Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 35

Patreon Reorganization, January 2021

When I set up my Patreon, I had no idea how well it would work–or not. My life in information technology has me paranoid, though, so I set up my Patreon through a paranoid lens.

Patreon worked better than I feared. It’s exceeded what I hoped for. Not my wildest dreams, mind you. (My wildest dreams are not financial, mind you, so they’re irrelevant–but still.)

I am therefore changing my Patreon to be more generous.

Creators of greater Patreon savvy than myself were unanimous in telling me to give...

A Very MWL Christmas

As if writing about TLS, filesystems, and apocalypse wasn’t bad enough, I also write Christmas stories. And sell them. To publishers.

Last year the WMG Holiday Spectacular sent subscribers a Christmas story every day for a month. It was a fictional Advent calendar. It included my Beaks short story, Sister Silence Night. It’s unquestionably a Christmas story. It couldn’t happen any other time of the year. And it’s also a Beaks story, so bring bandages.

This had two aftereffects.

One, the stories ...

Bundle, and the next Montague Portal novel

Those of you who stalk me on social media know that I was working to write a novel in ten days. It took two weeks, a serious failure on my part. I can only plead 2020. And now I can say why.

There’s this thing called Storybundle. For one low, low price you get a big heap of ebooks. And if you look at the Big Time bundle that came out last night, you’ll see at least one familiar name.

For $15, you don’t just get ten books. You get ten good books.

And part of your money goes to support folks deva...

Book Sale

For those interested in such things, I recently posted my 60,000th tweet. This prodded me to try an experiment I’ve been pondering for a while. Over at my ebookstore, two of my books are now on a “Name Your Own Price” sale. You can get git commit murder and PAM Mastery for any price you …

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Online Jails talk with Q&A, 25 September 2020

As part of the FreeBSD Foundation’s FreeBSD Fridays series, I’ll be giving a talk on Introductory Jails on 25 September 2020, at 1700 UTC or noon EDT. Yes, that’s tomorrow. I’ll be taking questions after. Join the talk at https://live.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/free....

Another orc story, and more fiction stuff!

The “Face The Strange” anthology has escaped, including my Prohibition Orcs tale “Woolen Torment.” I sold this story to this traditionally-published anthology back at the beginning of 2018. It was due to come out this fall, but the publisher cancelled the anthology this spring because of the plague. Thankfully, the editors chose to release it …

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“TLS Mastery” Covers Reveal, with T-shirts and Posters

No, that’s not a typo. TLS Mastery will have two covers. Eddie Sharam outdid himself this time, in more ways than one, parodying an artistic masterpiece that folks have requested for years. Munch’s The Scream could not be used for just any book, mind you. It demands a topic of particular notoriety. A subject that …

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TLS Mastery updates, August 2020

Solar systems form out of vast clouds of particles and gas. Motes of dust aggregate, drawn together by their own minuscule gravity over innumerable aeons. Those aggregates creep near other aggregates, eventually colliding into heavier masses, and their combined gravity draws yet more matter. A cosmic observer with a really compressed sense of time would …

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The Worst that Can Happen to an Author

Kris Rusch has a lovely blog post today on the need for courage in the writing business. I started to comment on it, but the comment grew to such a length that would be rude to leave it. “Comment” does not mean “lengthy diatribe.” So: A key component of courage is the willingness to accept …

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I’m At a Hacking Con

A virtual con, that is. Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) asked me for an interview. I’ll be live tomorrow at noon, US Eastern DST (1600 GMT). It’ll be on Jitsi, so there’ll be the tech to have a live Q&A. I expect we’ll have time. Not on the schedule yet, but I’m sure they’ll get …

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