Author: dave-o

FYI: Upcoming “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” ebook promo

Just a quick heads-up: my Nebula-nominated (“toot, toot!” goes my own horn) novella, “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” will be available absolutely *FREE!* next week! Visit Amazon between February 22 and 24 and download a copy! Spread the word WITH *EXCLAMATION* POINTS! Overstate Minor TRIUMPHS!!!
But, for reals, swing by and grab a free copy from Feb 22-24:
Amazon.com: Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate eBook: David Erik Nelson, Chad Sell: Kindle Store

Boomerang Success Story!

Make A Simple Cardboard Boomerang | Apartment Therapy

(credit: Richard Popovic)
I remember when my brother got a foam-rubber boomerang at the circus one year. We spent hours throwing it at each other in the backyard, desperately trying to get it to come back to us with little success. I figured I just didn’t have the knack. As it turns out, it was the boomerang’s fault (I knew it!), and I can make one in a few minutes that is guaranteed to work. Sign me up!

FACT: Hearing about folks’ success with one of my projects is just *insanely* gratifying–and all the more so when it’s a boomerang success story. My introduction to boomerangs as a kid was *also* a circus souvenir, and I had *exactly* the same experience as Richard; soured me on the damn things for ~15 years.
Do you have a boomerang success story? Send it my way; we need to push back against all the terrible boomerang karma drifting around out there.

On boomerangs and boomeranging (my final guest blog posts at Man Made DIY)

My last two guest blog posts are up at Man Made DIY; the first is on making your own boomerangs from scarps of cardboard (if you’re looking at this blog, you’ve probably already got the skinny on that). The other post is entirely new and starts to get at what I really like about teaching and DIY.
The Spirituality of Boomerangs: On Making Something from Nothing… — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: talk, diy, craft, philosophy

In a nutshell, the cheap toy-store boomerang encompasses the core sadness of “growing up,” and highlights what we envy in the “childlike wonder” of children: As we mature, we begin to reflexively doubt that neat things are real, or really as neat as they seem, and start to assume that most of the time most things just aren’t going to work as advertised. This is our default setting as Americans: Don’t believe the hype. So, if you take a room full of people who are savvy and jaded and know enough not to believe the hype, then give them a ruler and a marker and a pair of scissors and show them how to quickly make a working boomerang out of something they were going to cram in the recycle bin, they become luminous; they’ve just made something awesome out of trash, and it clearly dawns on them that there are a whole lot of other things they could make, too. They could remake the world.

Check ’em out. Thanks!

Crafting Liberation: Confessions of an Unredeemable Direction-Follower

I’m still guest blogging at Man Made DIY this week; please feel free to check my latest post out and, if you feel so moved, chime in. Thanks!
Crafting Liberation: Confessions of an Unredeemable Direction-Follower — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: recipe, talk, cooking, craft

I’m an unredeemable direction-follower. As a boy, I’d account for the meniscus when measuring water to make Ramen noodles. As a man, I was relentlessly mocked by my wife for my stove-side devotion to the succinct instructions of Mark Bittman . . . . This, obviously, is the pathology of a man terrified of failure–that I ever wrote anything at all, let alone an entire damn book (let alone several!) is itself a crippled miracle. While DIY is obviously empowering–My stove was broken, now it’s fixed; I did that!–having instructions in hand can really quickly shackle us, as it’s so easy to mistake a good way of doing X for the only way to do X. . . .

If you’re a crafter/maker, this is a worthwhile Kickstarter project

Or, really, a worthwhile investment; there is a *lot* of disorganized info floating around the web explaining how one *might* transition his/her DIY habits into some sort of business that at least defrays its own costs–and maybe even puts some meaningful scratch in the coffers. What’s missing in my humble, is an organized set of case studies from actual makers/crafters who’ve made their DIY hobbies into stable businesses.
I’ve interfaced with TJ a little, over email and Skype; he’s a good guy, and really well suited to putting this project together. Dave’s advice: Go in with at least $15 so you can get the ebook.
Makers Going Pro by TJ McCue — Kickstarter

Guest blogging at Man Made DIY is *GOOOOO!!!*

I’m guest blogging all this week at Man Made DIY and the first of these posts just went live. Tune in later this week for project-specific stuff, as well as some general DIYing advice and things I’ve learned since writing Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred.
The Craft and Commerce of Writing — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: talk, work, craft, writing

I never set out to write a craft book–or, for that matter, to write business columns, or reference materials, or textbooks on teen sex and Chernobyl, or basically anything that’s paid the bills over the last five years. I’d written for years, but it had been an after-hours art: Essays about technology and sexuality and Detroit’s decay; stories about clockwork robots, haunted dogs, monster wives, and giant squid–the kind of stuff you gut out after dark; the kind of stuff you write for the consuming love of finding how to say it. The kind of stuff that’s hard to sell.

My Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Holiday Gift To You!

It’s been a basically rad year for DIYing and making and meeting new folks who are enthusiastic about taking crazy ideas and making them into crazy objects and communities. As a token of my appreciation, I’d like to send any interested folks an ebook copy of my geeky DIY craft book SNIP, BURN, SOLDER, SHRED. Email me at dave[AT]davideriknelson[DOT]com before the New Year and I’ll send you a link to download a big, beautiful PDF of the whole thing (if you’re more of a Kindle/Nook person, I can probably accommodate you, too).
FYI for you strictly online shoppers: Odds are slim for getting a copy of my book in time for Xmas (although Chanukah People can probably get one from No Starch Press before the Eighth Night; order directly from their site using the coupon code “SHRED”, save 35 percent, get *free* ebooks!). So, I’m happy to hook you up with an ebook copy as a sort of place-holder gift, if you’d like; just drop me an email and I’ll send you a link.
Added bonus: Here’s a holiday song I recorded a few years ago, when there was more hair on the top part of my head, and more hours in each day. Enjoy! Merry Whatever Thing!
Another Dark Christmastime – YouTube

My 5yo and I finally built a LEGO microscale Millennium Falcon

Using the instructions I posted a few weeks back (Snip, Burn, Solder Blog: Make a LEGO Millennium Falcon Ornament) and the idiosyncratic mélange of decades-old hand-me-down LEGO we have on hand, my 5-year-old and I built this wicked-awesome Millennium Falcon (or, as he calls it, “the Peregrine Falcon,” because his grounding in the natural sciences sadly exceeds his grounding in American popular mythology. This is my fault, and I bear the full burden of our familial shame).
Pictured here in flight with guns blazing (the boy loves lasers):

And here in dry-dock with microfig Han and Chewie conferring about what the crap is wrong with the damn hyperdrive: