Author: Michael Lucas

Writer. Sysadmin. Owns this site.
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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 everything.

And yes, while the reference platform will be OpenBSD, I’ll also mention the FreeBSD support.

This book should be easier to write than the PAM book. Which is good, because I’m still fighting anemia. I have no idea when this will be done.

I will offer sponsorships once I have enough of the book done that I’m confident I can actually finish it. And I have some novel ideas for this book, but that’ll also have to wait a bit.

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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 back into the book.

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“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.

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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 do that. Especially conferences that pay my expenses.

Ditto for the fiction opportunities I’ve been offered. (Which really tonks me off.)

It turns out there’s a reason why I’m tired all the time. Why I can’t concentrate. Why my productivity is in the toilet. Why flying somewhere and returning leaves me wiped out for a week.

Why I’m not doing my usual September writing retreat in Oregon.

Why I’ve had to take bloody naps.

I’m anemic. My blood marrow has shut down, and isn’t making more red blood cells. The ones I have are old and tired, and not doing such a good job of hauling oxygen around my innards.

There’s no reason for alarm at this point. My physician said “hmmm… that should have worked” and sent me to a blood specialist. I’m on more meds. They haven’t used words like “aplastic” or “pernicious.”

If I worked for someone else, they’d just have to put up with me falling asleep at my desk. But I’m self-employed, so my boss isn’t nearly so understanding.

Why am I posting this?

  • If you’ve offered me a wonderful speaking or teaching opportunity and I turn you down, this is why. Yes, I want to expand my readership–but if I fly to Georgia and back in the space of a week, I’ll be flat on my back for a week afterwards. Add in a time zone change, and it’d be ten days.
  • If you’ve asked me to contribute to a book bundle and I say no: this is why.
  • If you’ve offered me exciting work that I’ve inexplicably turned down: ditto.

I am maintaining my existing commitments. I made those commitments already understanding my health. You’ll note that there’s only two of them. The furthest requires a three hour drive, and that’ll require rest breaks. (I’ll be fine at Ohio LinuxFest; I arrive early the day before, and I’m scheduling nine hours of sleep a night.)

My morale wobbles unpredictably between “not good” and “f— anemia.”

The bad news is: it took too damn long to find out this was going on. The anemia’s slow, stealthy progress hid the depth of the problem. It’ll take a while to recover.

The good news is: I’m expected to make a full recovery. There’s no reason at this time to think I’ll need vocabulary words like “aplastic” or “pernicious.”

More bad news is: you can’t do much to help me. The only thing I can do is wait for the meds to work, which will take a whole bunch of time. All I ask is that my readers understand why I’m slow in producing new books this year.

The great news is: I’m under medical advice to eat more cow.

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“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.

pam-preview

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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.

Hydrogen Sleets: a Montague Portal novelMeet the new universe, same as the old universe—
but thirteen billion years younger.

Aidan Redding’s new assignment? A space station in a universe so young it’s barely invented hydrogen. Researchers study the cosmos’ earliest days, discover whole new realms of science…
and go screaming insane.

The mathematicians claim this universe obeys the same natural laws as Redding’s own.

At the beginning of time, though, the universe writes its own rules…

Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Amazon IT, Kobo, iBooks, Gumroad

If you’ve wanted more Portal stories, this is your chance.

I imagined the Portal tales as short stories. It’s a perfect setup for a short story series, with its built-in reset button and the opportunities for mayhem. Somehow, this turned into a novel.

Those of you who collect these in print: despite it being a novel, Hydrogen Sleets has the same cover size as the other tales. It’s thicker because, well, it’s a novel, but it won’t mess up your pretty shelf display.

It’s available at all fine online bookstores, in both ebook and print.

Buying the book on its own is the expensive way to get it, though.

Hydrogen Sleets is temporarily part of the Out Of This World fiction bundle, a collection of high-tech SF novels that are all, in some way, out of this world. Here you’ll find starship repossessions, space pirates, doomsday machines, and more.

Get six books, including mine, for a paltry $3.99, or $9.99 for sixteen books. This is days of reading from a crew of excellent authors, plus me.

fan-twitter-1024x512

Rebecca Senese, the bundle curator, invited authors whose work she enjoyed. This bundle includes some of my favorite authors.

Personally, I enjoy buying bundles. They’re a great way to get explore new authors. The inexpensive price lets me sample work from authors I’ve never tried. Inevitably, I’ll enjoy most the books and a few will hit my tastes just right. It’s a great deal.

Rebecca’s doing a daily blog about each book and the author, including J.D. Brink, Leah Cutter, Marcelle Dube’, Mark Fassett, Jamie Ferguson, J A Marlow, Stefon Mears, Debbie Mumford, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Rita Schulz, Rebecca Senese, Dean Wesley Smith, Douglas Smith, and Blaze Ward. She’ll have a new post every day while the bundle runs.

Oh, did I mention it expires soon? You have four days. FOUR DAYS. As of when I write this, of course. Probably less by the time you read it. Get it now, or miss out forever.

Well, no. Not forever. You can buy each book individually. But that’s a lot more expensive, and all that clicking will tire out your mouse finger. Be smart. Get it now.

And I promise, next time I put a novel out, I’ll actually say something when it’s available.

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See Me in 2016

I have two more public appearances in 2016.

October 7-8, I’ll be at Ohio LinuxFest. They’ve asked me to speak on Introducing ZFS.

November 8, mug.org has invited me to talk about PAM. This is election day in the United States, so the talk is on how PAM is Un-American.

Sadly, family commitments prevent me from going to MeetBSD in Berkeley. Plus, there’s the whole “get on a plane” thing, which I try really really hard to avoid. I’d probably do it to see Berkeley, though. I’m pretty sure a pilgrimage to Berkeley is required once during my lifetime.

Other than that, you can catch me at a Semibug meeting.

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Cover reveal for “PAM Mastery”

For the first Tilted Windmill Press tech books, I elected to create covers from photographs. Some went over well, some less so.

For the FreeBSD Mastery books, I persuaded Eddie Sharam to create parodies of classic art. It’s far more expensive than photos, but reaction has been positive.

PAM Mastery is almost ready to go to copyedit, which means I need a cover for it. I’ve elected to continue the parody art. Without further ado, here’s the cover.

Sysadmin Gothic
Sysadmin Gothic

I’ve gotten some great feedback from DES, author of OpenPAM, and need to incorporate that into the manuscript. Once that’s complete, I can send it to copyedit!

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Wherein the past haunts me, but in a good way

Back around 1992 (or so), I published a role-playing game called Gatecrasher. This was back in the day when RPGs were on paper, and used all sorts of weird dice.

In retrospect, Gatecrasher was a triumph of vision over skill. The main design goal was “use all the dice.” But if you wanted to do something like “Spaceships and Sorcery,” playing an angel in enchanted chain mail wielding a propane-powered flaming sword and struggling to scrounge up spaceship fuel in time to make the Mars-Jupiter Hohmann transfer window, you could.

We did the main book and a single supplement, Believe It Or Else!, before the company folded, in the first of my many educational failures.

There’s not much on Gatecrasher on today’s Internet, but I did find one of the reviews of Believe It Or Else!

Around 1998-ish, I had moved on. My career in RPGs was dead, and I had focused on writing fiction, with occasional forays into writing tech articles for Sys Admin magazine. There wasn’t any future in writing tech stuff, but it was nice getting my name in print now and then.

One day I came home from work to find a Gatecrasher fan letter. On paper. Handwritten by a 12-year-old boy. He absolutely gushed about how he loved the game, but couldn’t find a copy of the supplement. He hoped I could tell him where to buy it.

I had no idea where to buy it.

Well, what can you say to that? I wrote him a polite letter back, thanking him, and sent him a signed copy of the second book. By “signed,” I mean “I scribbled a whole bunch of lunatic stuff on the inside cover including, if I recall correctly, the lyrics to ‘Mr. Reaper’ sung to the tune of ‘Mr. Sandman.'”

And that was it.

Occasionally I wondered if I’d scribbled too much daftness in that book and scared the poor kid’s parents so badly that they confiscated the book, but mostly it was just a bright spot in my ever-growing past.

Until today.

I got an email from that same kid. Okay, not kid. Ex-kid. Adult. Whatever they call thirty-year-olds these days.

At the time he wrote that letter, his home life sucked. Playing Gatecrasher with his friends helped him survive adolescence and grow up into a successful adult, with a career in IT and a spouse.

This is the most amazing, wonderful, heart-wrenching fan letter I have ever received.

If you’re a fan of something, tell the creator. Even if it was something from decades ago. They’ll love to hear from you. Especially if it’s something obscure, that the rest of the world has forgotten.

I still have a terrible time saying “thank you” when someone says nice things about my work. But it’s important that us creative sorts do that. Those fans might just come back two decades later…