Mailbag

Just mail today. I’m off to a meeting. But if you wanted to dual-boot Win95 and 98, or if you want insight into the writing process, read on.
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From: David Brimlow

Subject: Thanks

I know you’re sick of it, but Opt. Win. etc. is saving my sanity! I am ordering copies for all of my interns (we’re working on a B to B application) and for certain friends who deserve to be enlightened (in windows). Great work. Now how about a novel?

Dave

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Thanks! Sick of it? Hardly. You never get sick of hearing people tell you they like your stuff (unless it’s the same people over and over and over, which makes you start wondering what they want from you).

Thanks for the additional sales, to be sure.

I have been working on a novel off and on since I was 19. Crime fiction, semiautobiographical. Someday I’ll finish it, but I find fiction a much slower process. (Hmm, Optimizing Windows took me 8 months, versus 7 years so far for the novel…) You have to do just as much research, plus you have to be more creative and interesting. Technical books can get away with only being right. It doesn’t matter so much that chapter 9 of Optimizing Windows was boring since the other chapters, for the most part, weren’t. They’ll skip it and come back to it if/when they need the info. But if chapter 9 of a novel is boring, people put the book down and don’t pick it back up again.