New story: Savaged by Systemd

Yesterday, I put a short story up as an ebook. This was a wild experiment that I wrote on a whim.

When I say “wild experiment,” I don’t mean I decided to play with tenses and point of view. No, I decided to spend one day writing a lunatic piece, something that I’ve never written before.

Erotica. Sort of.

Computer erotica, to be specific.

Linux sysadmin erotica, to be more specific.

OK, fine. Systemd erotica.

It’s called Savaged by Systemd. And while it certainly contains erotic content, it’s got a bunch of other things in it too.

I try to wait to announce these things until they’re available in both print and ebook. But some weird things happened.

Here’s last night’s Amazon “hot new erotica releases.”

#2? This is madness.

Hot new releases only include titles released in the last little while. It doesn’t mean much compared to the general “books that are best-selling right now” list. So here’s a screenshot of Amazon’s erotica best-sellers from last night.

I’m #15. This, also, is madness.

But this book involves technical topics. It’s also showing up in the Unix category. Here’s a screenshot of Amazon.ca’s Unix Hot New Best-Sellers.

Hitting #1 in the Hot New Unix Books category is no big deal for me.

This morning’s SF Erotica best-seller list?

Strangest of all?

Here’s my Amazon ebook sales dashboard for the last three months, displaying unit sales.

Those little yellow marks all along the bottom? That’s my living. I’m not complaining about it. I get a reasonable middle-class wage compared to non-tech workers. Don’t get me wrong–if you offer me money I’ll take it. Reader donations in the form of book sponsorships have helped me out in desperate times.

And Savaged by Systemd is only $2.99, so I don’t make nearly as much off of one of those as I do a tech book.

But still: that’s a mighty pretty looking set of spikes, over there on the right hand side.

And it’s getting reviews. Goodreads is famous for giving lower reviews than most other book sites. Not only is SbS getting all five-star reviews there, it’s getting long and detailed reviews.

One of those reviews captures what I was trying to do.

Writers are pretty good about hanging on in the face of adversity. We’re accustomed to the larger world pretty much ignoring our feeble efforts.

Success disorients us.

My social media accounts are flooded. My email is worse than ever. Everybody on LinkedIn suddenly wants a piece of me. (I only LinkedIn with people I’ve actually worked with, btw.)

Despite the heady rush of literary success, I need to make some words. The deadline for the new Absolute FreeBSD is pretty inflexible, if I want it in print for BSDCan.