Q: Why do you say I should look at his "writing hand" when reading his hand?

A: The hand that he writes with is called his "dominant" hand. It reflects his adult personality, or the person that you are dealing with right now. When you get more experienced with the card deck, you can read his other hand, known as the "passive" hand. The passive hand reflects what he was like as a child. It also reflects his subconscious. You can read more details about the two hands and why they are important in my book, Read His Hands, Know His Heart .

Q: I think I can make out a Mystic Cross between my Heart Line and my Head Line, if I really squint!

A: There are some basic rules when reading hands. One of them is this: If you need to hold a high-powered magnifying glass to your hand in order to make out a line, that line is not important. In other words, it is what you can see clearly with the naked eye in good sunlight that is the most important. The other scratchy bits can be ignored.

Q: Someone told me I have a Short Life Line and I will die young. Is this true?

A: Not necessarily. In October 1985 I wrote to the prolific and gifted writer, Stephen King. I was researching the different types of Head Lines that can be found on the hands of writers, so I dropped Stephen a line asking if I could have his hand prints. He replied yes, that this would be no problem, even though he'd been told he had a short Life Line.

I mailed him a tube of fingerprint ink with instructions on how to print his hands.

Months went by and I didn't hear a word. I wrote to ask if he was okay and received a reply from his assistant, Stephanie. She explained that Stephen had thought over my proposal and had changed his mind. Seems Stephen is very superstitious and became nervous about giving me his prints.

I wrote Stephen again and explained that a short Life Line does not indicate an early death. It is more likely an indication of a temporary health trauma, either accident or disease. I said that his Life Line would no doubt continue to grow again once this incident was in his past. On June 19, 1999 Stephen was struck by a vehicle while walking and suffered severe injuries. However, he has fully recovered.

If a client comes to me and he has a short Life Line, I advise him simply to be very careful of his health and welfare around the time that the line begins to fade. It is common sense that any person that leads a risky life is not paying full attention to his health and well-being. So having a short Life Line can actually be a wake-up call to be extra careful and also to eat those greens.

Q: My girlfriend's thumbs bend right back, like she's double-jointed. Mine are stiff as rods. Are we compatible?

A: Love conquers all, right? Well, almost. With your stiff thumbs, you could be annoyed by her laid-back attitude to life: piled-up laundry, overdue library books, missed appointments. She takes these in her stride while you're screaming for clean socks. It's a trade-off. She'll love you for your hard-working ways and dependability and you'll enjoy looking through her rose-colored glasses. Just make sure you have plenty of other things in common in your hands.

There's a fine line to draw with our loved ones. You want enough differences in character to cause excitement, because we all know what that leads to. At the same time, you need to share important traits. It's complex, but so is human nature. Reading hands puts you one jump ahead in solving the puzzles of life.

Before I learned hand reading, I took guys out for a movie test. I'd pick an all-time favorite film. It had to be on a big screen, to get the maximum emotion. Then, at the crucial moment, like when Bambi's mother dies or Irish music plays loudly, my ears would be tuned for the sound of a sob beside me.

Those days are behind me now because I can read a guy's hands. But the point is the same; what I look for in a partner is compatibility in the emotional nature plus an interesting mind. You will have to decide what is important for you to share with a loved one. Comparing hands with The Love Deck is a sure-fire way to clue you in.

Q: I left a difficult relationship two months ago. My fingers and palms used to be covered in lines but now a lot of them have disappeared. What gives?

A: Congratulations! As your life has stabilized and you have become more calm and secure, the hundreds of little scratchy nervous lines have gone away. This is good. Your nervous system was sending out signals that all was not well, but now you have proof that things are better. Nervous lines look like a spiderweb laid across your hand. They are higgledy-piggledy in character and you don't read them except as an overall sign of frayed nerves.

Water-Hand people, those gentle souls, are the most likely to produce these lines when life becomes difficult. Given a choice between taking up yoga or kicking an offensive partner out of their life, the Water Hand will go for the yoga. They need support and the right circumstances before they can make an offensive move. So, if you have a Water Hand friend who is in trouble, be there for them!

Q: Why are fingerprints so important?

A: We all have free will, so anybody can make a tremendous effort to be whoever they want to be. But as soon as they let go of making that effort, and relax and act natural, they reflect the traits of their fingerprint type.

In other words, the person that wakes up every morning in the cold, clammy light of dawn and yawns, "Oh, yeah, just another day," or the person that leaps from bed with a song in her heart at the mere thought of hot bacon and coffee in that cute little mug.

Fingerprints reflect the most basic and unchanging elements of your personality. You can learn to modify the traits they represent, but most of us accept who we are and feel pretty comfortable in our own skin.