell them all because I would like to hold onto some of them.
Steve: I was going to say would you ever put them on display somewhere? How about during the hunt, would you consider putting them on display somewhere during the hunt?
Pel: Yes. I've been asked that a number of times. I've had other shows with other art and one of the things I think I will do is after we've had a couple of other hunts is put together a show. I'd love to display them and I’ve thought of doing that as part of wanting to share them but as part of a promotional thing as well.
Steve: Have you done any kind of publicity tours or anything, you know, book signing and whatnot?
Pel: I've done a number of book signings, yes.
[tangent: book signings]
Magic Mom: I have one more question. After the key is found and the puzzle solved, do you have any plans to publish a solution book or post on your website how it was to be reached?
Pel: Yeah, I mean ideally it'd be fun to publish that. I know that some of these other treasure hunts particularly if you look at Masquerade, he came out with a subsequent book on the solution and so on. I think financially he probably sold as many solutions books as he did treasure hunt books. And I think in part that would be something if someone found the treasure and I think I hopefully I sort of allude to that, I kind of leave it up to that person whether they want to be part of that. My feeling is if someone wants to reveal who they are and how they did it, I want to kind of leave that up to them until the end date at which point I think everyone deserves to know how it was all revealed; who found it and how it was found.
Magic Mom: I agree with that. That's a very good thought.
Pel: And part of that is, you know, and our hope is to have a whole series of hunts and Fandango will be involved in all of them, the fox. If someone were to find the first one they might not want to reveal how they came about doing it.
Steve: Because knowing that they may have a heads up on the second one?
Pel: They may think they do but our goal is that each hunt is going to be very different so that it's fair to everyone on subsequent hunts.
Steve: Well I'll tell you this right now. As a self-appointed spokesman of the Truerare Sons, if we do solve it we will publish it. We’ll let the whole world know how we did it too.
Pel: and I think that's entirely up to you
Steve: I think that’s fair because sometimes I look at it as just a regular consumer and fine, I bought the book to do your hunt yeah, it was solved, but now I got to buy a book to see how you did it? To me that's almost like double-dipping.
Pel: Well I don't have...
Judy: It is a little bit.
Steve: I know, and as an author and as a publisher I'm sure it makes a lot of sense economically.
Pel: If I sell if I sell 2 million copies, a million copies of this book and I know that I could probably sell so many copies of the solution to it and it makes as someone just mentioned, economic sense. I haven't hit that million mark yet.
Steve: How many how many are out there right now?
Pel: Well I don't want to say but it's you know this is not like, what's that book you mentioned a couple of times?
Steve: The Secret of the Alchemist’s Dar?
Pel: Yeah. This is self-published. I don't have a big publishing house sort of promoting this.
[Tangent: self-publishing]
Judy: I want to ask another question.
Rick: We've got about another 10 minutes left.
Judy: I want to ask another question. Okay there's a master riddle, right? Okay now, is each separate, like I Meet an Extremely Strange Man, okay is there smaller puzzles within the master puzzle? Or is it just one big puzzle?
Pel: Is there a smaller riddle within the master riddle?
Judy: Is there smaller riddles within the master, to make the master?
Pel: Yes, oh yes. They're different components that all feed into the master riddle.
Rick: So it takes a riddle to solve the riddle.
Judy: Right that's what I…
Steve: There's multiple riddles…
Pel: Yes. They’re multiple components so, and you may have already, you’ll come across different things, and by themselves they're not going to reveal the treasure. In conjunction with other components, they will.
Steve: Folks make sure you were listening, both the text is equally important as the pictures. Okay so that to me is awesome too because Stadler basically put it to us that, you don't necessarily need to have to read English in order to solve this puzzle, whereas yours you obviously need to read English in order to solve the puzzle. Unless the book is published in other languages, I don’t know.
Pel: Yeah. If you don't, if you can't read English unless you randomly come across the treasure I think it would be very difficult.
Steve: You'd be the guy walking his dog.
Pel: Exactly. And knowing where to have that dog lift its leg.
Steve: Now we only have 10 minutes left. I have a very important question to ask. and then we're going to have Pel give away a book to whoever he wants. Do you want to be a member of Rick’s Treasure World? We're doing Vegas Eye and doing some other hunts. You'd be really good on the team.
Pel: Well I'm new to all this and so send me information and how to go about doing this. It would be great.
[tangent: chat room, book giveaway, and end.]
Steve: Now let's get started. Mr Stockwell, let's just start the beginning. Why don't you give us a little background of yourself where you come from, where you grew up as a kid, things like that.
Pel: Just to give a little sort of background on Fandango and myself and my brother who couldn't join us tonight (his name is Jeff): We would go up to Maine in the summers and this hunt is based in Maine. It's based in Mount Desert Island. It's the largest island in Maine. I believe it's the fifth largest island in the US off the coast. You can actually drive to this island for those who haven't been there. We spent a good deal of time in Maine, not on this particular Island but on a similar place and our grandmother would go up and spent her summers in Maine and one of the things she would do each summer would be to create these treasure hunts, largely in part to get us out of her hair so that we wouldn't bother her, and we would spend days trying to figure out where she had hidden her treasures. Now she knew we would be coming she would put these things together and we would go out and dig and look.
Steve: That's awesome. How old were you?
Pel: We were like 10, 12, and then on up. We have other cousins and whatnot and these were geared towards sort of all ages. The idea was 1) to get us out of her hair but also for us to go out and explore the area so that we would know the different references that were out there and that's sort of started our fascination with treasure hunting. That alongside when you're sort of spending time on Islands whether they’re on Maine or anywhere, there's a little bit of a draw to that sort of Treasure Island mysticism so that factored in as well.
Steve: And you say Island whether it be a rocky island or a beach/sand island in the Caribbean, the first thing that comes into my mind is Captain Hook and buried treasure. I think it's the whole island thing I guess because there's waves crashing all the way around and easy in/easy out type of situation for a pirate. And plus growing up with it, gosh you must have learned all kinds of fun techniques and whatnot from what your grandma did.
Pel: Well, exactly, and each summer her hunts were very different. Sometimes they were very complicated and only one person could find the treasure, other times everyone had a chance to find whatever she had buried and most stuff of what she buried was a bag of candy or some little item. It was the search and being the one to have discovered the treasure.
Steve: The thrill of the hunt.
Pel: Yeah, the thrill of the hunt.
[tangent: learning via treasure hunting]
Pel: That's one of the things we sort of learned as kids was sort of we'd all be competing to find it but we all realize that you know we need each others help sometimes to figure out what does this clue mean. We were all different ages so people would have different ideas and and that was part of the fun of it. Again, it was the thrill of the hunt and sort of sharing. And part of it was you could corroborate, figure out a clue, and then you could see who is fastest to get to the next one.
Steve: That's great and you know what I bet it wasn't always the oldest cousin who came up with the right solution either.
Pel: Exactly.
Steve: [tangent: corroborating as a team]
Pel: Well one of the things that we've come to realize, and we've spent quite a bit of time, and this is not something that happened overnight--actually a number of years to put this together, is that we discovered there were all these other hunts out there and these other types of treasure hunts and you've probably come across these and seen them as well, and I've been clearly influenced by Masquerade which I came across years ago.
Judy: Oh, of course.
Steve: Really? I would have never guessed.
Judy: You would have never have guessed it, right Steve.
Pel: And then we put together this hunt and then in the process of trying to pull this all together to make it happen, we’ve come across other hunts and a number of them were, as you mentioned, they missed the point because we're sort of like, wait how can everyone come together when these are not... I'm missing the correct words here but they're very difficult to come together on because they're a little too competitive sometimes.
Judy: Right.
Steve: [tangent: invisible lurkers giving nothing back]
Pel: Well you know I'm looking at it from a different angle because you're one team and there are other teams and they’re other individuals and so everyone's out there; there's competition out there and it's sort of like the show, that reality show Survivor where you watch it and everyone pretends to be each other’s friends but ultimately someone wants to be the survivor. And I'm not familiar with the different teams out there as you all are but I'm sure that's something you all have to be careful of because you're working as a team but you don't know if someone wants to shoot off on the side or something but I like the idea that there are teams out there and everyone's working together and everyone’s sharing ideas. For us to see that type of interaction, to see that type of enjoyment, is exciting for us.
Steve: That's great. and you know it's a different angle too. There are individual teams out there where it's everyone corroborating but you know whoever finds it, it’s winner-take-all type of thing. With us we're going to pool it all, everything is pooled.
Judy: Yeah because what we do is likeSteve: was saying we whack it out and we put money aside so that we can all meet. There's also an ultimate goal on this as well as winning the prize.
Steve: Right, our goal was actually to have a reunion. I would love to be able to do enough successful hunts where we can have our team reunion on Mount desert island taking it apart rock by rock.
Judy: That would be so cool.
Steve: I asked one time, do you think the fine folks of Mount desert island would be ready for us? Can I ask a couple of questions about the island itself?
Pel: Absolutely.
Steve: Is there an airport there?
Pel: There's not an airport on the island itself but there's an airport. You can actually drive to the island. It's separated from the mainland by a very small body of water and
Steve: That's on the map even in the book. in the book the map even shows where it's connected so it's close, there's a small bridge going across.
Pel: Yes you can actually...there's a small airport right across from that connection I mean it’s a very small airport. The other place to fly into his Bangor Maine which is about I want to say 30 minutes 40 minutes away from the island.
[tangent: planes]
Steve: Now the island itself you said it's very large and there is... I get it now there's one thing that I'm a little questionable about...you say that it's a physical treasure hunt which is real cool I've never been on one, again this is only my second full-blown treasure hunt that I'm doing and I'm really loving. It's a physical hunt except you don't need to be present to claim it am I missing something there?
Pel: No you've got it incorrectly. You don't need to be present to solve the riddle. You do need to be present to find the key.
Steve: Oh, okay so somebody can solve...wait a minute now...
Pel: So you can solve the riddle--you can figure out where the key is. You don't have to go there...in other words you don't have to be there to figure out where this is hidden.
Steve: Okay but in order to claim it, you gotta go get it.
Pel: In order to claim if you have to go get it.
Steve: So it'd be pretty senseless to say, hmm, I know where it is. I'm not going to get it.
Pel: Right and when you when you solve the riddle you should know that you've solved the riddle.
Steve: Okay. Very good. That's awesome. The same thing with Dar, when you solve it, you’ll know when you solve it. It'll be very clear and concise.
Pel: Yes.
Steve: Now there's another question on that. With the text and the pictures and everything like that, is the whole hunt contained within the book? And please, if I cross the line just say, listen I can't answer that.
Pel: Is the whole hunt contained within the book?
Steve: I mean it's not like a book and then you have to go to different websites--it's a web-based type of thing.
Pel: the whole hunt the is contained within the book. You don't have to do any internet anything; it's all within the book, yes.
Steve: Which is great too, that's a big help.
Pel: Yep. Yep everything's within the book.
Steve: Now your brother and yourself did this, and your brother obviously was doing some... I'm not a spy or anything like that, please, I'm a regular guy, but I looked it up and your brother’s a screenwriter in LA?
Pel: He's a screenwriter in LA and his most recent sort of film on the big screen was the adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia.
Steve: Right, right. That's pretty awesome, that's pretty great. And yourself is a great artist. I saw you in the Shaw Gallery.
Pel: Yeah the Shaw Gallery is a gallery up in Maine. Let me interrupt one second, I have a young daughter who I have to direct to a different room...
Pel: Sorry about that I'm back.
[tangent: Shaw Gallery]
Steve: Now where are you from originally?
Pel: I’m from the Boston area, just outside of Boston.
[tangent: accents]
Steve: Back to this whole island and everything. So you guys were on an island close by or a similar Island. What made you choose this particular Island? You say you took years to put this together. Was that part of your search criteria to find an island with the right lay of the land or whatever?
Pel: Well yes. And one of the things is that Maine has thousands of islands, all different sizes and one of the things that's important too is getting to these islands. Some of the other big islands in Maine, you cannot drive to, you have to take a ferry to so they're actually a little more difficult to get to.
Steve: So accessibility.
Pel: Accessibility and also they don't have quite the variation in landscape. Mount Desert has this fantastic landscape. It has we’ll call them mountains. They are large hills but you can call them mountains with some great hiking. There's lakes, there's ponds, and then there's this fantastic dramatic Maine landscape: beaches, rocks. There's a natural fjord the cuts sort of right up the middle of the island. So it's unique in itself, it's a very...it sort of encompasses...
Steve: A very diverse landscape.
Pel: Very diverse landscape and it encompasses so much of the rest of the Maine landscape. And it also has this great National Park...
Steve: Acadia
Pel: Acadia and it's a great place to go. One of the ideas was the hunt should be fun in itself but it should be a fun place to go regardless so you can go to Acadia and experience this great landscape. Now you have to be careful--there's a lot of fog on the Maine coast and you could go up there and never see daylight because the fog could roll in and cover the island for weeks but it's just a great place to go to so it was a fun place and this was a fun thing to do in a fun place.
Steve: [tangent: St. Croix.] So this island shows a lot and represents a lot of different landscapes and landscape features that the whole great state of Maine would have.
Pel: Yeah it's really, it's a great place, it's one of the great, I think, national parks.
Steve: The hotels and everything there to accommodate folks?
Pel: Well that's the other thing, there's all the infrastructure. There's plenty of places to stay with great hotels, there’s great campgrounds if people want a camp,so it has all that alongside this great park. It's an interesting spot. Historically a lot of wealthy people went up there and this is years and years ago and made it their sort of summer destination. And as more and more people gravitated toward the sort of unique spot, some of the wealthier people that were vacationing there decided that they wanted to protect themselves from it getting over developed and essentially they purchased a good chunk of the island which has now become this national park.
Steve: Which actually insures what they did and why they did it stays there.
Pel: Exactly. so they...
Steve: So now they don't have to pay taxes on it. Let the government take care of it.
Pel: Exactly to protect themselves, they made it available to everyone.
Steve: Which is actually pretty awesome in itself that they made it available to everybody to see the beauty that it holds.
Pel: Exactly. And some of these wealthy people did some neat things. They built...there's a whole series of these old carriage roads that go back to a time when people were up there and they had horses and carriages and they wanted to sort of be able to move back and forth and go to these neat scenic areas.And that's all Incorporated into the park now so you can go up and mountain bike, you can hike, you can actually... the park itself has a place where you can get horses and ride these trails. So it's very...
Steve: Is it guided or if you're an experienced rider you can just rent a horse for a few hours
Pel: You know I know they can guide you. I don't know offhand whether you can just rent a horse and take off on your own but that may be possible. I'm not sure on that. But I think if you are you probably could. It's that type of place.
Steve: Fantastic. Now how about the fire. You know some folklore of the island. Was that part of your, as you were looking for a site, you know to find some fun folklore, some place that had some, like, you know, and I don't want to get crazy in the book but the fire seemed pretty important.
Judy yeah it does.
Steve: Is there remains from the fire that are still there. I mean we all know..Rick you had showed us that there was a fire on the island back in 1945 or something like that. Now is there something significant that burned down? Is there remains that they keep there?. Was there loss of life, things like that with it?
Pel: Well one of the things we wanted to do in creating the hunt was to incorporate as much history as we could. And part of that was to not spell out the history per se but work that into the story itself. And there was a...after all these sort of wealthy people went up and created their summer homes and they built these fantastic mansions along the coast and they were largely centered around the main town there which is now called Bar Harbor. That caught fire and many of these great homes burned down. I don't know exactly how many survived but just a handful. And after that a lot of the summer residents dispersed around the island rather than be centered in this one place. So that was a big change for the island in that rather than everyone being focused in one place, everyone spread out. And part of that led to the creation of the park because as people spread out they begin to realize that if they didn't protect themselves, the whole island would get overrun. But that was a big event for the island itself. It nearly burnt down the entire Island. So that was a bit of the history that we incorporated into the story.
Steve: That's great. As I said, part of these treasure hunts are learning things. We're going to know all about this island before we're done.
Pel: Well the neat thing, I mean hopefully one of the neat things, and we actually didn't do this with the internet in mind but for those who want to learn more, they can go to the internet and they can learn more about the history itself and they will see as theylearn the history of the island, they will pick up visually things in the illustrations about the island such as the fire.
Steve: I’ve seen that place; I know where that is. And then you can pinpoint it on the map.
Pel: Exactly.
Steve: which is great. So that’s why I said we're going to know all about that island.
Judy: Yeah I learned about it a long time ago. I have a question. Were you interested in astrology along the way before you did this book?
Pel: Part of going to Maine as a youth in the summer, one of the neat things is, you’re away from all these big cities. Another thing my grandmother would do is as it got dark and as she wanted to sort of distract us and get us out of her hair she'd send us outside and lie us out on the lawn and look up at the sky and there we’d learn about the stars and such. And you can on occasion see the Northern Lights in Maine. And so that was another part of our youth that we incorporated in and sort of learning about astrology.
Steve: That's fantastic. That's kids having fun learning stuff.
Judy: Hey even adults. I even go out and lay out up on my deck and look up at the stars.
Steve: Yeah I live in New York City and I get the bright light wash and I get six stars in the night.
Pel: So much of what we do as adults is, I mean we're always learning but all those little things we might have done as kids or even thought about come back into our minds as we get older.
[tangent: Alchemist’s Dar]
Steve: Come on, when you were twelve, tell me you didn't have a wooden sword and a paper hat and you were some Black Beard or Red Beard or Captain Hook. I know we did that.
Pel: No and that's in part we're trying to recreate that for ourselves.
Steve: That's fantastic.
Judy: Well sometimes adults forget how it is to be a child.
[tangent: kids]
Pel: Ultimately the kid in us never leaves. The more we can rediscover that, the better.
[tangent: Sponge Bob]
Rick: I'd like to ask him how he come up with the name Fandango?
Pel: I liked the sound of the name Fandango. but part of it was to try to capture the image of a little bit of this is a dance. Go out and have fun, dance, enjoy it, but there are certain moves you're going to need to make. So the name just sort of, the name worked and it was sort of in line with that. It's a dance but it's not as random as some dances.
Rick: Well how'd you come up with the main character using a fox? How did that come about?
Pel: Well the fox is a very... one thing we thought is a very playful creature but a very clever creature, but at the same time, you can't always trust a fox. So we just like the... but a fox also is a little cuddly, it's not necessarily dangerous, it's an acceptable creature in that sense. It's not threatening but the cleverness of the fox was a key factor in choosing the fox.
Steve: Now I can agree with that. We kind of forgot to really give the whole audience if people don't know what the book is really about. Why don't you give us a quick summation basically. If somebody doesn't know what the book is about, do you want to tell them, hey man what's that book about?
Pel: Well, the book is essentially a fantasy. The basic theme is Neptune falls in love with the Lady of the Wind and the idea being that if you're on the ocean, the wind and the ocean are the two forces you always want to, are always working together or against each other. So Neptune and the Wind fall in love but Neptune can never leave the sea so he wants to deliver a token of love to the Lady of the Wind. But how does he do this? So he starts off by finding a creature that can be both on sea and on land and that would be the otter. To go deliver this token of love. And then the fox comes along and cleverly takes over this task, thinking that he'll be able to profit by doing this. So it's basically a love story that along the way employs a clever creature who might not have the best intentions. And the fox goes off to deliver this token of love but along the way loses it before he's able to actually deliver it and the quest of the hunt is to find where this treasure has been lost. Where did he lose his treasure?
Steve: And it follows his adventure. What he runs into. There's lots of colorful characters. The pictures are fantastic I will say so. If you don't mind, with artistic technique: when you guys do these type of drawings okay and use certain techniques and I'm not going to get specific but hidden letters or whatever, are you able to see another artist that does a very similar thing? Is it easier for you to decipher things?
Pel: Am I able to see other artists who do the same thing or...
Steve: Similar things, you know. It might not be identical but a similar thing. stop me if I'm out of line here but like say, in some of the clouds if you turn them a certain way they kind of make bubbly letters.
Judy: Yeah I saw that.
Steve: Now as somebody who wrote this stuff and I'm having a hard time reading letters, they could be done that way intentionally as a misleader or whatever, to misdirect you that I'm sure is part of the evil puzzle-making process. You know, there's got to be lots of dead ends, if you will, until you finally find the right one and it'll be real clear for you. But as an artist, as somebody who knows and utilizes these techniques, is it easier for you to see somebody else's work?
Pel: If you seen some of my other work, clearly from your references before in some of these other galleries. And it's very different than what's in Fandango.
Steve: Oh without question. You're using techniques in Fandango that you're certainly not using in your regular stills.
Pel: Absolutely. these are illustrations which in themselves are stories in themselves. Now even in my fine art you're doing an interpretation of a scene which hopefully is a story in itself but these are more specific in their makeup. In composing these illustrations there are techniques that I'm using that I don't use in my fine art. So in my fine art the stroke, how I take that brush and bring it across the canvas or the thickness, the layers, or the swirl I make are very important in terms the makeup of that painting. When you’re doing an illustration you're looking at what are the components of that illustration as opposed to the brush strokes and so on. So if you're looking at clouds, yes there are, and I can say this only because I think it's fairly clear, there are things in the clouds that are not results of random brush strokes; they’re intentional.
Steve: They’re deliberate. It’s deliberate to draw a picture, absolutely.
Pell: Yeah.
Steve: With the Dar book, you don't know me from a hole in the wall and maybe we should keep it that way, but I did some experiments if you will with the book.
Judy: He's our alchemist.
Steve: Well because it was The Alchemist Dar. So I basically created a lab and I did some with the same components that were available to this alchemist. Whether I spilled acid on it or boiled in oil or all kinds of these things.
Judy: He had me doing it too.
Steve: There was one page that you had to, without getting too much on a tangent, there's one page that you had to hold up to the sun to complete the picture. So what's an easy way for me to do this without having to walk around holding these pages to the sun? It was actually an accident where somebody else actually was cooking some french fries and got some oil on a page and all of a sudden it was, wow you can see right through this. So for me I'm doing the whole book. So I dip the book in oil. Boy my wife wasn't too happy about the smell.
Judy: What kind of oil did you use? I used virgin olive oil.
Steve: I don't know. I used some regular vegetable oil.
Pel: I will tell you this that pouring olive oil on this book will not help you in any way.
[tangent: puzzle books]
Steve: Now how about: what do you like to do? What are your hobbies?
Pel: Well I have a number of different hobbies. I'm actually, by day I'm a financial advisor which is very different from being an artist full-time so I'm always looking at different components of the world and how the world sort of fits together, which I guess in part goes together with putting together a treasure hunt. But right now I'm up in the hills of New Hampshire and just before you called I was sitting outside from where we are and an enormous bear walked by from about 40 feet away so I'm very much into the outdoors. I don't want that bear to come any closer but it's nice to... it was very cool to see that bear walk by. So the outdoors and doing outdoor activities is a lot of fun and I'm researching what I hope to be a couple of other hunts in the future so...
Steve: You definitely have the Son’s blessings and backing in that. for sure.
Judy: I was going to ask if there was going to be another book in the works.
Pel: Yes. We've got a couple of others in progress now and it takes enormous amount of time to put this all together and make them all work.
Steve: You’ve gotta figure, he works as a financial advisor, doing the hunt, and his fine art, and being dad. That's a busy slate.
Pel: Well they're all those factors too but even without those it takes a lot of time to sort of put these things together, test them beforehand, you know, put them all, make sure that everything sort of fits together. They're fun. they're a labor of love.
Steve: With you and your brother, is there a staff or anybody else?
Pel: No we don't have a staff.
Rick: Is there a movie in the works?
[tangent: Hollywood]
Pel: Oh, is there a movie with this? No there's nothing in line with us, no.
Rick: I have another question for you. If somebody does win the prize, is the hunt over? Do they get the prize right away or no?
Pel: Yes there's one prize and the first person to discover that prize, claims the prize, the hunt is then over.
Steve: So it'll be announced quickly at that point?
Pel: Yes that would be announced on the website. We’ll contact all the media we can and announce that. Anyone that has signed up on the website, there is a place there to sign up for updates. We're not that tech-savvy so it's not an interactive hunt. We do periodically update that but the minute the treasure is found, we will post that on the web.
Steve: Here’s a question about that: the location of the treasure: could somebody actually stumble upon it and if so when was the last time you verified that it might still be there?
Pel: Someone could accidentally stumble upon it, I guess. I mean that’s possible. It's not out of the...
Steve: Someone's out with their dog throwing a ball or whatever...
Pel: Yup, no it's all possible. I attempt to verify at least once a year.
Steve: When was the last time you did verify?
Pel: Last year. To claim the treasure, you need to notify Stockwell Publishing.
Steve: www.followthefox.com. Go there.
Pel: So if the treasure is discovered, we will know, we’ll post that. Someone will not be able to claim the treasure without us knowing that they've discovered it.
Steve: Meaning that if it's not there...Let's say hypothetically you verified it last year. I'm up there this week and I know exactly where it is. I go there and it's not there. I can at that point contact and say, listen here's my find, this is where I went, and there's nothing there. You would at that point say, we got a winner?
Pel: In the treasure hunt you're looking for a key. And that key goes to a safety deposit box. So to verify that the treasure is found, we will be notified when that safety deposit box is opened.
Steve: But what happens if, let’s say somebody goes to the location where the key is and it's not there? At that point, I mean, what do you do to make it right at that point?
Pel: Again we’ll go...Let's say for instance someone went and it wasn't there. If they notified us and said we've discovered the treasure, and I get quite a few inquiries on, I went here, and I will say that nobody has come up with the answer to the riddle, but if someone says here it is, we’ll verify that they have found the treasure.
Steve: even if the key is not there though?
Pel: Correct and I will go up and check to see if the key is there or not.
Steve: I'll be waiting by the rock. I'll be sitting there waiting for you, man.
Pel: I will take measures to look to see if you're waiting to watch. I will verify, I mean it's not something I can go verify everyday if the key is there but if someone were to find this key randomly, along with the key are explicit instructions on how to claim this treasure so it wouldn't be someone just coming across a random key. There would be…
Steve: Okay so there's more to the package.
Pel:There's more to the package. They would know that it's not something...
Steve: They'd have to prove to you that, how they got it, not by: I was just walking by dumb luck and that person would be disqualified correct?
Pel: No, technically if someone found this randomly, it's theirs.
Steve: Really, by happenstance?
Pel: By happenstance, absolutely.
Steve: What's the population of the island, you know, the full-time residents?
Pel: The full-time residents is about 10,000. There are a number of towns on the island. The island itself is about 100 square miles, maybe a little bigger than that. Which to put it in...I believe it's the fifth largest island in America. Now that doesn't tell you much but I think Long Island...
Steve: Hawaii's pretty big
Pel: Yeah Hawaii's pretty big. Well I don't know how Hawaii...if you break it up into the different islands but Long Island is bigger than Mount Desert Island but Mount Desert Island is bigger than say Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket.
Steve: How about Manhattan?
Pel: I don't think Manhattan is included in that. But about 10,000 year-round residents. In the summer that goes way up. There's a huge summer population. There’s about two to three million tourists that go there each year to the park.
Rick: We have some people that are calling in, they’d like to ask you a question. Would you care to answer them?
Pel: Sure, sure. As long as I can answer, I will go ahead and answer.
Rick:We got one on the line now. Taffy. She wants to ask a question.
Taffy: Hi everybody. I'm just sitting here mesmerised listening to Mr. Stockwell. Mr. Stockwell, usually authors when they write a book, they base their characters usually on people they know. I was fascinating about your grandmother and is she in your book?
Pel: Well I think she may be to a degree. I think if you looked at the...do you have the book?
Taffy: Yes I have it right in front of me.
Pel: There's a lady in a window drinking a cup of tea. She doesn't look like my grandmother but my grandmother always had a cup of tea and was sort of...
Taffy: Yes, typical grandmothers right?
Pel: That could be her but. Subconsciously that might be her.
[tangent: Wise Old Woman]
Taffy: I've also written a book, not like this, and you know you base your characters on people around those around you. Like the fox, did that remind you of someone that was foxy and clever in your life and that's why I wanted to know and but I got kind of off the track because you mentioned your grandmother and usually grandsons have a very special feeling for their grandmothers. You know they've done a lot with them. At least I hope so with my grandchildren so and my grandson so.
Pel: Yeah on that we've been clearly influenced by our grandmother. You know, her treasure hunts as kids so she there was a big influence on us.
Taffy: Thank you so much for answering my question, I appreciate it.
Pel: Thank you for calling in.
Steve: Rick do you have any more?
Rick: that was it so far, Steve. There's a lot in the chat room.
Steve: Oh I haven't been monitoring that at all. I'm enthralled here. So now with our fox Mr. Fandango going through and he seems to be running all over the island and obviously he's followed by this eagle who seems to be the henchmen of Neptune although I would kind of more think it would be the Lady of the Wind’s henchman and if he didn't deliver, this guy was overseeing it.
Pel: Well the Lady of the Wind’ doesn't know that she's been looked for so until the end.
Steve: But my for me I don't really put an eagle as somebody, more like the otter. The otter was a perfect guy to go to until Mr. Fandango decided to step into the picture and relieve Mr. Otter of his mission, if you will. You know looking at pictures and everything, is there techniques there where you're utilizing illusions?
Pel: Are there techniques where I'm utilizing illusions?
Steve: Well you look at that old Baroque painting of the two Lords and at a certain angle looking at this picture all of a sudden you see a human skull down in the bottom? Are you familiar with that picture, the illusion of that?
Pel: Yes if I'm imagining the same one, yes.
Steve: We're talking of the baroque period for certain, two distinguished gentleman and there's this blur thing down at the bottom and you're like, what's that? Then you look at the painting at a certain angle and now all of a sudden it becomes a very clear skull. Do you utilize techniques like that? I mean are you having a ball doing this stuff?
Pel: I'm having a ball doing this stuff. And you know everything in the... I think you have to look at everything in the illustrations and you have to at the same time you have to look at everything in the text. It's a... there's not... there's not any one sort of angle. In other words and I may not be phrasing this correctly but you don't have to be familiar with baroque art to solve this riddle. But I'm having fun putting stuff in the illustrations and we had fun putting things in the text and working everything together. So someone may come across something and find that to be helpful in their search and there are other things that people will find that might not be helpful so much in their search but might be amusing but at the same time confirm that they're doing something correctly.
Rick: We have another caller that has a question.
Magic Mom: It’s me, Magic Mom. Hi I do have a question. When you were creating the illustrations for the book, did you create the entire picture and go back and then add clues or do you use a method where you start with clues and illustrate around them? If that's not asking too much.
Pel: So did I start with the clues and illustrate around them or start with the illustrations and put the clues in?
Magic Mom: Correct.
Pel: You know it was... I don't know if it was either/or. It was everything that the text in the pictures and everything was...we plotted this all out together. So before we did the illustration we knew that we wanted that illustration to go along with the story at this stage and I don't know if that answers the question or not.
Magic Mom: It does. I'm always kind of always fascinated with these...I’m no artist myself but I'm kind of fascinated with how the clues are embedded into these pictures and trying to imagine if I was doing it. I would have to draw the whole picture I think and then go back and try to hide clues and I don't know if that would be an efficient thing so it's just very well done.
Pel: Well I think there’s what I call the so-called master riddle. And so you have that master riddle and how do you present this master riddle and then you go about creating the components of that.
Magic Mom: Correct. No doubt a lot of work.
Steve: How many hours do you have in each picture? They're so well-detailed and everything that these aren't something that are just going to be whipped up.
Pel: No I mean these... many, many hours and it's hard to see but some of these illustrations are quite large and they've been reduced down to the size of the page.
Steve: What's your biggest one?
Pel: These are, what, 8 and a half by 11 so the biggest one is probably 44 by 34.
Steve: Why is that? Is that because it's easier to put the detail and then shrink it down?
Pel: Yeah in terms of... I like to work big in part. In part it's just how I like to paint. I like to paint big. And when we were doing this I had no idea about how the whole publishing, how it all takes place. In creating in our future hunts I will not work so big. It's very expensive to reduce a large painting down to a book size format. Whereas if you could just duplicate an 8 and a half by 11, it's not so expensive.
Steve: Well on that note about the expense. Just remember folks out there if you go to www.followthefox.com and order a book...
[tangent: book order]
Rick: When the prize is found, the original paintings, will you sell them?
Pel: I've been asked that many times and I will not sell them all because I would like to hold onto some of them.
Steve: I was going to say would you ever put them on display somewhere? How about during the hunt, would you consider putting them on display somewhere during the hunt?
Pel: Yes. I've been asked that a number of times. I've had other shows with other art and one of the things I think I will do is after we've had a couple of other hunts is put together a show. I'd love to display them and I’ve thought of doing that as part of wanting to share them but as part of a promotional thing as well.
Steve: Have you done any kind of publicity tours or anything, you know, book signing and whatnot?
Pel: I've done a number of book signings, yes.
[tangent: book signings]
Magic Mom: I have one more question. After the key is found and the puzzle solved, do you have any plans to publish a solution book or post on your website how it was to be reached?
Pel: Yeah, I mean ideally it'd be fun to publish that. I know that some of these other treasure hunts particularly if you look at Masquerade, he came out with a subsequent book on the solution and so on. I think financially he probably sold as many solutions books as he did treasure hunt books. And I think in part that would be something if someone found the treasure and I think I hopefully I sort of allude to that, I kind of leave it up to that person whether they want to be part of that. My feeling is if someone wants to reveal who they are and how they did it, I want to kind of leave that up to them until the end date at which point I think everyone deserves to know how it was all revealed; who found it and how it was found.
Magic Mom: I agree with that. That's a very good thought.
Pel: And part of that is, you know, and our hope is to have a whole series of hunts and Fandango will be involved in all of them, the fox. If someone were to find the first one they might not want to reveal how they came about doing it.
Steve: Because knowing that they may have a heads up on the second one?
Pel: They may think they do but our goal is that each hunt is going to be very different so that it's fair to everyone on subsequent hunts.
Steve: Well I'll tell you this right now. As a self-appointed spokesman of the Truerare Sons, if we do solve it we will publish it. We’ll let the whole world know how we did it too.
Pel: and I think that's entirely up to you
Steve: I think that’s fair because sometimes I look at it as just a regular consumer and fine, I bought the book to do your hunt yeah, it was solved, but now I got to buy a book to see how you did it? To me that's almost like double-dipping.
Pel: Well I don't have...
Judy: It is a little bit.
Steve: I know, and as an author and as a publisher I'm sure it makes a lot of sense economically.
Pel: If I sell if I sell 2 million copies, a million copies of this book and I know that I could probably sell so many copies of the solution to it and it makes as someone just mentioned, economic sense. I haven't hit that million mark yet.
Steve: How many how many are out there right now?
Pel: Well I don't want to say but it's you know this is not like, what's that book you mentioned a couple of times?
Steve: The Secret of the Alchemist’s Dar?
Pel: Yeah. This is self-published. I don't have a big publishing house sort of promoting this.
[Tangent: self-publishing]
Judy: I want to ask another question.
Rick: We've got about another 10 minutes left.
Judy: I want to ask another question. Okay there's a master riddle, right? Okay now, is each separate, like I Meet an Extremely Strange Man, okay is there smaller puzzles within the master puzzle? Or is it just one big puzzle?
Pel: Is there a smaller riddle within the master riddle?
Judy: Is there smaller riddles within the master, to make the master?
Pel: Yes, oh yes. They're different components that all feed into the master riddle.
Rick: So it takes a riddle to solve the riddle.
Judy: Right that's what I…
Steve: There's multiple riddles…
Pel: Yes. They’re multiple components so, and you may have already, you’ll come across different things, and by themselves they're not going to reveal the treasure. In conjunction with other components, they will.
Steve: Folks make sure you were listening, both the text is equally important as the pictures. Okay so that to me is awesome too because Stadler basically put it to us that, you don't necessarily need to have to read English in order to solve this puzzle, whereas yours you obviously need to read English in order to solve the puzzle. Unless the book is published in other languages, I don’t know.
Pel: Yeah. If you don't, if you can't read English unless you randomly come across the treasure I think it would be very difficult.
Steve: You'd be the guy walking his dog.
Pel: Exactly. And knowing where to have that dog lift its leg.
Steve: Now we only have 10 minutes left. I have a very important question to ask. and then we're going to have Pel give away a book to whoever he wants. Do you want to be a member of Rick’s Treasure World? We're doing Vegas Eye and doing some other hunts. You'd be really good on the team.
Pel: Well I'm new to all this and so send me information and how to go about doing this. It would be great.
[tangent: chat room, book giveaway, and end.]
