Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 51

“PAM Mastery” print sponsor books

I have the first official batch of PAM Mastery print copies. Here’s the stack ready for the sponsors.

Why is one box bigger than the others? One sponsor, who shall remain nameless but let’s call him SJ, sponsored the book several times over. Sending him more than one book seems like the right thing to do. Even if he doesn’t enjoy the books or their topics, they make great table levelers and spider smashers.

My 3-day challenge for Oct 2016

The meds are starting to work. I’m feeling better. Not great. Not good. But better. Better enough that I should be making some words. And I’m having a terrible time making words. My writing discipline has collapsed this year, because I’ve been ill.

This happens to every writer–really, any self-employed person who works fully independently. Us indies need to get our discipline back every time something goes wrong.

For me, the trick to getting things back together is to set goals that succeed o...

Unlicensed Book Translations

I’ve had books translated into nine different languages. The rotating banner at the top of my blog shows some of them.

A reader pointed me at a translation that I wasn’t aware of: FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS in Russian. Unfortunately, the translator didn’t get rights to do so before translating it.

This is not the first time this has happened. For future reference, I’m putting up a post about my response in this situation.

The fact that someone thinks that Allan and I did a good enough job on the bo...

Next Tech Book

Now that PAM Mastery is out, I’m starting work on my next project.

I’m taking a break from anything filesystem related. Yes, I want to do FreeBSD Mastery: Jails, but that involves a lot of filesystem stuff, so that goes on hold for a bit.

Instead, I’m starting a book on OpenBSD’s web stack. Between httpd, relayd, and CARP, plus assorted surrounding infrastructure like acme-client, OpenBSD’s got a pretty solid offering for its environment. It doesn’t do everything–but most of us don’t need eve...

“PAM Mastery” out!

cue Movie Voice Over Voice

They thought they knew PAM. They were wrong…

My long-dreaded PAM book is now available, in both print and ebook.

You can grab it at all the usual suspects–I mean, bookstores.

The semibug PAM talk live tweet

On November 8 I’ll be at mug.org, giving a talk on how “PAM is Un-American.”

Last night, I gave an early version of the talk to the smaller, and not recorded, semibug.org crowd.

Josh Grosse live-tweeted the event.

The actual talk will be recorded. And will have considerably less swearing. Because it’s being recorded.

And yes, I think there really will be a Complete and Unexpurgated Edition of PAM Mastery available at the BSDCan 2017 closing auction. All I’ll need to do is add all the swearing...

“PAM Mastery” ebook now out

Get it before it gets you. I’m still waiting for Apple to get the book up in iTunes, but it should be there within a day or two.

Print proofs are on their way to me. If they look OK, you’ll be able to get the book in print next week.

If you want both Kindle and print versions, buy the print first. You’ll then be able to get the Kindle version for $2.99.

This year’s anemic output

(This is a “blog it so I can refer folks to it later” post.)

Last year, I wrote 403,000 words. Not great, but not terrible.

So far this year, I’ve written 130,900 words. That is terrible.

I also seem to have passed an awareness threshold. In the last few months, I’ve been offered speaking and teaching opportunities at half a dozen events, including big events like LISA and MeetBSD.

I’ve had to turn them all down. Which sucks. I want to expand my readership, and conferences are a great way to...

“PAM Mastery” print layout done

I’ve been rolling this rock uphill so long, I’ve been feeling like Sisyphus. But “PAM Mastery” is finally copyedited and I’ve done the first print layout.

Next up? Indexing, cover finalization, and ebook production.

Soon. SOOOOON.

New novel, and a new novel bundle

So… er… I put a new novel out last month.

And totally forgot to blog it. Apparently, releasing a new book is now such a commonplace occurrence that even I don’t find it noteworthy.

Or maybe it’s just that my brain absorbs information as readily as a stainless steel sponge.

Whatever.

Anyway, Hydrogen Sleets is the first ever Montague Portal novel.

Meet the new universe, same as the old universe—
but thirteen billion years younger.

Aidan Redding’s new assignment? A space station in a universe...