Next Tuesday marks the publication of my latest YA novel, Homeland, and I’ll be kicking off a month-long tour across the US on February 5 with a stop in Seattle, followed by Portland and San Francisco.

From there, I swing to the southwest — a region I’ve never toured! — with stops in Salt Lake City and Tempe. Then it’s northeast to NYC, south to Cincinnati, Miami, Chapel Hill, Decatur, Oxford, MS, Memphis, and New Orleans.

Then I do two stops in Texas: Austin and Houston, before crossing northeast again to Portsmouth and Concord, NH; down to DC, over to Boston, then Albuquerque.

There’s also a couple stops I’ll be making after the tour proper: Lawrence, KS and Toronto.

I’ll be reading from the book, talking about the themes and my inspiration for writing it, and about how Aaron Swartz contributed to it. I’m hoping that the public appearances turn into a chance to brainstorm about how to keep Aaron’s work going. The events are all-ages and kid-friendly, and I’ll be happy to sign your books, ereaders, floppy discs, laptops, or whatever.

I don’t think that there are going to be any more cities added — pretty much every day is a travel-day already. But there is some time for press interviews, podcasts, and so forth, so if that’s your thing feel free to mail me and I’ll forward you on to my publicist to see if we can schedule it in.

Touring is hard work, but I love it. Everywhere I go, I meet happy mutants — young and old — and get to talk with them about their passions and hopes. It’s what keeps me going through the year. I really hope you’ll come out and join the fun!

Here’s the full schedule:

Homeland Tour/Cory Doctorow/February 5 – 26, 2013

Here’s a long excerpt:

Homeland (Excerpt)

And here’s some things the critics are saying:

“Outstanding for its target audience, and even those outside Doctorow’s traditional reach may find themselves moved by its call to action” – Kirkus

“Fans of Little Brother and the author’s other stories of technophiliac hacktivism ought to love this book” – Publishers Weekly

* Assuming your town is one of the ones I’m coming to, of course. Alert readers will have already noticed that there’s not much action in the midwest, Rockies, or northeast, which is a deliberate decision in the hopes of minimizing weather delays during a jam-packed tour schedule. Sorry! I got to as much of the northeast and midwest as I could back on the Pirate Cinema tour in November.

Here’s a reading from my upcoming novel, Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother. It’s a rehearsal for the readings I’ll be giving at schools and libraries when I leave for my 22-city US tour next week.

He fitted me with a blood pressure cuff — yeah, it was a tactical cuff, which clearly made this guy as happy as a pig in shit — and then started in with the electrodes. He had a lot of electrodes and he was going to use ’em all, that much was clear. Each one went in over a smear of conductive jelly that came out of a disposable packet, like the ketchup packets you get at McDonald’s. These, at least, were non-tactical, emblazoned instead with German writing and an unfamiliar logo.

That was when I started puckering and unpuckering my anus.

Yes, you read that right. Here’s the thing about lie detectors: they work by measuring the signs of nervousness, like increases in pulse, respiration, and yeah, sweatiness. The theory is that people get more nervous when they’re lying, and that nervousness can be measured by the gadget.

This doesn’t work so well. There’s plenty of cool customers who’re capable of lying without any outward signs of anxiety, because they’re not feeling any anxiety. That’s pretty much the definition of a sociopath, in fact: someone who doesn’t have any reaction to a lie. So lie detectors work great, except when it comes to the most dangerous liars in the world. That’s the “It’s better than nothing” stupidity I mentioned before, remember?

But there’re plenty of people who start off nervous — say, people who’re nervous because they’re taking a lie detector test on which depends their job or their freedom. Or someone who’s been kidnapped by a couple of private mercenaries who’ve threatened to take him to their hideout if he doesn’t cooperate.

But sometimes, lie detectors can tell the difference between normal nervousness and lying nervousness. Which is why it’s useful to inject a few little extra signs of anxiety into the process. There are lots of ways to do this. Supposedly, spies used to keep a thumbtack in their shoe and they could wiggle their toes against it to make their nervous systems do the Charleston at just the right moment to make their “calm” state seem pretty damned nervous. So when they told a lie, any additional nervousness would be swamped by the crazy parasympathetic nervous system jitterbug their bodies were jangling through.

Thumbtacks in your shoe are overkill, though. They’re fine for super-macho super-spies for whom a punctured toe is a badge of honor. But if you ever need to beat a polygraph, just pucker up — your butt, that is.

Squeezing and releasing your butt-hole recruits many major muscle- and nerve groups, gets a lot of blood flowing, and makes you look like you’re at least as nervous as a liar, when all you’re doing are some rhythmic bum-squeezes. As a side bonus, do it enough and you will have BUNS OF STEEL.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes “Beer Jewelry” and “Odd Musical Furniture.” He often “meditates while reading cookbooks.”

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