Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 54

Get the “Immortal Clay” sequel: Kipuka Blues

It’s taken far longer than it should have, but: you can now order the sequel to Immortal Clay, Kipuka Blues.

Due to the vagaries of indie publishing (discussed at the bottom of this post), the paperback version is available now. The ebook will be released on 5 April, but most readers can pre-order it now.

To my shock, more than one person has ordered the paperback. One of them picked up Immortal Clay in paper as well. Apparently the books are developing… fans. Fans who are unwilling to wait f...

“FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS” sponsorships ending soon

When I set up the FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS print and ebook sponsorships, I never considered when I should take them off sale.

Comments are due back from tech editors tomorrow, 28 March. I’ll immediately be processing them. This should take a couple days. Once I’ve made all the corrections, I’m sending the whole thing out for copyedit.

The sponsorship sale ends when the book goes for copyedit.

If you want to be a sponsor, act now.

If not, that’s perfectly cool too.

Free short story: “Butterfly Stomp”

My social media followers are probably sick of hearing me babble about my new novel, Butterfly Stomp Waltz. But it’s relevant here.

Last fall, I attended a Kris Rusch writing workshop. One result was a heist crime short story. Many people liked it and wanted more. Kris’ comment was (paraphrased), “This is a fine story as it is, but really, it wants to be the start of a novel.”

So I wrote BSW. People seem to like it. Now I’ve put the original short story up as a freebie. It’s a modern heist cr...

First review of “FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems”

Sunday Morning Linux Review episode 184 discusses FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems.

While SMLR is always worth listening to, if you want to cut right to the review (or, alternately, if you’re me coming back to look for good quotes to steal for publicity purposes), the review starts about 30 minutes in.

It’s about 1:11 into the unedited video.

Summary: the book does not suck. And some parts are actually interesting. Which is nice. The book did expose Mary to new ideas and sent her runnin...

FreeBSD and pam_listfile

I’ve discovered unknown terrors while researching and writing PAM Mastery. Well, terrors previously unknown to me, at least. I’m certain that the OpenPAM and Linux-PAM developers are very much aware of them. (I’m also certain that they’re part of the reason DES keeps his hair cut so short, so that he can’t yank it out of his head in bloody chunks.)

Part of the writing process was building a giant spreadsheet listing operating systems, PAM versions, and which modules appear in each OS. Strictl...

Sponsoring “PAM Mastery”

The FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS sponsors have a complete manuscript, the version that’s been sent out for tech reviewed. I therefore feel free to solicit sponsors for PAM Mastery, at print and ebook levels.

I waffled on asking for sponsors, but more than one person told me that if people want to put money in my hand, I should take it and say “thank you.” So what the heck.

While PAM has a potentially wider audience than FM:AZ, that interest isn’t as deep. I’m expecting nowhere near as many P...

I just spammed my customers. Mea culpa.

I’m debugging a problem with a reader who bought books directly from me at tiltedwindmillpress.com. The link to download his books isn’t appearing in his account.

As part of this, I noticed that about a fraction of the orders were stuck in the “processing” stage. Customers could get their books by logging in, but the order isn’t really complete in the database. The problem user was among them.

As part of debugging, I told the system that all the “processing” orders were complete. Because they...

“FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS” in tech review

FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS went to the FreeBSD developer community and a few select folks for technical review last night.

If you bought a sponsorship, either print or ebook, the manuscript is now in your account.

FM:AZ will not be on a discount pre-order. I figure the sponsors deserve the right to satisfy their morbid curiosity over the defective, untested, uncorrected manuscript. Plus, they get a little bit of joy over their privileged status. Not to mention bragging rights.

If you’re a...

New novel in print and ebook: Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Some of you have seen this on the mailing list, others on social media. I announce ebook availability to the mailing list and then on social media. Once a fiction book hits print and Amazon ties the two formats together, I blog it.

My new crime thriller novel, Butterfly Stomp Waltz, is out. It’s a modern crime thriller with guns and explosions and heists and all that fun stuff.

I got a message earlier today from a random reader.

So I bought your book and it’s SO GREAT! I’m hardly into it and...

February 2016 status and sponsorship questions

I’m thrilled and grateful with the results of the FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS sponsorship. Eighteen ebook sponsors and eight print sponsors have made my life easier. I’ll list them at the end of this blog post.

Allan and I are very close to having a completed first draft of the book–as in, we need a couple thousand more words from Allan and we’re ready to for final pre-tech-review touch up. As we’re working chapter-by-chapter in Google Docs, I’ll then have the job of pulling all the docs in...