Category: Other Writing

Early Access! Get a sneak-peak at the #DIY projects in JUNKYARD JAM BAND TODAY!


My publisher is offering early access to projects from JUNKYARD JAM BAND (release date: May 2015). These are completed, fully illustrated musical instrument/toy projects that have been revised, tested, copyedited, proofread, and gone into final layout. The first batch of Early Access Projects drops *today(!!!)* and includes the Slinkiphone, Plasti-Pickup, and Scratchbox.
Anyone who preorders the JUNKYARD JAM BAND print edition or ebook is automatically enrolled in Early Access. You get projects as soon as they’re fit for public consumption, and have the opportunity to hit us with feedback. Pre-orders also get a 30% discount (use the coupon code EARLYBIRD ) and when you buy the print edition you get the DRM-free ebook bundle, too (no up-charge or additional fee). In short, order now and you get a few projects *immediately,* will be the first to get a print copy, and will have the finalized ebooks the day they drop–all for *less* than the steeply-discounted Amazon list price (and you get all that in addition to supporting indie publishers, the Maker Movement, DIY in the schools, the Youth of Today, the Future of America, my family, dog, dependents, and creditors, blah, blah, blah). It’s a win-win-win-win-win…winn

  • Pre-order JUNKYARD JAM BAND and get FREE Early Access!

    • Help Me Pick a New Author Photo!


    FUN FACT: Humans like buying books that they have reason to believe were written by actual humans like themselves. (*Pfff* humans, amiright?) Subsequently, if you write a book, the publisher is going to ask for a picture of you to put on the back. Since this picture is going to be used in offset printing, it needs to be relatively high resolution. When No Starch Press asked me for a high-rez pic to use as my author photo back in 2010, I had exactly *two* pictures to choose from, both taken at the spur of the moment on the same day. The one I used–shown at the left–is the one where you *can’t* see that I’m holding a gun[*]
    So, that was the entire process for choosing my author photo: Let’s go with the one with no visible guns. We in the biz call that “understanding the market.” Fortunately, in the intervening years, phone-based cameras have gotten much better and I’ve met more photographers. I now have a plethora of options for my new author photo–and you can help us choose one!
    Please take a few seconds to finish this quick one-question survey. Help a brother out! Thank you, and Happy 2015!!!
    https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9QC7WVD

    Continue reading “Help Me Pick a New Author Photo!”

    (Re)Watch Jim Henson’s “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” Appreciate the Subtle Narrative Trajectory

    FULL DISCLOSURE: I have no idea if this TV special is actually enjoyable or not; it was made in 1977, and screened several years running when I was little, and so I watch it not as a fully-functional 21st Century human, but as a larval 1980s proto-being sitting rapt at the foot of the broadcast-only television set that largely raised him. I believe that, when I first saw Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas our television remote control was still literally a clicker, in that it actually clicked. This was certainly in the days before VCRs, consumer-grade satellite television, or the cable company reaching our heavily wooded Metro Detroit suburb. On re-viewing, I’ve discovered that this “special” (as we then called them, presumably because they were advertised as “special broadcasts” or “special programming” in the TV Guide) left deep traces in the folds of my forming brain–for example, I realized during this recent re-viewing that the cigar-box ukulele I’ve included in my upcoming DIY book is quite clearly modeled on the cigar-box banjo the muskrat plays in Emmet’s band.
    Anyway, maybe this show is only truly enjoyable through the lens of nostalgia, but watching it with my 21st Century children the other night, I realized that not only is this a weirdly inside-out “Gift of the Magi” (in that Emmet and his mother hock *each other’s* prized possessions in order to get together the money to enter the contest to win some money to give each other presents–it’s like O’Henry if it had been rewritten by Quentin Tarantino), but also really interestingly nuanced storycraft: Once the contest starts and Emmet and his mother realize they’re competing against *each other,* there’s only one outcome that *isn’t* devilishly tragic, and that outcome is inherently a downer. Nonetheless, Henson pulls it off in a masterfully balanced way, making for a humane, moral, and powerful piece of storytelling.
    But what *really* struck me was how much this story reminded me of O’Conner’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”–not in an obvious way, as with the echoes of “Gift of the Magi,” but in its overall mood, its sense of rural down-in-the-holler isolation interfered with by a briefly glimmering, chaotic criminal element that comes careening into the scene from somewhere far out of their normal ken–hell, out of their goddamned orbit, like malignant meteorites–just to fuck shit up and then zoom away again.
    And, of course, the thing that those chaotic, quasi-criminal “River Bottom Boys” do that fucks things up is insert actual rock into the prevailing old-timey folkery. I remember, as a kid, identifying with Emmet–who was the obvious Good Guy™–but also being uncomfortably drawn to and fascinated by the River Bottom Nightmare Band’s music, which wasn’t *good* music in the way that Emmet’s and his mother’s was (those are, in fact, perfectly sturdy little folk/bluegrass tunes), but was *powerful* music. I know that other folks my age had a similar experience back then, and was surprised when my wife looked up from her work as we all watched this (on our discarded dead-pixelated flat-panel TV that’s hooked to no cable and can receive no broadcasts, but instead gets its signal from a half-broken laptop computer–a rig that is functionally a million times better than the TV I watched for, easily, 6-hours a day as a child, and which my children rarely even think to ask about turning on) and commented absently that she really liked the Nightmare Band’s song and schtick.
    The Nightmare Band is dressed as arena glam-rockers, but they really are, truly and at their core, punks. And, of course, that punk got into me and all the other little footie-pajama-clad proto-humans staring into their family TV sets back then, when “Winter Break” was still called “Christmas Break,” and everyone was a little less guarded in their seasonal microaggression and microinvalidation . I doubt this was Henson’s intent, but we rarely end up actually accomplishing what we set out to do–which I’m pretty sure is the motto *actually* written on Lady Liberty’s tablet.
    For those who aren’t students of Hebrew or the Torah, I’l just note now that EMET translates to “truth.” Just sayin’

    OUTTAKE (via @dhelder):

    Dear Internet: I Made You These Xmanukah Songs

    I’m a mixed Jew who’s lived in the American Midwest for his entire life. I think these songs, more than anything else I’ve ever written, are honest about that experience.

  • Another Dark Xmastime (FUN FACT: I wrote this during my first year as a fundamentally unemployable stay-at-home dad; my son believes it is an accepted part of the general Xmas Music Canon.)
  • Dreidel Bells (FUN FACT: The beat here is an original GameBoy running an early German Nanoloop cartridge. Both voices are obviously me, but the filters for the robot voice badly overburdened my iBook, causing significant lag–which is why Mr. Roboto struggles so badly to hit his marks.)
  • DreidelDreidelDreidel (FUN FACT: The beat here is a vintage analog Boss DR-55 once owned by POE, crammed through a heavy-metal distortion stompbox.)

    • Get Yer Last-Minute e-Stocking Stuffers and Virtual Dreidel Loot!

    Maybe time has slipped past you, or you just need to get a little something different for someone a little different. These ebooks will put you back less than a cup of fancy coffee, won’t languish in the US mails, and don’t need gift-wrapping:

    The New Guys Always Work Overtime: An award winning time-portal short first published in Asimov’s last year. Taylor works for Just-in-Time Fabrication and Fulfillment. Instead of outsourcing production, his company is 100% MADE IN AMERICA—and keeps prices down by bringing in cheap labor through a time portal. Training these quaint temp workers seems like a good job—until Taylor meets the latest batch of New Guys. (Also available DRM-free, which might suit you better for gift giving.)
    The Giant Squid presents A Tahitian Tale: Chronicles of the Giant Squid – Volume 1: The first in a series of autobiographical two-fisted tales narrated by Poor Mojo’s Giant Squid–a sorta sinister, sorta steampunk squid just trying to get along in a world not of his making (and also recover Tycho Brahe’s cursed golden nose for his Nazi masters).
    Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate (Clockie American Steampunk Book 1): In this celebrated steampunk novella, a lonely veterinarian recounts a crippled, alcoholic, Confederate infantryman’s attempts to teach decommissioned clockwork soldiers to make nice (*wink, wink*) with their Mormon neighbors. (Also available in a pick-what-you-pay DRM-free bundle.)

    Need something more substantial? Check out this DIY toy book or celebrated steampunk novella.

    Wanna Review My Forthcoming book: JUNKYARD JAM BAND: DIY MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND NOISEMAKERS? Drop Me a Line! #diy #maker


    Are you a READER OF THINGS? Are you interested in the MAKER Movement and DIY? Do you like FREE BOOKS? I’m wrapping up my second DIY book for No Starch Press: Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers. This new book is focused entirely on musical instruments and noise toys (both traditional and odd-as-hell–see a few early prototypes in the videos below). If you’re interested in a review copy, hit me with your contact info and a link to your venue (or blog, Tumblr, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon account, etc.)
    Wondering what my books are like? There are SNEAK PEEKS and FREE SAMPLES from my first book at the No Starch Press website and on Amazon.
    Please feel free to pass this on to others you know who might be interested! Thanks!




    HISTORY: A HISTORY OF HISTORIES IN 10 HISTORIES


    If you’ve set foot in a physical bookstore in the last several years, you’re no doubt familiar with the A History of X in N Ys nonfiction subgenre (e.g., A History of the World in 100 Objects, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, A History of the World in 12 Maps, etc.). It’s not a terrible scaffolding to build a non-fiction work around, but the gimmick is certainly getting played out, and descending into self-parody.
    A while back I spotted one of these “History of X in Ten Whatevers” snowclones on a “New Releases!” shelf in our local B&N while wandering around, waiting for my boy to pick out another Pokemon desk reference. I can’t even recall the history’s actual title or topic now, just that it had the format, and so goaded me into snarking the above-embedded tweets.
    But the more I’ve thought about it, the more it’s begun to seem like a sort of a reasonable project, as a framework for picking apart what we really mean when we say “History,” and what we’ve meant over time. Like, Shakespeare’s RICHARD III is a “history,” but is totally slanted. Most US branches of Xtianity take the OLD TESTAMENT as a history–and it meaningfully is, but not in the same way that BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE is a history, or THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and Studs Turkel’s WORKING are histories, or THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT is a history. Heck, the TORAH (i.e., that same OLD TESTAMENT) *isn’t* considered a history by most of the Jews for whom it is the primary religious text–but the Talmudic and other commentaries on the TORAH *are* understood to be a very important history of the evolution of not just Jewish thought, but human ethical development.
    For that matter, there are distinctly different *kinds* of histories that have gone in and out of vogue over time; few true chronicles are produced any longer, but memoirs and biographies–especially those focused on folks previously ignored because of their race, gender, class, or general Otherness–have blossomed and multiplied.
    And all of which speaks to our evolving notion of what “history” means–and the possibility that HISTORY: A HISTORY OF HISTORIES IN 10 HISTORIES is actually not that bad of an idea. The question is: What 10 histories would go in? I kinda like the idea of having DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL in there, as well as Plains Indian winter counts, and Iceland’s Islendingabok and subsequent Book of Icelanders database).
    What would you include?

    HAPPY THANKSGIVING: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!” #gobblegobble #writing

    THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.

    This is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag–which is saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. They are the awful, crippled, shambling intermediate link between stage plays (which I like) and modern cinematic multi-camera sitcoms (which I *also* like). That said, the terribly be-shitted wasteland of laugh-track sitcoms was–by very virtue of the enormous piles of shit–nutrient rich soil, and some wonderful things flourished there. Chief among them were gags like this. Here it’s presented as a single, stand-alone joke. But in the episode itself, it was broken up (you can see the rough jump cuts where it’s pasted together here), and developed across the entire half-hour of programming as a sort of lietmotif.

    TIP FOR WRITERS: This sort of multi-strand punctuated development is a really great tool both for building and managing tension (and thus carrying the audience along), and for building stories that can grab and hold otherwise non-overlapping audiences (MY SO-CALLED LIFE is sort of a perfect example of this: Most episodes had largely independent narrative threads about the parents and teens, making that show highly watchable to two groups who otherwise can’t agree on much).

    ANOTHER TIP FOR WRITERS: When this joke is presented standalone like this, it becomes obvious that it’s a pretty tidy example of a piece that is pleasing and easy to track, in part, because it manages cognitive load gracefully–establishing a premise, building expectant tension, then releasing that tension–with a classic three-part structure.

    FINAL NOTE: When I was a kid, it was the general manager’s punchline that I repeated–“as God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”–believing that it was the key to this house. I mean, after all, folks laugh when you say that. But as I get older and re-watch this each year, I find that what really, really makes it is Les Nessman’s earnest reporting of the facts–he is, in fact, in his naiveté, perfectly modeling what a reporter should be and should do–and especially his shell-shocked recounting, during the story’s Tangle, of the turkey’s counterattack. I’ve found that often–especially in literary fiction–authors confuse the Tangle with the Resolution, believing that once they’ve provided the Setup and Tangle, their story is done. I’d previously assumed that this was because they’d mistaken a simple twist for a “twist ending.” But the WKRP Turkey Drop Gag gives a clue as to a deeper reason for why folks confuse the Tangle for the Resolution: It’s because the Tangle is often the source of your story’s real punch, the place in its core that it coils back down into in order to spring out from its heels and knock you silly with the Resolution. (If these terms–Tangle, Resolution–are throwing you, just skim the bulleted bit near the top of the cognitive load post.)

    The Working-for-the-Weekend Career Strategy: Pick a Pay Scale, and Look for a Job in that Zone



    I’ve become increasingly convinced that “find your passion” is an incredibly destructive piece of advice. It tends to create three outcomes:

    1. Folks who follow their passion and flourish in that field.

    2. Folks who follow their passion, discover that they are constitutionally ill-fit for that job, and either self-destruct or abandon ship, in either case feeling like a failure.

    3. Folks who have no idea what the Hell their “passion” is supposed to be, and thus spend their working life being, at best, deeply dissatisfied.

        4. Group #1 is vanishingly small, and possibly self-deluded. Bear in mind that, technically, that word–“passion”–denotes a level of excitement and arousal that is almost unbearable. It should be used to describe experiences that are fleeting and intense: orgasms are passionate, teaching English is a slog. If you tell me “teaching is your passion,” then I want to know what the word us you use for when your genitals are in contact with those of someone you love.
        Group #2 are the sad realists. I was actually in a job that was my “passion” for about 8 years. I was good at it, but totally psychological incapable of coping with the job’s stresses, and that almost ended up killing me (literally).
        Group #3 are robbed of one of the great satisfactions of human life: Being useful to other humans. No one is passionate about custodial work, or even “passionate” about it. But there are some really great custodians out there, who make lives better every day, and are proud of their work and the positive impact they have on their fellow humans. That is a noble and wonderful thing, and it’s embarrassingly easy to achieve: When you learn a trade and do it competently–not passionately, but well and responsibly–you can and will be useful to your fellow humans. I’d wager that *most* of the dissatisfied workers in Group #3 are perfectly competent at their jobs, and could be enjoying, on a daily basis, how useful they are to their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family–but they aren’t, because they’re casting around for the career equivalent of True Love.
        So, here’s my suggestions: Forget about your “passion.” Instead, imagine the kind of life you want to live–Where do you want to live? With whom? How many if them are dependent children or pets? What hobbies and and trips and experiences do you want to have in your life?–Calculate out how much money you need on an annual basis to do that, and then look at this list and pick a job.
        This works for folks changing careers, too. Sick of being a teacher (which is, incidentally, the “passion” that almost killed me)? Well, heck, then consider being an embalmer or a glazier or hazmat worker or a radio/TV announcer or a solar-cell installer or a goddamn drywaller–all of which pay about the same as being a first-year teacher, and two of which I know for a fact you can learn in a week or two of on-the-job training. Lots of weird, unrelated jobs are adjacent to each other in pay. There are lots of different ways to work for the weekend.
        (source where I first saw this graphic)