My Books: In Print and In Progress
The downside to writing technical books is that only technical people buy them. When there are few scenes involving scantily clad bodies, car chases, or things that explode with precise protagonistic timing, your audience dwindles. But I’m the proud co-author of two books:
Managing NFS & NIS, published by O’Reilly & Associates was my first technical book. Now in its second edition, mostly rewritten by Ricardo Labiaga and Michael Eisler, it’s been in print since 1991. It’s an oldie.
Blueprints for High Availability, published by John Wiley & Sons, is also in its second printing, also with major work from co-author Evan Marcus. We look at how (and why) we can make computing systems more reliable than they usually are. We have a Facebook fan page for the book if you care.
I’m currently working on a third book, which is a love story about hockey: teams, fans, fathers, sons, traditions and miracles. What’s not to love? Scott Gomez has a cameo in it, as does the official timekeeper for the New Jersey Devils, and there are chapters with exclusive Jeff Halpern and Patrik Elias content (would you expect anything less?). The book is called 8 Days, 8 Nights, a play on the duration of most Jewish festival holidays as well as the fact that my son and I wear number 8 while playing hockey. I’m tempted to turn one of the chapters into a short story (an action I’ve been advised to take by several more serious authors), and as of right now I’m going down the self-publishing and self-promoting route.
