So you want to write a book, that’s cute.
Here is my attempted journey into published authorship and how it just kind of (almost) happened. My background, dad, husband, light beer aficionado, tech geek, hacker.
I am a huge fan of a very popular publishing company. I have at one point owned almost all of their books. Their content is fantastic and has an excellent reputation in the hacker/tech community.
So one day (and I am still not sure what possessed me to do so), I emailed the owner of the company and told him what a fan of their content I am and explained how it really helped advance my career. I asked him if they had a hacking book in the works on one of my favorite topics, wireless hacking. He said no, but asked me if I wanted to put together a proposal and outline. I was beyond excited.
So I did.
I took me a while, a lot of googling and research into topics I knew about but unfamiliar with, like hacking Bluetooth protocols. I’ve written several Medium blog posts and really enjoy it. Writing a book was something I would have never dreamed, that was going to be out of my comfort zone, but a blast.
A month or so later, I submitted the proposal. A week later the publishing company got back to me and they wanted to move forward. I signed the contract while my biggest fan, my wife ran to the store and bought champagne.
So after the party was over, the work began. Hard work is nothing new to me, I typically live by the adage, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a fucking time!
My outline contained roughly 15 chapters, outlining attack vectors, tools and methodology of the different technologies.
It really was fun, learning while I wrote gave me a deeper understanding of the material, what was really “under the hood” of wireless protocols. Although reading government RFC specification of radio frequencies was absolutely awful.
Between fulltime fatherhood, a fulltime job and writing, it was exhausting. I got burned out several times. And my attitude was slowly changing as my free time shifted from playing with my daughter to reading, researching, researching and reading. As my research continued and the deeper down the rabbit hole I went, the less and less I actually knew of the subject. But I kept myself motivated with the thoughts of the completed product and my daughter being proud of what her dad accomplished. Not only did I have to research the material, demonstrate it, write it, develop my own graphics, tables and charts then it would have to get edited and finally peer reviewed for any technical inaccuracies. That fucking elephant I was eating kept getting bigger and fatter.
So I got one chapter down. I was really pleased with the way it turned out I began working on the next. Then we got Covid… so I took care of my wife and daughter. Writing stopped and I thought I was done for good. As it was the least important thing anyways…
A few months later things were normal again and my writing resumed. I had about 3 chapters near completion, I was really missing some of the important technical details due to hardware and really advanced troubleshooting. It became a real pain in the ass. It was starting to loose its fun.
So I decided to send my one completed chapter, it was about 20 pages. I was really proud and anxious, part of why I waited 8 months to submit the first chapter.
The editor was nice and friendly, but she basically took a red marker to it and when she was done there was no black ink left on the page. Feeling defeated I took a week away from it. I opened it back up and began making corrections. I was waking up at 4am to get started on the edits. I submitted it over and over again. This process took about a month. Then in her last email, she told me that she recommends I take a writing class and not to send her another version with run-on sentences again.
Now at this point, I had an ungodly amount of hours into this single chapter. I would have to do this 14 more times?! I wasn’t doing this for the money, but the amount of money I was expecting to make off of this book, would have equated to a few cents an hour.
So 10 months later, a few unfinished chapters and one semi finished chapter I emailed the editor and owner asking to terminate my contract. It wasn’t an easy decision. Lots of highs and lows, when the time came that it was no longer fun and that I started to dread the work, I knew it was time to call it. I have a million other things to spend my time on. I hope some day to finish it, but this time in my life this is not it. Who knows where life will lead you, I never thought I would (almost) be a published author. Perhaps I will put that on my resume?
Good luck to any aspiring authors out there. Its a lot of god damn work.
