Been super busy with Run Your Own Mail Server page layout, but took a break to finish writing next month’s FreeBSD Journal Letters column.
These “generative artificial intelligences” scour the Internet collecting text strings and noting which characters often appear in which order. The programmers heard the phrase “the wisdom of crowds” and thought it wasn’t satire. When you enter a string into the system, they produce a string that looks like something that would appear after your string. In other words, if you enter something that looks like a StackExchange question, they provide an answer that looks like something you would get from StackExchange. The average answer on any public technology forum is a poison to the spirit that makes my Perl look glamorous. Not Hollywood glamour. More like Eldritch Faery Queen Glamour that winds up with you chained to your keyboard condemned to write for the entertainment of the Unseelie Court until you become the greatest author on Earth, which would give you lots of practice but as you no longer receive books from Earth you can’t perform the comparison that would conclude your deal. Still, don’t do that. The Faery Queen carries one heck of a grudge, especially if you smuggled lockpicks in with you.
Making it the biggest Mastery book I’ve ever written. I was right to make the ebook $15, and I suspect the print version will wind up being $35. Won’t know until I feed it to the printer.
Now I go through the manuscript page-by-page with my red pen and highlighters, looking for layout errors. And content errors. Yes, I’ve caught content errors at this stage before. The best way to perceive an error in a manuscript is to change the form.
With luck I’ll have a clean interior to submit to the printer in a couple days, and a print proof will arrive the week after. I check the proof repeatedly for a few days. If that works, I’ll be ordering the regular books. (The only blocker for the special edition is the art, which arrives about 15 August. I’ll order that proof right away.)
It’s been over a year since I did this kind of check, and it seems that all of my highlighters except the blue and pink have dried out. I fear that this will turn into some sort of gender reveal disaster… but I knew the risks when I got into this business.
You must be comfortable acquiring and managing TLS and the associated X.509 certificates. Email did not always require TLS, but certificate prices have plunged to zero so TLS is fairly standard. This book uses Let’s Encrypt certificates maintained by ACME, and presumes you can do the same. If your organization insists on purchasing expensive certificates and maintaining them by hand, you are welcome to do so.
We will also use outside services to support email troubleshooting. These are all services that can be replaced if you write custom code, a skill set that does not overlap with running mail servers. I’m certain that immediately after this book escapes someone will release a package that lets us easily handle said debugging.
From now on, I will toss around terms like network port and X.509 certificate and floccinaucinihilipilification and expect you to either know what they mean or how to look them up. You cannot suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia and run an email server.
Fascinatingly, spell check recognizes floccinaucinihilipilification but not hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Also, my copyeditor demanded–and got–combat pay.
A few years ago I switched from delivering books via WordPress downloads to Bookfunnel. Now and then, folks ask why. “Because it reduces my pain without escalating yours” is trite, but true. Here’s the full explanation.
When I first opened tiltedwindmillpress.com, I provided files at obfuscated filenames. By the third direct sale, someone had shared the link to eleven thousand of their closest friends. Pirating my books is a jerk move, but pirating them off my own server is downright insulting.
Woocommerce provides access controls for downloads, letting me limit the number of downloads. I set it to ten and moved on.
That eventually caused problems, though. Now and then someone would need to redownload their books more than ten times. People want help loading their files onto devices. Woocommerce’s download management is clunky, probably because they didn’t anticipate my use case. Bundles like The Full Michael took hours of painstaking labor to update. (I don’t remember if I actually launched TFM before Bookfunnel, but the thought of doing it the old way causes keyboard-trashing shudders, so my body certainly remembers.)
Bookfunnel lets me provide epub, mobi, and PDF, all easily labeled. If you create an account at https://my.bookfunnel.com, they’ll let you redownload your books as many times as you like. When I update a book, updates actually propagate across the accounts. They can help you load your ebooks onto whatever weird ereader you own. I pay them for this service specifically so they leave my customers the heck alone.
Yes, having my readers’ email addresses in the hands of an exploitative firm would suck. I am highly confident that exploitative firms already have that information, however. Many of you use disposable or filterable addresses for exactly that reason. I would take the money I spend on Bookfunnel and give it to a WordPress contractor to have them manage the files, or to even write a Woo-compatible WordPress plugin for ebook management.
So: ease of management, ease of re-downloads, and help loading books on your devices. That’s why.
Once upon a time there was this person who vexed me so badly, I had to write a book just to complain about them. (Not why I wrote the book, nor why I griped about them therein.) My fierce vituperation was so all-encompassing, they not only changed their name but their gender so they could attempt to rebuild something from the ruins of their reputation. (Totally not why they changed their name. Nor their gender.) Now I’m gonna tell you about working with Delta. (Not that we ever actually worked together. They’re just an example person. Libel laws prevent me from explicitly naming Gabriel, though he will hopefully recognize himself. That new emotion you’ve never previously experienced, Gabriel? It’s called “shame.”)
You probably have a preferred public discussion platform for technical matters, something like Reddit, Mastodon, or the penal board forum. Delta’s that person who when they see someone ask a question, they search Google and post the first link it vomits up.
The trick in writing about issues you don’t experience is to check your work with someone who has that problem. If you don’t know anybody who has that problem, you probably shouldn’t be writing about it.
Yesterday, the copyedits on Run Your Own Mail Server returned. This means that today I’ll be setting up a Discord and integrating into my Patronizer systems to replace the Video Hangout level, writing the next column for the FreeBSD Journal and, coincidentally, the last column for Dear Abyss. I asked Simon Travaglia if he’d be interested in doing a foreword but he sensibly declined, so I guess I better write something to introduce that travesty. (I’m open on suggestions for people to approach, mind you.)
Anyway.
Once I complete the copyedits, I start on the page layout.
Once I complete page layout, I order print proofs and make the ebook.
The print proof is my absolute last chance to fix errors. At that point, I turn off preorders and order sponsor, Patronizer, Kickstarter, and preorder copies.
I have no date for this. Depends on if the copyeditor can cause me as much pain as I caused her.
Hello. Welcome to Sixty Seconds of WIP. I’m Michael Warren Lucas. Today is (11 June 2024). I’m in the last week of my anthology submission binge, working on a new Rats’ Man’s Lackey tale, but it’s going to trad pub so I can’t share tidbits. The Rats’ Man’s Lackey tales could be described as “Jason Bourne living in Supernatural Witness Protection.” Here’s a snippet from the first one, The Rats’ Man’s Lackey and the Half Gallon of Christmas Miracle.
Getting from my attic room to the boss’ sanctum meant lowering the ladder, avoiding Magrat the Mayhem Maid as she “cleaned” the third floor, taking either the narrow twisty servants’ staircase with its they’re-not-ghosts or the main stairs with the now-those-are-ghosts, through the gallery of I’m-telling-you-those-are-paintings-not-real-people, down the freakishly wide spiral staircase that escaped from a 1950s Hollywood spectacle, and crossing the main hall.
That marble floor’s tried to murder me twice.
The second time, with a knife.
Until recently, I didn’t believe in any of this tripe. Today, I didn’t want to bother with it.
A December morning sun poured over the oaks and maples surrounding the manor. It was just warm enough for this Northern boy to have the window cracked, but cool enough you might think winter would decide to fire a blizzard across Georgia just for funsies. A perfect day to climb down the trellis.
Episode 52? One year’s worth of this daftness? I suspect most podcasters come to their senses well before this. Is anyone actually listening to this drivel?
(This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of June, and the public at the beginning of July.)
“The deck is clear, projects are ready to go, I’m ready to WRITE!”
One lovely Friday night in May, She Who Must Be Obeyed finished teaching for the summer. The following Sunday, at five AM, she broke her leg.
You look alarmed, so I’ll say now: she will fully recover.
The next couple weeks were a blur. The third week, where she could take care of herself enough that I could do some work, are also a blur–but mostly because I was doing tech edits on Run Your Own Mail Server. The Kickstarter was scheduled to start on 20 May, and I had invested a bunch of energy in shilling it, so I didn’t want to push it back, but my stupid conscience demanded I have the book in copyedit before launching the Kickstarter. Why would I launch a Kickstarter on a book I’m not ready to deliver? I also had to finish writing two four-hour courses, one on email and one on TLS, for BSDCan. So, I launched the Kickstarter and got ready for BSDCan.
You remember my last Sausage post? Where I said I thought that the direct market for RYOMS was exhausted? I hoped I might gross seven, maybe ten thousand?
I was wrong.
So very wrong.
This is insane
And the dang thing isn’t over! I’m going to be shipping over 500 books. I might need to buy help doing that, particularly for the drop-shipped copies. Despite that complaint, you’d be helping me out if you’d share the campaign.
Part of the reason I set the Kickstarter to run over BSDCan was that I was teaching about email, and wanted to mention that the Kickstarter existed. I thought it might sell a couple more books. Also, I thought that if I was busy being the BSDCan con chair, I couldn’t spend my days obsessively reloading the Kickstarter page to see if anyone bid. The con chair role mainly consisted of pointing at volunteers and saying “You. You are empowered to make this Thing happen. Go. Do.” Plus, I’d deal with any last-minute disasters.
You ever start a week-long con exhausted? Because I sure did. It was a loooong week. Fortunately, SWMBO was more able to care for herself, so I was able to go at all. (If I hadn’t been chair, I would have canceled.)
So, yeah. Very few new words this month, and those all on polishing RYOMS. I hope to change that this month.
The eight hour drive home from BSDCan gave me time to ponder the world and my place in it. One thing I’ve been contemplating is my Patronizer rewards. The video hangout tier was popular during the covid lockdown. We still have covid, but we’re not in lockdown. I often start the video hangout and nobody shows up.
I’m contemplating dropping the monthly video hangout, replacing it with a quarterly all-Patronizer hangout: two in my morning, and two in my evening. That would give everyone a chance to show up.
I would replace the Monthly Video Hangout tier with a private chat. I would check the chat at least 2-3 times a week. The question is, what platform? Signal would be preferable, but its anonymity means it doesn’t integrate well with Patreon or Woocommerce. I’m familiar with Slack. Matrix and Discord annoy me. The catch would be, I’d demand that such a chat be family-friendly. Perhaps Addams Family friendly, but family friendly. That means moderation. I don’t know if I want to do that labor.
So, pondering. Video hangout subscribers, I’m open to your thoughts.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for RYOMS to return from copyedit. While books like SNMP Mastery covered complex material, that material could easily be chunked. It’s the most complex and interrelated book I’ve ever written. It does not break into chunks. Everything depends on everything. That meant painstaking interleaving of information, in a weird order that looks clunky but is the only way to approach the material. There’s reasons nobody else wrote this book. I have several outstanding anthology invitations, so I’m gonna break up my mental logjam and write some short fiction for a little bit. My brain is tired after the last few months.
I’m looking at the RYOMS Kickstarter and thinking I should do that revision of Networking for System Administrators I’ve been pondering. The cover art will need mushrooms, however.
Before then, though, I’ll launch Dear Abyss. Which might make two grand, if I’m very lucky. A collection of previously published honest advice columns is of much less interest than running a mail server. Even if “honest” means “bitter and cynical.” We’re talking sysadmin stuff, after all.
Sorry for the dearth of news, but it’s been a crap month. Do let me know what you think about the chat thing, however.
I’m working on a new Aidan Redding story, but can’t share any of it yet. Contract terms, y’know. I can say it’s a Class D universe tale, however, which I haven’t done before. I needed to skim some of Aidan’s earlier adventures, so here’s a snippet from Drinking Heavy Water.
The engulfing darkness made every sound more obvious. Chevy’s breath wasn’t loud, but I could tell it was deep and thorough. “Your President wants to stop selling tritium to Texas. We need that energy. If I can stop this, I must.”
I said, “Even if Soviet Texas did okay without it, Kendall has thirty other countries on this list. Someone’s going to react badly.”
Gunfire said, “I’m sure Nirvana is on it.”
“Them. Seattle Sacred. Fearless.” Any nation on Kendall’s list might respond with nukes, or bioweapons, or nanotech. Everybody knew how to build doomsday weapons. Maybe they’d strike Montague facilities across the world, or long-loathed neighbors. Civilization only endures if everyone has equal access to it. We all fly together, or a handful soar until they crash.
