Here’s my latest Pencil-Sharpening tour recap, including my encounter with an electric pencil-sharpener salesman and sharpening my 500th pencil!

Let my visit to Salt Lake City serve as a parable about the importance of keeping a positive attitude even as your dreams are ground into black powder by a universe conspiring to destroy you …

Hi everybody who reads my blog! I’m in Salt Lake City, Utah in a fancy hotel!

The latest recap from my nationwide pencil-sharpening tour can be found here.

In other news about HOW TO SHARPEN PENCILS, here is a comprehensive, disarmingly sincere interview I did about the project.

And here is a video made by the good people at VICE magazine:

Literary Festivals, erotic Christian fiction, Southern Comfort, and more … it’s all here in this recap!

I’ve been hired by myself to recap my pencil-sharpening tour. Here’s the first recap!

One of America’s top pencil bloggers has written a comprehensive review of HOW TO SHARPEN PENCILS:

There are great illustrations that are genuinely useful, if you wanted to understand your pencil and your sharpener down to a science. Graphics like “Irregular pencil points — a taxonomy” shows you five results of an improperly sharpened pencil. He goes into some detail to explain how to avoid pitfalls that result in these types — this is actually useful, people!

I’m getting very excited for my nationwide pencil-sharpening tour.

Talk to you soon — on my internet blog!

Hello, blog readers!

I’m happy to say that my new book HOW TO SHARPEN PENCILS will be published on April 10! Can you believe it? I almost can’t.

Friends, this exhaustive pencil-sharpening manual is a valuable addition to the craftsman’s home library and will be the definitive guide for generations of pencil enthusiasts. It features a foreword by John Hodgman, lovely photographs by Meredith Heuer, and 18 chapters, including:

– SHARPENING A PENCIL WITH A POCKETKNIFE
– PSYCHOLOGICAL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH PENCIL SHARPENING
– MASTERING CELEBRITY IMPRESSION PENCIL SHARPENING (CIPS)

The book is based on my experiences running ArtisanalPencilSharpening.com for the past two years, in which time I have sharpened more than 475 pencils for clients around the world! (If you’re one of those clients, thank you for your business!)

Here are some computer links for pre-ordering the book from robot bookstores:

ORDER ON AMAZON!
or …
ORDER ON BARNES & NOBLE!
or …
ORDER ON POWELLS!

(Of course, it is my preference as an artisan that you buy the book from your locally sourced bookseller.)

To promote the book, I am embarking on a NATIONWIDE PENCIL-SHARPENING TOUR. More information about this tour will be forthcoming.

For now, I hope you will consider ordering the book! Need I say it makes a lovely gift?

Many thanks for your interest,
From your friend with the blog,
David Rees
http://www.mnftiu.cc
http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com

Hi everybody! I’m sorry I haven’t bloggered much lately. I just got back from JoCoCruiseCrazy II, a Caribbean nerd cruise organized by Jonathan Coulton. It was really fun! (I will try to find photos on the internet to share with you.)

I have a bunch of shows coming up this spring, most of which are devoted to promoting my pencil-sharpening book, which will be published on April 10!!!

Hmm. I can’t really think of anything else to mention right now. But I’ll be back soon, blogging harder than ever.

Sincerely,
David

We’ve put together a fun show for Thursday’s installment of LOLLYGAGGIN’. Please join me (David) as I host Max Silvestri, Jacqueline Novak, and other funny guests. We will join forces in laughter or my name isn’t Buster Brown, aka “The Cell-Phone Communicator.”