Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 43

New podcast interview

Apparently August 2018 is Shamelessly Shill Yourself Month. I appeared on the IT in the D podcast last week. A fun time was had by all–well, at least by me. And that’s the important thing, right? We talked about my books, decades of IT, SSH, ed, and general nerdery. I worked with Dave and Bob …

Continue reading "New podcast interview"

Tuesday, 21 August 18: me, on ed(1), at SemiBUG

The headline pretty much says it all, but: Next Tuesday, I’ll be presenting on ed(1) at the SouthEast Michigan BSD User Group, semibug.org. 7 PM, Altair Engineering. I doubt that any user group or conference will want me to show up to talk about ed(1), even though it is the standard text editor. So, this …

Continue reading "Tuesday, 21 August 18: me, on ed(1), at SemiBUG"

Bookstore Reading

My first ever reading at a bookstore happens this Friday! I’ll be at the Grey Wolfe Scriptorium in Clawson, MI, at 7 PM this Friday, reading from git commit murder. The bookstore is really easy to get to, maybe a mile west of I-75 on 14 Mile Road. If people show up, I’ll read aloud …

Continue reading "Bookstore Reading"

Burn it down! Burn it all down!

I burned yesterday and redesigned my web sites. What was www.michaelwlucas.com, blather.michaelwlucas.com, www.michaelwarrenlucas.com, and mwl.io have been consolidated in a single site, mwl.io. Fiction, nonfiction, FAQ, and blog, all coexisting as one happy family. Happy families are the ones most likely to stab each other in their sleep. But anyway. I have a whole slew …

Continue reading "Burn it down! Burn it all down!"

Web Empire Redesign

I just went through and switched all four of my personal web sites to WordPress’ 2017 theme, getting rid of Atahualpa and Evolve. They were fine for their time, but 2017 supports everything I need and most of what I want. My sites still need help, though. And I’m reaching out for guidance from people …

Continue reading "Web Empire Redesign"

Writing Business Cashflow

Most craft businesses fail. It’s not surprising. Being an expert knitter doesn’t mean you should open a yarn shop. Lots of those hobbyist stores go broke in the first year because the excited, enthusiastic storekeeper doesn’t know how to pay himself and the landlord. In business, cashflow is king.

Writing is a craft business.

Kris Rusch’s writing business blog has a lovely article about business capitalization and implosion. As an IT nerd who survived not one but two dot-com crashes, and as a...

Second Editions versus the Publishing Business

I find myself with an extremely publishing-wonky moral dilemma, and want my readers’ opinions. My apologies for the length of this post.

Tech and academic publishers will frequently release a new and updated edition of a book simply to goose sales of the book. In college I bought three different versions of the same calculus book because they changed constants in the exercises. Calculus hadn’t changed, but the publisher gouged my wallet because they could. I had better use for that money, lik...

New Patreon rewards for $1 tier

Patreon looks like it works for me, much to my surprise. The $1 tier looked a little empty, though, so I’ve added a couple rewards there.

The fiction readers get a free short story. Right now it’s the first Prohibition Orcs tale. I’ll probably change that some time.

The nonfiction readers get what is possibly my most ludicrous reward: a MWL footnote fortune file. Install it on your Unixy host, add fortune mwlfortune to your .login, and you’ll get a random quote from one of my books. It’s most...

New Interview

My Patreon now has a video.

Getting the fine folks of Lawrence Systems to shoot it competently had a cost. They wanted to interview me. So we did. It’s sort of random, but a good time was had by all.

I will say: that is a lot of books.

New “Immortal Clay” short story

I’m pushing to get Bones Like Water, or Immortal Clay #3, finished by the end of 2018.

While you’re waiting for that, though, the latest issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly has an Immortal Clay short story. Shoot Through the Heart is about a couple of teenagers “survivors” having a really bad day while trying to make the world better. Get it at Amazon, Kobo, or anywhere else ebooks are sold.

Don’t want to buy a whole magazine for one story? Buy it for all the other stories too. I’m appearing wi...