Crime writer. Many of those crimes involve computers.
Kris and Allan of BSDNow interviewed me this week, about FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems.
Also about the Lucas Track (now up to ten events, I must be even nuttier than I thought!) at Penguicon, and about my new novels.
Also, how to intimidate Allan Jude into working harder. Always useful information.
It’s taken far longer than it should have, but: you can now order the sequel to Immortal Clay, Kipuka Blues.
Due to the vagaries of indie publishing (discussed at the bottom of this post), the paperback version is available now. The ebook will be released on 5 April, but most readers can pre-order it now.
To my shock, more than one person has ordered the paperback. One of them picked up Immortal Clay in paper as well. Apparently the books are developing… fans. Fans who are unwilling to wait for the electronic version. Weird.
Anyway, you can find the book on pre-order at many of the usual suspects: Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Amazon IT, Kobo. The iBooks pre-order has gone weirdly astray, and while I’m trying to get it fixed you just might have to wait until 5 April to order it.
The Kipuka Blues cover is based on me before my morning caffeine.
The obvious question is, why is the print book available before the ebook? Ebook release can be tightly scheduled, while the scheduling between my on-demand printer (CreateSpace) and the rest of the world is much more nebulous. I wanted enough time to receive a print proof, make corrections, get another proof, and get the book into stores. Weirdly, the first proofs came back… fine. No corrections needed. This means I was able to push the button and launch the print earlier.
As with the Mastery books, I’ve tried to make the Kipuka Blues a physical artifact worth owning. It’s by far the thickest book I’ve published, roughly twice the size of any FreeBSD Mastery book.
In a throwback to the 60s and 70s, the paperback edition is illustrated with black and white line art by the inimitable Brad McDevitt. (Actually, I tell a lie. Virgil Finlay could imitate Brad, but sadly Finlay died in 1971. With any other artist, this would be a guarantee that he’d quit working, but with Finlay I’m not quite comfortable guaranteeing that.)
And here’s the cover from the print edition. It different from the ebook cover in that you can pick it up and hold it. You can get a better look at the art by going to one of the bookstores linked to above.
I’ll start writing IC3, tentatively titled Bones Like Water, as soon as I finish writing $ git commit murder. At an hour a day, it’ll probably be well under way before BSDCan.
When I set up the FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS print and ebook sponsorships, I never considered when I should take them off sale.
Comments are due back from tech editors tomorrow, 28 March. I’ll immediately be processing them. This should take a couple days. Once I’ve made all the corrections, I’m sending the whole thing out for copyedit.
The sponsorship sale ends when the book goes for copyedit.
If you want to be a sponsor, act now.
If not, that’s perfectly cool too.
My social media followers are probably sick of hearing me babble about my new novel, Butterfly Stomp Waltz. But it’s relevant here.
Last fall, I attended a Kris Rusch writing workshop. One result was a heist crime short story. Many people liked it and wanted more. Kris’ comment was (paraphrased), “This is a fine story as it is, but really, it wants to be the start of a novel.”
So I wrote BSW. People seem to like it. Now I’ve put the original short story up as a freebie. It’s a modern heist crime tale.
50% John McClane
50% Robin Hood
100% trouble
Reeling from the death of her lover and partner, freelance “exfiltration specialist” Billie Carrie Salton breaks into a high-tech, high-security biotechnology firm to steal their sickle cell anemia cure and broadcast it to the world.
In, out, announce. Easy.
Except Salton’s life never works that smoothly…
You can get Butterfly Stomp at Kobo, iBooks, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, and the myriad other national Amazon branches.
The cynical among you probably think that this is a marketing ploy, to get you to buy the novel. You wouldn’t be wrong. There’s a note at the end of the story that says “If you want more, get the novel!” But offering a small freebie is a good way to let people try your work. It’s why Costco gives away tastes of cheese and chocolate and fried calamari. And I don’t just want readers–I want customers. Repeat customers. That means making it easy for people who like the sort of thing I write to find my work.
I can attest that Costco’s cheese marketing plan works quite well, at least in my case. And I believe in learning from the greats.
Sunday Morning Linux Review episode 184 discusses FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems.
While SMLR is always worth listening to, if you want to cut right to the review (or, alternately, if you’re me coming back to look for good quotes to steal for publicity purposes), the review starts about 30 minutes in.
It’s about 1:11 into the unedited video.
Summary: the book does not suck. And some parts are actually interesting. Which is nice. The book did expose Mary to new ideas and sent her running for the manual and Wikipedia a few times, but learning is good for you, so that’s okay.
I should also note that while I offer free review copies to podcasters, SMLR insists on purchasing books for review. They say it keeps them unbiased. I won’t argue.
I’ve discovered unknown terrors while researching and writing PAM Mastery. Well, terrors previously unknown to me, at least. I’m certain that the OpenPAM and Linux-PAM developers are very much aware of them. (I’m also certain that they’re part of the reason DES keeps his hair cut so short, so that he can’t yank it out of his head in bloody chunks.)
Part of the writing process was building a giant spreadsheet listing operating systems, PAM versions, and which modules appear in each OS. Strictly speaking, OpenPAM proper contains very few modules. Most “OpenPAM” modules actually originate from FreeBSD. But people are free to use them, so they generally get lumped into the “OpenPAM module” bucket.
One module that’s conspicuous by its absence in pam_listfile. Pam_listfile.so lets you accept or reject access based on the username’s presence in a file. It’s much like the traditional BSD /etc/ftpusers functionality.
It’s a reasonable enough module. And I’m told that pam_listfile.so can be compiled to work on FreeBSD, but nobody’s bothered to submit a port. How to make it work is a perennial question on the FreeBSD mailing lists.
The good news is, you can easily emulate pam_listfile.so on FreeBSD using pam_exec. Pam_exec runs a command as part of the PAM chain. If the command returns 0, the module says to grant access. If the command returns 1, the module says to deny access. (Whether PAM obeys this instruction or not depends on the type of statement.)
Here I implement basic pam_listfile.so functionality in a shell script, pam_listfile.sh.
Enable pam_listfile.sh as an auth rule.
auth required pam_exec /usr/local/scripts/pam_listfile.sh
Now all you need is a script. This version of the script permits access if the username appears in /etc/validusers.
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/grep ^$PAM_USER$ /etc/validusers
return $?
And here’s a version that rejects access if the username appears in /etc/validusers, exactly like /etc/ftpusers. It’s a huge change, adding an entire exclamation point.
#!/bin/sh
! /usr/bin/grep ^$PAM_USER$ /etc/validusers
return $?
You could add more functions as you need. The important thing is to return either 0 or not-zero.
PAM Mastery is over half finished. I’ve completed the parts on “this is how PAM works” and have moved on to “here are some cool PAM modules that you might want to use.”
And my marketing department says I need to mention that I’m taking sponsors on the print and ebook versions of PAM Mastery.
The FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS sponsors have a complete manuscript, the version that’s been sent out for tech reviewed. I therefore feel free to solicit sponsors for PAM Mastery, at print and ebook levels.
I waffled on asking for sponsors, but more than one person told me that if people want to put money in my hand, I should take it and say “thank you.” So what the heck.
While PAM has a potentially wider audience than FM:AZ, that interest isn’t as deep. I’m expecting nowhere near as many PAM sponsors. If you want to really stand out in a list of sponsors, this is your chance.
Also, I’ll be speaking at semibug tomorrow night. Don’t miss it.
I’m debugging a problem with a reader who bought books directly from me at tiltedwindmillpress.com. The link to download his books isn’t appearing in his account.
As part of this, I noticed that about a fraction of the orders were stuck in the “processing” stage. Customers could get their books by logging in, but the order isn’t really complete in the database. The problem user was among them.
As part of debugging, I told the system that all the “processing” orders were complete. Because they are.
I did not realize that this would send an email to each of the customers, saying that their order had completed.
It’s about 200 people.
Back to 2013.
All I can say is: mea culpa. I should have predicted this, but I didn’t. I apologize, I’m sorry.
I’ve also installed the Woocommerce Autocomplete Orders plugin, to hopefully prevent this from happening again.
Annoyingly, the customer who can’t download his books still can’t see the files. In an attempt to make things better, I’ve made them worse.
So… I’m a real sysadmin, I guess?
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS went to the FreeBSD developer community and a few select folks for technical review last night.
If you bought a sponsorship, either print or ebook, the manuscript is now in your account.
FM:AZ will not be on a discount pre-order. I figure the sponsors deserve the right to satisfy their morbid curiosity over the defective, untested, uncorrected manuscript. Plus, they get a little bit of joy over their privileged status. Not to mention bragging rights.
If you’re a sponsor, I’m going to ask you to download the manuscript, go to the last page, and check the spelling of your name. While I did my best to verify them, non-English character sets might be my undoing here. Plus, I’m an idiot, which doesn’t help.
Some of you have seen this on the mailing list, others on social media. I announce ebook availability to the mailing list and then on social media. Once a fiction book hits print and Amazon ties the two formats together, I blog it.
My new crime thriller novel, Butterfly Stomp Waltz, is out. It’s a modern crime thriller with guns and explosions and heists and all that fun stuff.
I got a message earlier today from a random reader.
So I bought your book and it’s SO GREAT! I’m hardly into it and am considering faking sick for the rest of the afternoon so that I can keep reading.
I’m still waiting for the butterfly stomping part. I hope it’s monarchs. Cocky bastards. Always flapping around and landing on flowers like they’re soooooo much better than everyone else.
Yet another life goal for me: a review that says “I used a sick day to read this book.”