Category: Chatter

What most of you probably don’t want

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Too Subtle for my Own Good

It turns out that part of my April Fool’s book release failed. More than one person has commented on the excoriating review of Ed Mastery posted on Dan Langille’s blog.

People missed the italicized text at the top:

Here’s a guest post by Michael W Lucas.

I wrote this review.

Of my own book.

Ripping it apart as a terrible idea, and myself as a terrible author.

Of all the parts of the Ed Mastery release that could be taken as a prank, this was the most prankish. I thought it was obvious.

The failure of a prank goes on the prankster. Live and learn.

Now, back to writing “git sync murder…”

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My ConFusion Schedule

I’m girding my loins, gritting my teeth, and leaving the house this weekend. Specifically, I’ll be attending ConFusion, one of Detroit’s major F&SF cons. If you’re attending and want to avoid me, here’s a few panels and events I’ll be participating in.

11am Saturday – Petoskey – Last Exit Before The Worst Timeline
12pm Saturday – Isle Royale – The Ancient 1980s
5pm Saturday – St Clair – Mass Book Signing

You can roam the con freely those three hours. Otherwise, keep your eyes open and be ready to dodge away.

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MWL’s 2017 Wrap-Up

It’s that time again. Time to reflect on my myriad personal failures in 2017.

The obvious place to start is my 2016 wrap-up post, where I listed goals for 2017. As usual, these goals were wildly delusional.

The short answer is, my iron was back up to normal. My writing speed wasn’t, though. I’d lost too much general health, and needed hard exercise to recover it. Yes, writing requires physical endurance. Maintaining that level of concentration for several hours a day demands a certain level of blood flow to the brain. I could have faked it in a day job, but when self-employed as an artist? Not so much.

Then there’s travel. I did my usual BSDCan trip, plus two educational trips to Lincoln City, Oregon. The current political mayhem convinced me that if I wanted to hit EuroBSDCon any time in the next few years, I should do it in the very near future. So I went to Paris, where I promptly got pickpocketed. (Thankfully, they didn’t get my passport.) I was actively writing the third edition of Absolute FreeBSD, so I visited BSDCam in Cambridge to get the latest information and a sense of where FreeBSD was going. I also did weekends at Kansas LinuxFest (because they asked and paid for my trip) and Penguicon.

(Because people will ask: why EuroBSDCon and not AsiaBSDCon? A six-hour transatlantic flight requires that I take a substantial dose of heavy-grade tranquilizers. I’m incapable of making intelligent decisions while on those drugs, or for several hours afterward. They don’t last long enough for twelve-hour flight to Japan, so I need to be accompanied by someone qualified to tell me when I need to take the next dose partway through the flight. This isn’t a predetermined time that I can set an alarm for; it depends on how the clonazepam affects me at those altitudes. A drug overdose while flying over the North Pole would be bad. When I can arrange that qualified companion, I’ll make the trip.)

I need most of the preceding week to prepare for long trips. I need the following week to recover from time shifts and general exhaustion. Additionally, I have to hoard people juice for a few weeks beforehand so I can deal with folks during these expeditions. Travel disrupts my dojo time as well, which impacts my health.

Taken as a whole: I didn’t get nearly as much done as I hoped.

Here’s my complete output of big books.

Or, everything I put out: one novel, one tech book, one story, and one novella.

I wrote more stories, but Kris Rusch bludgeoned me into submitting them to trad markets. (The woman is a brute, I tell you. Cross her at your peril.)

Among my 2017 titles, my fiction outsold the tech books. No, not Prohibition Orcs–all four of the people who buy those love them, but the sales tell me I’ve done something wrong with those tales.

My cozy mystery git commit murder outsold Relayd and Httpd Mastery.

But what outdid them both, as well as most of my older books? What title utterly dominated my sales for the last quarter of the year? It was of course, my open source software political satire disguised as porn Savaged by Systemd: an Erotic Unix Encounter.

I can’t believe I just wrote that paragraph.

The good news is, once I recovered from EuroBSDCon, my writing got better.

I finished Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd edition and submitted it to the publisher.

I wrote the second edition of SSH Mastery (no link, because you can’t order it yet.)

I’m plowing through git sync murder, the sequel to git commit murder. I don’t get to see the new Star Wars movie until I finish GSM, so hopefully that’ll be this month.

All in all, I wrote 480,200 words in 2017. Most of that was after September. It’s annoyingly close to breaking half a million, but after 2016’s scandalous 195,700, I’ll take it.

One of the nice things about being an author is that most of your income is passive. You do the work, and the money trickles in for years afterwards. I had money coming in while I was out of commission. The bad news is, that income slowly drops. If I’m to stay an author instead of becoming a wage peasant, I have to schlep some books out PDQ. I can do it, provided I remain focused on production.

That slump is the big reason why I broke down and started a Patreon. It’s why I started taking sponsorships for tech books. You folks carried me through my health problems. I can’t thank you enough.

The fact that AF3e is trad published complicates the financial picture. I won’t see any money from that book until 2019. No, I’m not complaining–that’s just a fact of life, and I knew that going in. But it provides extra motivation for getting my butt in gear right off in 2018.

So 2018 will be my Year Of Making Words. The finest words, of course. Artisinal. Straight from Detroit, a third world city in America’s heartland.

So what’s on tap for 2018? What’s the plan?

  • BSDCan, Penguicon, and two educational trips to Lincoln City, Oregon. That’s it. Under no circumstances will I leave North America, sorry.
  • write 600,000 words, or 50,000 words a month.
  • Complete and release four tech books
    • SSH Mastery 2nd ed
    • FreeBSD Mastery: Jails (I suspect this will turn into two books, it’s a huge topic)
    • either Mastodon Mastery or Ansible for Legacy Systems.
    • #MWLSecretBook, which I can’t talk about until for now, for reasons which will become clear once the book comes out
  • Write the tech book I didn’t complete above, and release it if there’s time
  • Write four novels
    • git sync murder, a sequel to git commit murder
    • Bones Like Water, or Immortal Clay #3
    • Drinking Heavy Water, Montague Portal #5 or Aidan Redding #4
    • To Be Decided From a List of Candidates, All of Which I Really Want to Write
  • Be sufficiently flexible to kick Ray Percival in the head at BSDCan. A front kick will do, but I’m shooting for the high-flexibility side kick as a stretch goal.
  • Exercise enough to drop twenty pounds
  • Stay married while doing all of the above
  • Stay alive

Other than the last two, these are all deliberately fail-forward goals. If I only get three tech books done instead of four–hey, I’m ahead by three tech books! If I only drop ten pounds, that’s better than gaining ten. “Stay married” and “stay alive” aren’t fail-forward goals, but I have a good idea how to achieve them both.

This time next year, come back to see exactly how I failed!

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Conferences and Traveling

obsolete: now on its own page.

If you want to ask me to come talk at your con, event, or show, that’s cool. I like to meet my readers. Here are things I consider when you ask me to show up and talk. This stuff only applies if you ask me to come as a speaker: if I decide to come to your event without an invite, that’s on me.

I get enough invites that I could speak at a different conference every week. Even tiny conferences meet these requirements without trouble. Don’t bother telling me your conference should be an exception: it is not.

Everything is political, and everything is financial. I don’t consider either more important than the other. But let’s talk money first.

For me to speak at your event, I need you to cover my expenses: notably, travel, lodging, and meals. I’m not going to fly across the country on my own dime to give your keynote. Yes, I’ve been asked to do that.

Put me in the bouncy back of a plane and I’ll be nauseous for three days. (I can’t do roller coasters or fast elevators either.) Me being ill at your event is counterproductive. I don’t need first class airfare, or even business class, but basic economy “condemned prisoner on way to execution” class doesn’t work. I need on the wings or in front, preferably on the aisle. Regular economy is fine, although if the carrier has one of those $100 upgrades for Less Torment Economy I’d really prefer that if I’m flying long across the country. And I need transportation between the airport, hotel, and event.

I need a quiet hotel room. Young Lucas didn’t mind sleeping on someone’s couch, but I’ve hit the age where “sleeping wrong” is a thing.

I’m fine with hotel continental breakfasts, sandwiches for lunch, and modest dinners. Mind you, it’s a shame to visit cattle country and not get a good steak, or a coast and not have seafood, so one meal like that is nice.

Want to get on my good side? Arrange a couple 20-oz bottles of cold Coke Zero per day.

For that, I’ll do one prepared talk a day and sit on as many panel discussions as you want. I can do a second standalone talk in a day, if it’s a talk I’ve given before. I also promise not to hide in my hotel room between talks.

I make my living off my writing. If I’m speaking at your event, I’d like the chance to sell a few books. I don’t sell near enough to cover a flight, but it generally covers airport parking and incidentals. I’d need a spot to stash a suitcase of books between talks.

For the political side:

Your event needs a harassment policy. It needs to be obvious. You need to enforce it. If there haven’t been complaints about your group, that’s fine. If someone’s upset with your group, well, that happens. If you had complaints, instituted a policy in response, and have improved, that’s okay–we all learn. But if your group or the organizers have a history of letting harassment slide, or if the event organizers of have a history of sexual and/or racial harassment, then I’m going to pass. I pretty much agree with Scalzi’s post on his policy.

This is not about “safe spaces” or “special snowflakes.” This is about me and my readers not being subjected to creepy jerks. (The word I want isn’t “jerks,” but I’m trying to keep this post G-rated.) I already loathe traveling. I’m not going to go somewhere that welcomes jerks, because jerks go where they are permitted.

If you don’t identify your organizers, I’m going to ask. Save everyone a round of email and post them on your web site. Be proud of what you’re doing, even if you’ve never done it before.

If I’m aware of your event and decide to show up on my own, as a guest, of course I’ll pay my own way. But I’ll check for your harassment policy. If you don’t have one, or if you have a bad history in that regard, I won’t attend. And you’ll never know.

Am I saying you have to have a harassment policy? Nope. I’m saying I will choose to not attend your event unless you have one.

And I’m not interested in debating this policy here, or anywhere online. Talk to me in meatspace about it.

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Web Presence Redesign

Sometimes success is a problem. I should be glad I’ve hit this point. Instead, I’m annoyed at having to take time off from productive work to shuffle web sites. I only want to do this once, so I’m presenting my plan here. My readers are perhaps the most highly qualified people in the world to punch holes it. Also, writing it down will help me figure out the details.

I need to redesign my “web presence.” (Ugh. Hate that term.)

As an author, I present two faces to the world: nonfiction author Michael W Lucas, and fiction author Michael Warren Lucas.

I have two different names because while my readers might not care terribly much about genre, they do care about fiction versus nonfiction. My tech readers don’t want to see my novels (with some exceptions), while the fiction readers find the tech baffling (as they should). Very few people are cross-spectrum Lucas fans.

So, different names and different web sites. I make no pretense that these names are two different people.

I have a generic landing page for people interested in both sides. That URL is short enough to type on a cellphone. The page is kind of clunky, but I’m working on a modern-looking version.

I also have a blog. Which is the site you’re reading now.

My tech author page has most of my information, as that’s where most of my readership has been. The fiction audience is growing, however. I’ve heard from more than one fiction reader that the nonfiction site alienates them. (I understand them perfectly. Computer technology alienates most people.)

So I need to rearrange. And I want to do it in such a way that it reduces information duplication and maintenance of text. Plus, I only want to do it once. So, here’s the plan. Please save me labor and punch holes in it before I do the work.

The blog stays right where it is. Too many incoming links.

Move the following from the nonfiction site to the landing site:

  • all of the autobiography pages
  • about, contact
  • make the FAQ a top-level entity
  • “support an author”, but link to it

Move the following from the fiction site to the landing site:

  • the contact form (integrate with the contact info from nonfiction site)

On the nonfiction site:

  • make the “talks” page a top-level menu item
  • Rebrand the site as “The books of Michael W Lucas” with “About the Author” linking to the generic site

On the fiction site:

  • Rebrand the site as “The books of Michael Warren Lucas” with “About the Author” pointing to the generic site.
  • Link to the “Support an Author”

As far as the new landing site goes: I really must thank Lucy Snyder for letting me stealborrow take inspiration and configurations from her WordPress setup.

So, all my readers who are experts in information management: where did I screw up? What optimization opportunities am I missing here? What am I going to regret months or years from now? Other than being an author, of course.

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Penguicon 2017 Schedule

Next weekend, April 28-30 2017, I’ll be at Penguicon. Two weekends after that (12-14 May), I’ll be at Kansas LinuxFest. But we’re on Penguicon right now.

Here’s my events and the description for each. Each is 1 hour unless specified otherwise. And I’m asking your help for some of these events. (Updated to add the LN2 events, which I’m not running but a guy has to eat sometime.)

Friday:
8PM: LN2 Ice Cream
9PM: The OpenBSD Web Stack – OpenBSD is best known for security and networking. But they also have a highly secure web server and load balancer. This talk will take you through the OpenBSD web stack, presenting its strengths and disadvantages. We’ll cover the httpd web server, free globally valid SSL certificates through ACME, the Common Address Redundancy Protocol for two-server clusters, and the relayd load balancer. Many of the security issues common on web servers are simply not an issue on OpenBSD. Come find out why!

Saturday:
9 AM: Writers and Traditional Publishing – So you want to sell a book to a publisher. How do you do that? What should you expect? How do you optimize your chances of getting not just a deal, but the deal you want? What gets some people into traditional publishing, and keeps others out? Come hear authors discuss the good and bad of the publishing biz!

10-11:45AM: Author Meet & Read, Vol. 1 – A big room with Clif Flynt, Mary Lynne Gibbs, Jen Haeger, Christian Klaver, James Frederick Leach, David Erik Nelson, John Scalzi, Clarence Young, and myself, all showing off our books, talking to our readers, and signing books. I will have my books still in print for sale. I’m expecting that the others will all have long lines and I’ll be there alone, so this is your chance to heckle me in person.

10:54-11:03AM: reading from git commit murder – Readings are tightly scheduled, so I expect this to begin and end sharply on time.

1PM: self publishing in 2017 – Self-publishing is an increasingly important channel for authors to reach their readers. It also changes constantly, with new tools and distributors opening daily and existing platforms changing. This panel brings together veteran self-publishers to share their experiences, discuss the changes of the last year, and give new authors an edge in the business.

2PM: 90 second reads – Join a handful of Penguicon authors as they read 90-second passages from their novels. The selections will be thematically linked based on keywords, such as sorrow, fury, funny, love, etc. Timing is crucial! After, there will be a Q&A with the authors.

3PM: LN2 ice cream

5PM: Writing High-Performance Nonfiction – Writing nonfiction is not merely reciting facts. It’s a specialized form of storytelling, very different from your college essays and book reports. Whether you’re writing memoirs or computer texts, using storytelling techniques transforms your work for the better. This talk takes you through making your nonfiction not only readable, but memorable.

7PM: BSD Operating Systems in 2017 – I’ll be discussing the current options in BSD-based operating systems, the big news from recent projects, new developments, and where we’re going from here.

8-10PM: LN2 ice cream

Sunday:

10AM: breakfast – LN2 ice cream

11AM: Senior Sysadmin Panel – Storage – The years know things that the days and weeks never know. We’ve gathered half a dozen people who’ve been sysadmins for over 20 years to talk about the one of the most dreaded and annoying topics in computing: storage.

12PM: Self-Promotion for Creatives – Independent creators are their own PR departments. We have to not only make all the things, we have to spread the word about all the things. Here we have a bunch of artists and writer types who successfully spread their work across the world. What works? What doesn’t? How can you be shamelessly self-promoting without being a jerk? Come find out!

Where could I use help?

In the 90 second reads panel, I get a few 90 second periods to read a selection from my fiction. Each read should have a theme. Our group has four themes: Betrayal, Heartbreaking, Scary, Funny.

For those of you who have read my fiction: I could use suggestions for parts of my books that you thought fit these themes. I have a few thoughts, but what I think fits a theme is probably not what struck you lot as fitting that theme.

So: if you’ve read my fiction, what of mine would you suggest for a brief reading in any or all of those themes?

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“And then the murders began.”

A whole bunch of people have pointed me at articles like this one, which claim that you can improve almost any book by making the second sentence “And then the murders began.”

It’s entirely possible they’re correct. But let’s check, with a sampling of books. As different books come in different tenses and have different voices, I’ve made some minor changes.

“Many people find encryption disturbing and even a little scary. And then the murders begin.” — PGP & GPG

“Welcome to Cisco Routers for the Desperate! And then the murders begin.” — Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd ed

“Network administrators of all backgrounds share one underlying, overwhelming desire. And then the murders begin.” — Network Flow Analysis

“I asked a psychiatric nurse practitioner about paranoia, and was told that ‘paranoia is the feeling that people are after you.’ And then the murders begin.” — Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition.

“Over the last ten years, OpenSSH has become the standard tool for remote management of Unix-like systems and many network devices. And then the murders began.” — SSH Mastery

“The Domain Name System (DNS) maps hostnames like www.michaelwlucas.com to IP addresses, so computers can find Internet sites without people needing to remember strings like 192.0.2.87 or 2001:db8::ab01. And then the murders began.” — DNSSEC Mastery

“Resolved: controlling user access to a computer’s privileged programs and files is a right pain. And then the murders began.” — Sudo Mastery

“Everyone from big organizations to family photographers worries about preserving their precious data in the event of system failures. And then the murders begin.” — Tarsnap Mastery

“You can arbitrarily replace everything in your computer–except the hard disk. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials

“Dear systems administrators: the firewall people don’t want to talk to you either. And then the murders begin.” — Networking for Systems Administrators

“Storage: a hole with no bottom, into which you pour data. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems

“Much of our systems administration training focuses on filesystems. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS

“The Z File System, or ZFS, is a complicated beast, but it is also the most powerful tool in a sysadmin’s Batman-esque utility belt. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS

“Authentication on Unix-like systems is perhaps the closest thing sysadmins have to black magic. And then the murders begin.” — PAM Mastery

“Blood shall rain from the sky, and great shall be the lamentation of the Linux fans. And then, the murders will begin.” — Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Ed

Conclusion: Seems legit.

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My face on the wall

I gave a talk at the Troy Public Library on Monday night. It went well: great audience, lots of questions. To my surprise, they had a poster announcing the talk. Like I’m a draw or something.

Librarian Cathy was kind enough to take my picture with it. The poster is great.

What’s that on my face? Well, I think Benno Rico captured that best: “HELLO HUMANS I AM SMILING AT YOU TO SHOW YOU I WILL NOT MURDER YOU IN YOUR SLEEP DO NOT FEAR”

If I could smile, I’d be on TV. Late night. Hawking petrified phlegm extractors.

Great poster though.

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2017 presentation proposals

I have my usual two annual events that I speak at coming up: BSDCan and Penguicon. I have ideas on what to submit, but thought I’d see if anyone had something they’d like me to present. Things that I can present, that is.

For BSDCan, I’m pondering between a talk on OpenBSD’s web stack (httpd, relayd, and CARP) and a 4-hour ZFS tutorial. I’ve been kicking ZFS a lot the last couple years, and figure folks are sick of it. The relayd book should be out before then.

Last year at Penguicon, I ran 10 events. That did me in–mostly because I didn’t know I was ill at the time, but still. Panels are much easier than talks, though. So I’m going to submit fewer this year, and let them throw me on panels as needed.

For the Penguicon tech track, I’m thinking of talks on the OpenBSD web stack and “BSD in 2017.” The “Senior Sysadmin” panel I chaired last year did pretty well, so I was pondering reprising that but with a theme like “storage” or “maintenance.”

I usually throw a couple things into the lit track as well. This year I’m pondering a panel on self-publishing and a panel on promotion for writers. That’ll leave space for me to get added to other lit panels.

Is there something you’d like to see me present at either of these? Leave a comment to say so.

And as someone’s going to ask why I submit more for Penguicon that BSDCan, let me answer that.

BSDCan has a soft “one event per speaker” limit. We get a lot of proposals, and we want to bring as many different BSD folks together as possible. Plus I’m on the BSDCan committee. Having ten events starring me would look bad.

And Penguicon will let me get away with doing ten events. Give me blank time at a con and I’m likely to sneak out to the county library for a couple days of peaceful reading. If the library won’t let me in, I generally hide under the stairwell and start chewing my hair out. I have no hair left on my head and the police tell me I’m out of warnings, so I reduce the odds of that happening by staying busy.

Hey, if I was social, I’d be in sales.