Monday, June 16    


When I was a geek
Whatever your definition of geek may be, I don't think I am one. A dork, sure. Raving lunatic? Without question. But I definitely don't know what RSS stands for, nor do I really care to find out.

However, due to my shady past at New Riders and the former Macmillan Technical Publishing, I know a few more acronyms than I'm comfortable with. I have been known to mutter "DHCP" under my breath. Which is why, when I saw that servergeek liked my Dew button, I was both flattered and taken back to the days when I worked on books like this one. I used to hang with the tech boys. I had my posse of reviewers. I used to pretend I understood what was going on. I think I actually know more about computers and technology now than I did then, but my tech-vocab is gone. As are most of my friends from those days -- I know at least one of my reviewers went on to write a book (Nice job, Mark), but other than that, I have left my sordid past behind me. I haven't scoped out the happenings in the computer section of the bookstore in years (unless you count looking for Stone's book at B&N this afternoon).

My favorite part of publishing was getting into an author's acknowledgements. Sure, it was usually something like "Thanks to Jen Garrett for annoying the hell out of me to make sure I got the book done on schedule," but it was something. In the end, I traded acknowledgements for a byline. All in all, probably the right decision.

  posted @ 12:26 PM |