Category: fiction

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50% TWP titles (and more) at Kobo.com

If you’re a Kobo user, I’ve got a heck of a deal for you. All of my Tilted Windmill Press titles, fiction and nonfiction, are available for half off with a coupon code. This includes books like FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS, SSH Mastery, and Immortal Clay, but excludes my No Starch titles like Absolute FreeBSD and Absolute OpenBSD.

It’s not just my books either. All self-published titles are eligible.

Here’s the coupon codes and eligible dates, by country.

Canada:
October 28th – October 31st
Promo Code: CA50SALE

United States/Australia/New Zealand
October 27th – October 30th
Promo Code: GET50SALE

United Kingdom
October 30th – November 2nd
Promo Code: UK50SALE

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September 2015 updates

I haven’t done a general update since June? Well, let’s give where things are at the end of September. Because it’s October, and for my whole career my status reports have always been behind, and I see no reason to change now.

FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS is underway. Right now it’s in Allan Jude’s capable hands, but Allan has this thing called a “day job.” Apparently when you’re the It should be out before the end of the year.

In the meantime I’m mining words for FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems. It covers NFS, nullfs, NTFS, and even filesystems not beginning with N. (Can’t think of what those are offhand, but I’m sure there are some.)

Immortal Clay 2, or Kipuka Blues, is at the line editor. So I’m waiting on that.

I’m spending 60-90 minutes a day on a new project called “Butterfly Stomp Waltz.” This started as a short story but, well, things happened–mainly that the folks who read it demanded the rest of the story. (Those of you eager for the new nonfiction books: if I stop writing fiction, my tech writing speed plunges. So this is to your benefit too.)

I suspect the next tech books will be on PAM, then something on OpenBSD httpd/relayd. (I’d really like to see httpd ported to more operating systems before I do that book, though.) I do intend to head towards the FreeBSD jails book, but after spending a year on FreeBSD filesystems I feel a definite need to poke elsewhere for a while.

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Two new stories

Here’s two short stories I’ve just put out. I had a complete blast writing these. I think you’ll enjoy reading them.

Spilled Mirovar

Spilled Mirovar
Spilled Mirovar

The modern year of 1927, and orcs still have to fight elven asshole bullshit.

Prohibition left exceptions for the church of Men, the Elvish sacraments, even the Dwarfish rituals. But the elves in Congress insist that orcs have no sacraments.

Without the Orcish draught, without the rites, Uruk-Tai’s fine strong boys might grow tall. They might earn respect.

But they will never be Orcs.

And Uruk will not let that happen…

Whisker Line

Whisker Line

Snatched from the tunnels beneath his war-shattered homeland, Aleksander has everything he could want. The kind and generous people of the amazing New York City gave him a home. A job. A new leg. Teeth. Even a face.

He lives the perfect life—until bombs explode in the glass skyscrapers.

The fine people of New York don’t understand war.

But Aleksander and his secret Family do…

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June 2015 Updates

Yes, it’s July. But these updates are for June. Because I put off writing this post.

Initial reaction to “FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS” has been positive. I’m pleased that so many people like the book.

Work on “FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS” is underway. I want to get this book done soon. Soooon. Because I’m kind of sick of writing about a single filesystem. This book should be smaller than the first ZFS book, thankfully.

I’m spending an hour a day on the sequel to Immortal Clay, called “Kipuka Blues.” I expect to have a first draft finished in July.

I now have three Montague Portal stories available. The first one is free on all platforms now, as a loss leader. Not sure how well that will work–the market for short fiction is smaller than the long fiction market. My fiction page has links for various Amazon sites, iBooks, Kobo, and more.

If I want FM: AZ done soon, and I want KB done soon, why don’t I pick one and crank on it? Nonfiction pays the bills, so I can’t drop everything and work on fiction. If I only write tech stuff, though, the nonfiction words go dry. Writing fiction keeps the nonfiction spigot clear and flowing.

I’ve done 200,000 words of publishable writing in the first half of 2015. I’d like to make in an even half million for the year. That’s not ridiculous–if I maintained my January and February outputs for every month of the year, I’d hit a million words in 2015. We’ll see what happens.

And as far as my master plan for writing full time goes: it seems that the rebooted Star Trek gets a whole lot better about Season 3. The bald French dude is no Kirk, but he’s not all bad. I hear they did some followup series. I might check those out once I’m done.

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Free novella at Amazon

My SF novella Forever Falls is free on Kindle through 11 May 2015 (next Monday).

This book is only available on Kindle right now — I’m trying their Kindle Select program, which supposedly gives additional visibility and promotion. It doesn’t seem to have helped so far. Come 3 June, when the Select enrollment runs out, I’ll have this piece on iBooks and Kobo and all the other ebook platforms.

But until 11 May 2015 the book is free, from all of the usual Amazon outlets.

  • Amazon US
  • Amazon UK
  • Amazon DE
  • Amazon CA
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    Web site rearrangement

    In case you’re reading this in reverse order in your RSS feeder: ignore the last couple of posts. It’s content I’m moving from my web page to the blog.

    I’ve redesigned and rearranged the fiction section of my web site, so that it more easily answers hard questions like “What have you written?” and “Do you write anything I might like?”

    The nonfiction section is OK, given how many tech books I’ve written. Hopefully the fiction section will now scale as well.

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    “Forever Falls” novella print and ebook

    I posted this elsewhere, but now that it’s in print I should mention it here:

    I have a new Montague Portal novella out, Forever Falls, in both print and ebook.

    There’s no grounds for murder.

    There’s no ground at all.

    The people exploring and exploiting alien universes risk everything—including their lives.But Devin Gupper’s death makes no sense. And the more questions security officer Aidan Redding asks, the less rational it seems.

    But in a bottomless universe full of impossibilities, with neutronium miners at one end and a steel-aerating blimp at the other, one impossible murder is only the beginning…

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    Initial reactions to “Immortal Clay”

    (For my own reference later.)

    One of the worrisome things about putting out your own books is the concern that it might suck. I have a long track record in nonfiction, so I’m pretty confident there. But novels are a whole different art. When I put Immortal Clay out two weeks ago, I suspected that nobody would get past page two.

    Most of the initial feedback came via Twitter, with things like:

    So someone I know bought it. That’s cool.

    Then some of my nonfiction readers picked it up, and gave it its own hashtag:

    People began reading it, and said things like:

    Then someone finished it:

    So the real message came through? Excellent!

    And then a couple comments in private mail, like:

    “You bastard! That book kept me up half the night. There was just no good place to stop!

    Yep. That’ll do.

    If you’ve read the book, I’d appreciate a review on Amazon. There’s four right now. Amazon won’t show it in searches and “also bought” lists until there’s five.