My Diecast Life

by Dan Vado, Jef Bambas (Editor), Emily J Parent (Editor)

When longtime indie-publisher and SLG Publishing founder Dan Vado found a carrier full of his childhood diecast cars while cleaning out his late mother’s attic, the first thing he did was play with them. He didn't lay out track, although he could have, he rolled them around a table and he found himself reminiscing about the times spent playing with these cars and the story each one had. What began as a few nostalgic eBay listings turned into a memoir about growing up Italian-American in late-1960s San Jose. In My Die-Cast Life, Vado spins a series of warm, funny, and vividly detailed stories—each tied to a toy car—that chart the collisions between family, friendship, and the first sparks of imagination. From Sunday living-room races on bright-orange track to learning English at home one mis-translated soap opera at a time, Vado re-creates the sights, sounds, and smells of suburban California childhood with humor and heart.

114 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 2, 2025

About the author

Dan’s desired life goals of being a professional layabout and part-time man-about-town were interrupted when he accidentally became a comic book publisher. Founding his comic book company, SLG Publishing in 1986,

Dan went on to publish many eclectic and idiosyncratic titles, such as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, Lenore by Roman Dirge, and a host of other creators and titles too numerous to mention. In addition to his publishing work, Dan briefly wrote for DC Comics, most notably producing a thankfully-forgotten-until-someone-decided-to-reprint-it run of Justice League comics at the same time as being one of the first writers published by DC Comics with a creator-owned contract with his series (with Norman Felchle), The Griffin.

Frequently travelling the path of most resistance, Dan founded a music venue called The Art Boutiki Music Hall. Opening in 2009, the Art Boutiki brought together music, comics, and other art in one place until it closed in December 2025. Dan can often be seen wandering the streets of Midtown in San Jose, walking up to people and saying, “Do you know who I AM?”

Dan is spending the latter part of his useful life pursuing yet another, and perhaps his least yet profitable, avenue: being a writer. His current project is a 90-page novella called "My Diecast Life," which will be released in December of 2025. This new project is a series of vignettes from Vado's boyhood, told through the lens of playing with diecast cars, and offers brief looks at growing up in an Italian household, among other things.

Reviews

[Norman Felchle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, touching, entertaining….and exactly what writing should be ! Dan’s a born storyteller (a gift I’m both envious of and in awe of) If you’re a human you’ll find stuff in this series of vignettes that speaks to you.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan Vado's autobiographical tales of the 1960s and 70s, with a unique perspective on Americana as a child of Italian immigrants, focused through his childhood love of diecast Hot Wheels cars. The indie comic publisher apparently wrote this by way of eBay listings online when selling the collectable toy cars, and the stories became so engaging it became worthy of an entire book. There are everyday stories of family hardships, bullying, crushes and its inevitable awkwardness, getting in trouble (however unfairly) at school, and most of all about growing up. Relatable for humans with hearts, no matter one's generation. And I even learned a lot about cars.

[Stef 'Sharky' · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is genuinely enjoyable from the first page — the introduction alone immediately establishes Dan’s voice: warm, self-aware, and quietly funny. What I loved most is how the humor isn’t performative; it comes from lived experience and the way he frames the sometimes chaotic, sometimes beautiful collision of cultures and worlds he’s moved through. I found myself chuckling left and right, not because the moments were exaggerated, but because they felt familiar and human. This was cozy and nostalgic...it was enjoyable being taken back to simpler times. As a bonus, I even walked away inspired to try a few of the classic Italian dishes he mentions (pane cunzato is officially on my list). It’s great to see Dan writing again; I sincerely hope this is the beginning of more and more stories finding their way onto the page.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot Wheels, childhood memories and a good sense of humor - great combination and compelling stories!
Thank you to Dan and NetGalley for the digital review copy.

P.S. It's for humans.

[Owen Thaxton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew that there was actually something important amidst that pile-up of, "collectums," that is the toys and collectibles market. Stories! Stories from the peeple who played with the toys! The story of a boy and his journey to becoming a Man. I feel like people were buying poems, not just toy cars when Dan Vado sold his collection Hot Wheels in the faith of his Mother. God bless you, Nonna.

All of us are going through a transition. We arrive not at one specific destination, but pass through a melange tapestry of experience. In this way we acquire learning by which we may prepare ourselves for our next intentional step, growing into the person we have always been waiting to become at the end. In the era of the Dan's life when these passages were written and collected he is going through the transition of wisdom, applied with the patient hand of gained knowledge. Ask this guy for stories.

Dan's writing is wonderfully pulpy. The Dan gives himself to the story in these really specific ways, with really specific flavors of the Dan coming through. He is so generous with his reveal of himself to us. We can wait patiently for humanity to reach the Singularity, access read/write privileges of the Cosmic Record, and read the stories of the Dan's life ourselves as some sort of collective big floating appendages conscious, but that is an awful long time to wait.
I am so grateful hearing Dan's stories, and I love that he was so brave and confident to speak candidly about some things which might otherwise be unbearable to voice and be rejected for. In this transition to the next stage of maturity, I think it's Dan's stories of his Nonna that I love him the most.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proof that childhood stories never really grow old...

I picked this up thinking it would be about toy cars and suddenly I was knee deep in childhood memories I did not even know I had. That is the magic trick this book pulls off. My Die-Cast Life is funny, heartfelt, and super easy to fall into, like listening to someone tell great stories at the kitchen table. I loved how each little car unlocked a whole world of family moments, growing pains, and that feeling of being a kid when everything felt bigger and louder and more important. This book made me laugh, slowed me down, and reminded me why the stuff we played with as kids still matters. If you like stories that feel real and leave you a little nostalgic by the end, this one is a great read 🚗✨

[Abigail L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Die-Cast Life is a warm and often funny memoir that uses childhood toy cars as a doorway into growing up Italian American in late 1960s San Jose. Each chapter ties a small, ordinary object to a bigger moment involving family, friendship, language, and imagination, and it works surprisingly well. The stories feel lived in and specific, from Sunday races on bright orange track to the awkwardness of learning English through half understood television shows. What I enjoyed most was how personal it felt without ever trying too hard. It reminded me how small memories can carry a lot of emotional weight, and I found myself smiling at moments that felt familiar even when they were not my own.

[litandcoffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vado’s memoir offers a measured, unsentimental examination of how a child learns to survive within the overlapping pressures of family, culture, and unspoken rules. The book's frame is deceptively simple. Now in his sixties, Vado finds himself rolling his childhood die-cast cars across a table, allowing memory to surface without force. “This car was no mere toy,” he writes. “It was all the possible futures I might have.” That line establishes the book’s emotional center. The cars are not sentimental props; they are containers for longing, control, embarrassment, aspiration, and imagination. Each chapter is anchored to a single vehicle, but the narrative weight rests on the child who used play as a way to understand a world governed by rules he did not create.

Vado’s mother looms large throughout the book, volatile, loving, unpredictable, and absolute. Her authority governs the household with no room for negotiation. When she enters a room, tension follows. “Company comn’. Pick dis up and put it away!” she orders, and the command carries consequence as much as instruction. His father, quieter and emotionally distant, offers occasional protection but little refuge. From an early age, the child learns to read the emotional weather of rooms, to retreat when necessary, to comply when resistance would cost too much.

Growing up Italian American in late-1960s San Jose places Vado in a constant in-between. English is not his first language, and fluency arrives piecemeal. “It was like learning to play the piano from someone who doesn’t have fingers,” he observes, capturing the disorientation of assimilation without turning it into grievance. Misunderstandings follow him into school and friendships. Names become vulnerabilities. Jokes misfire. A toy’s name becomes an invitation for ridicule. These moments are minor in isolation, but cumulative in effect. Play becomes both refuge and rehearsal. The Sunday living-room races on bright-orange track are rituals governed by rules Vado controls. Cars are disqualified. Wrecks must “convalesce.” Order is imposed where life offers none. “Without tradition and ritual,” he asks, “are we not just savages?”

The book’s quiet power lies in restraint. Vado does not exaggerate or retrofit adult judgment onto childhood scenes. Losses are absorbed rather than explained. Humor surfaces often, but it is sharpened by exposure rather than softened by nostalgia. By its end, the book reveals itself not as nostalgia, but as an inquiry into memory itself. The cars are sold. The stories remain. What survives is not the object, but the imprint of a childhood spent learning how to endure, imagine, and move forward anyway. Readers who loved the quiet reckoning of Educated by Tara Westover, or the unsentimental childhood portrait of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, will find a similarly intimate, observant memoir here.