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  About the Author
Craig Conley, “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation” (Encarta), is a curator, benefactor, philosopher, author, music producer, and documentarian. A former college teacher of writing and literature, he left academia to pursue his research into one-letter words, two-fold deities, and ancient technologies for using harmonics to heal and to facilitate spiritual transformations. In addition to his One-Letter Words: A Dictionary, Magic Words: A Dictionary, and Minimalist Coloring Book, he has written several educational titles, including four editions of the textbook Human Diversity: A Guide for Understanding, published by McGraw-Hill. His latest documentary, “David Lynch and His Precursors,” traces the avant-garde filmmaker’s influence through time, to movies that predate Lynch’s own body of work. Philosopher and magician Lawrence Hass writes: “If David Lynch and Jorge Luis Borges created a book the result would be something very much like the writings of Craig Conley. As with those artists, Craig’s work creates truly remarkable and subtle effects. His books are ones to dream with and learn from.” 
Conley is a visionary thinker. In 1999 he developed a new system of musical notation called “Do-Re-Midi,” allowing musical ideas, melody lines, riffs, arrangements, and even full scores to be easily shared via e-mail or other text-based English communication, with no special composing software or music font required. Novices can read Do-Re-Midi more easily than standard musical notation, as no more than a rudimentary familiarity with the musical scale is requisite. Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. Conley’s virtual pet was actually a rare flower that needed the proper water, light, fertilizer, and TLC in a computer game entitled “Florist.” He is pleased to report that his virtual flower is still flourishing and has in fact grown to a nearly incomprehensible size, though he cautions that “If the seed pod were to fall in the real world, we’d be facing a major catastrophe. Truly devastating.” He resides in North Carolina and California. |
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