About The Author

Hello,

My name is John Caroselli, and it’s a pleasure to have you visit my website.  Growing up I had an active imagination, to say the least.  Developing worlds and characters in my head as I created games to play with friends around the neighborhood.. but most of the time we just ended up playing American football.  I had never been interested in creative writing, or even fiction for that matter.  My mind constantly wandered while reading summer vacation assigned novels like Animal Farm by George Orwell or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  While I can enjoy those books now, and many others, at the time I couldn’t focus.  Constantly imagining that orcs were trying to take over the castle (my childhood home) and I needed to defend it, or that I had to take on a secret spy mission on the other side of the world and reading this book would make me miss my flight.  I didn’t like reading, and I didn’t like writing, I just wanted to do.  I played games, hung out with friends, met new people, got turned down by some girls and had successes with others. 

As I grew, I had expected my imagination to fall off, as it had with all of my friends and most of the adults in my life.  However, that never happened.  As my friends drank more alcohol, did more drugs, and overall consumed themselves with every aspect of adulthood, it appeared as the child within them was dying off.  With me, he was burning brighter than ever before.  As the adult friends around me argued over how philosophies they had learned from some political figure were going to save the world, I was more concerned with how amazing it is that birds can fly.  Or, how we as a species could emulate those physics in aircraft.  I was able to see the world every time as if it were the first time. 

Unfortunately, like my friends, the grey haze of adulthood creeped in, and the child within me began to die…So I had thought.  At first I began having those same debates, as all of my friends before me.  How this idea will save the world, even though it ended up being some regurgitated belief I had heard from someone else who had regurgitated what they heard from some philosophizer.  As I fell down the rabbit hole deeper, losing myself to this inhuman concept of adulthood, I ended up exploring less of the world, missing sun rises and sunsets, and being incredibly less active.  Focus fixed on the dreaded job, the great salvation for the adult, apparently where adults think happiness comes from.  This was never my experience, however. Jobs had always removed me from where I had found true happiness.  In friends, family, and the freedom to explore. I thought getting a Master’s degree would expand my job pool, and make it easier to find that salvation.. I was wrong. 

None-the-less, I trudged forward, receiving my Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology.

‘Ooos and ahhs can be heard in the distance.’

While I had a fierce love of psychology it appeared to remove even more of my childish nature. Categorizing every aspect of human existence into easily definable concepts.  Intelligence, narcissism, and the how well can you do this job test.. without actually doing the job.  A Determinist’s wet dream psychology is, being able to tell you exactly who you will become and the reasons why.. we have the statistics to prove it!  Constantly being asked “Analyze me!” by friends.  I obviously would never give them the appropriate answer of “You’re insecure and narcissistic”, but instead politely decline to give an answer. 

As I traveled further and further into the dark treacherous cavern of adulthood I realized something.  The world had always been dark and terrifying, filled with fear.  However, it was the childish light that made everything less scary.  So I began to act like a child, not because I felt like a child, but to hopefully feel childish once again.  As I started to move my body, distance myself from social media, and explore the tangible world around me, I was able to find my imagination once more.  Like a long lost toy forgotten in the back of a shed, covered in dust, spiderwebs, and insect carcasses.  When I picked it up, it was as if I had never put it down.   

As an adult, I had to learn how to use my childish imagination.  One cannot run around fighting imaginary orcs at thirty.. without winding up in a straitjacket with a needle in your neck.  Which leads us here, naturally, The Smoking Quill.  A place where I can use my childish imagination and knowledge of psychology to create provocative stories with the use of illusions, and sleight of hand tricks.