I edited my SNMP MIB to include the two new books, Prohibition Orcs and Frozen Talons, and realized that the first book in that table came out in 1992.
Thirty years ago.
Plus, Frozen Talons is my 50th full book. If you count “things with my name on them,” including anthologies and chapbooks but not translations, it’s number 96. No–wait–my list is missing one thing. It’s 97. Quick, someone send me a neurotypical personal assistant to track all this crap!
Fifty books in thirty years. Two thoughts.
1) A more business-oriented author would have planned a 30/50 Marketing Extravaganza, with advertising defoliated into swanky golf courses and a special cryptocurrency limited to a single coin for each book. The coin for Ed Mastery: Manly McManface edition is measured in units of–uh, never mind. The thought makes me even more tired.
2) Daang, I write slow.
It’s not as quite as bad as that, of course. Look at the “More Books By This Author” page from Tarsnap Mastery in 2015.
Excluding the “coming soon” titles, that’s 14 books. Many of them are heavily-researched 500,000-word doorstops.
I’ve written 36 books in the eight years of full-time writing since then. Somewhat better. Numbers don’t really mean much, though. What does “36 books” mean in the real world? Well, here’s my catalog in April 2015. One copy of every version of everything, including translations.
I took the photo to make the shelf look full, but note that there’s space at the far left end, next to the Japanese translation of Absolute FreeBSD.
In 2017, the shelf became full.
I thought that was an achievement. Look, the books fill the shelf edge to edge! There is no way to stuff another book onto that shelf!
Silly me. 2020:
I had a hard choice. Upgrade the brag shelf, or stop writing.
Here’s today.
We bought that bookshelf in 1996 for gerbil cages. I’m afraid it’s about to overflow. Fortunately, Ikea has bookshelves again. Maybe I can get something fancy, with glass doors?
Of course, neither the number of books nor the total mass of said books matter. The sales on most of these books faded into the long tail years ago. Like “words written per day,” “how many books I’ve written” is irrelevant. The only books that matter are the ones I’m writing now. But, also like “how many words have I written today,” the count of how many books I’ve written is the only way to measure the ineffable and to set goals.
So, here are some goals that might take me through my career.
1) Next year, I will break “100 Things With My Name in Them.” Anthologies and chapbooks count for this. With February’s Devotion & Corrosion collection, Run Your Own Mail Server later in the year, and (hopefully!) $ git merge murder and the Skybreach books before the end of the year, I should break this easy. With any luck, there’ll be new editions of the ZFS books near the end. Given my atrocious record-keeping, perhaps I’ve crossed this already. Who knows?
2) 100 books total before 2033. Some doorstops. Some 40,000-word novels. A whole bunch in between.
While I intend to keep writing until I’m dead, I also know that I have no idea what my health will be like in however many decades I have left. With any luck, in 2032 I’ll shoot for 150 before 2043.
What are all these books? Grab the current list in my SNMP agent, as discussed in the Networknomicon. Because some of you still treasure your minds, however, I’ll leave a copy here for posterity. I don’t think anyone but me has a complete set of originals, except for maybe EB over in Israel. If he doesn’t have all 50, he’s pretty dang close.
Anyone who has all 96–uh, 97–should probably seek professional help. And a carpenter, for a good bookcase.
SNMP table: TWP-MIB::mwlBooksTable
titleIndex title year genre length
1 Gatecrasher 1992 fiction full-length
2 Believe it or Else! 1993 fiction full-length
3 SLUGS: The Satanic, Loathsome, Unholy Game System (as Greg Donner) 1994 fiction novella
4 Gatecrasher 2nd edition 1995 fiction full-length
5 Women who Run with the Werewolves 1995 fiction anthology
6 Absolute BSD 2002 nonfiction full-length
7 Absolute OpenBSD 2003 nonfiction full-length
8 Cisco Routers for the Desperate 2004 nonfiction full-length
9 PGP & GPG 2006 nonfiction full-length
10 Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd edition 2007 nonfiction full-length
11 Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd edition 2009 nonfiction full-length
12 Network Flow Analysis 2010 nonfiction full-length
13 Horror Library volume 2 2010 fiction anthology
14 Opening the Eye 2011 fiction story
15 Breaking the Circle 2011 fiction story
16 SSH Mastery 2012 nonfiction full-length
17 Vicious Redemption: Five Dark Fantasies 2012 fiction full-length
18 DNSSEC Mastery 2013 nonfiction full-length
19 Sudo Mastery 2013 nonfiction full-length
20 Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd ed 2013 nonfiction full-length
21 No More Lonesome Blue Rings 2013 fiction story
22 Sticky Supersaturation 2013 fiction story
23 Lavender 2013 fiction story
24 Pax Canina 2013 fiction story
25 Wednesday's Seagulls 2013 fiction story
26 FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials 2014 nonfiction full-length
27 Immortal Clay 2014 fiction full-length
28 Waking Up Yesterday 2014 fiction story
29 Calling Control 2014 fiction story
30 Moonlight's Apples 2014 fiction story
31 Networking for Systems Administrators 2015 nonfiction full-length
32 Tarsnap Mastery 2015 nonfiction full-length
33 FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS 2015 nonfiction full-length
34 Forever Falls 2015 fiction novella
35 Spilled Mirovar (Prohibition Orcs 1) 2015 fiction story
36 Whisker Line 2015 fiction story
37 Wifi and Romex 2015 fiction story
38 PAM Mastery 2016 nonfiction full-length
39 FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS 2016 nonfiction full-length
40 FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZedFS 2016 nonfiction full-length
41 Kipuka Blues (Immortal Clay #2) 2016 fiction full-length
42 Hydrogen Sleets 2016 fiction full-length
43 Drowned Mirovar (Prohibition Orcs #2) 2016 fiction novella
44 Butterfly Stomp Waltz (Beaks #1) 2016 fiction full-length
45 Earthquake Kitten Kiss (Beaks spin-off) 2016 fiction novella
46 Butterfly Stomp (Beaks #0) 2016 fiction story
47 Forced to Talk, Like, With Your Mouth 2016 fiction story
48 FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems 2016 nonfiction full-length
49 git commit murder 2017 fiction full-length
50 savaged by systemd 2017 fiction story
51 Httpd and Relayd Mastery 2017 nonfiction full-length
52 Ed Mastery 2018 nonfiction novella
53 Ed Mastery, Manly McManface Edition 2018 nonfiction novella
54 SSH Mastery, 2nd edition 2018 nonfiction full-length
55 Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd edition 2018 nonfiction full-length
56 Bedazzled by Blockchain 2018 fiction story
57 Face Less 2018 fiction story
58 Boundary Shock: Tuesday After Next 2018 fiction anthology
59 Boundary Shock: Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, Oh My! 2018 fiction anthology
60 Sudo Mastery, 2nd edition 2019 nonfiction full-length
61 FreeBSD Mastery: Jails 2019 nonfiction full-length
62 Terrapin Sky Tango (Beaks #2) 2019 fiction full-length
63 Winner Breaks All 2019 fiction story
64 Boundary Shock: Apocalypse Descending 2019 fiction anthology
65 Fiction River: Superstitious 2019 fiction anthology
66 Snot-Nosed Aliens 2019 fiction anthology
67 An Interpretation of Moles 2019 fiction anthology
68 SNMP Mastery 2020 nonfiction full-length
69 Boundary Shock: Alien Dreams 2020 fiction anthology
70 The Networknomicon 2020 nonfiction full-length
71 Cash Flow for Creators 2020 nonfiction full-length
72 Boundary Shock: What Might Have Been 2020 fiction anthology
73 Face The Strange 2020 fiction anthology
74 Bloody Christmas 2020 fiction anthology
75 Drinking Heavy Water 2020 fiction full-length
76 Final Gift 2020 fiction story
77 Woolen Torment 2020 fiction story
78 Drums with Delusions of Godhood 2020 fiction story
79 Uncollected Anthology: Deities 2020 fiction anthology
80 Woolen Torment 2021 fiction story
81 Aidan Redding Against the Universes 2021 fiction full-length
82 Fiction River: Chances 2021 fiction anthology
83 Fiction River: Dark and Deadly Passions 2021 fiction anthology
84 TLS Mastery 2021 nonfiction full-length
85 Only Footnotes 2021 nonfiction novella
86 git sync murder 2021 fiction full-length
87 The Holiday Spectacular #2 2021 fiction anthology
88 Boundary Shock: Wandering Monsters 2021 fiction anthology
89 Fantastic Christmas 2021 fiction anthology
90 Mysterious Christmas 2021 fiction anthology
91 Witness November 2021 fiction story
92 Domesticate Your Badgers 2022 nonfiction full-length
93 DNSSEC Mastery, 2nd edition 2022 nonfiction full-length
94 Letters from ed(1): The FreeBSD Journal Letters column, years 1-3 2022 nonfiction novella
95 Fiction River: Broken Dreams 2022 fiction anthology
96 Prohibition Orcs 2022 fiction full-length
97 Frozen Talons 2022 fiction full-length
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