This issue includes publishing news, the second half of my interview with Commodore tech writer, Dan Sanderson, and an update on Christina's Portrait.

The Local Author Fair at the Fullerton Public Library is this Saturday, August 22 from 12:00–4:30 pm. I'll have autographed books on sale and possibly give a preview of my upcoming novel, Christina's Portrait. Read about my experiences from last year's show.

My essay, "The Long Race," was accepted in the Mission Viejo Library Literary Anthology!

You can learn all about it at the Mission Viejo Local Author Showcase on Friday, September 4 from 5:00–8:00 pm at the Norman P. Murray Community and Senior Center. Look for me at the Mission Viejo Writer's Group table.

Christina's Portait is still on track to be released in November. My first round of publisher edits is coming soon. In the meantime, Wordhaven Press posted the first of the excerpts on their social media.

Christina's Portrait will be available in paperback and eBook. Look for more details in future editions of this newsletter. Make sure you're subscribed to get the latest.

My other recent novels show characters facing their past to deal with the present—and they're both centered in Reseda, California.

In Amiga, Laura is a middle-age programmer dealing with family problems and a new manager who's young enough to be her daughter. She also carries painful memories of a job at a startup company in the mid-1980s that took a dark turn. She may find the answers to her problems in the computer that changed her life, the Commodore Amiga.

In The Remainders, a homeless son and troubled father must reconnect across Southern California. Eighteen-year-old Dylan Glass was kicked out of his mother and stepfather's palatial home and finds himself sleeping in his SUV behind the abandoned Reseda Theater. Miles away in Orange County, his father Oliver struggles with trauma from an abusive and tragic past.

You can find Amiga and The Remainders in paperback and Kindle, and you can request these books at your local library.

Last month, I introduced you to Dan Sanderson, the technical writer at the revived Commodore. This month, we conclude our interview by discussing the documentation process, what Commodore wants users to experience, and advice to beginning technical writers.

What software and hardware did you use to create the documentation?

I insist on LaTeX when given a choice. It’s old and arcane, but also powerful enough for the most demanding book designs. Everything is in text files that can be edited with text-oriented tools, stored in revision control systems, and constructed with scripts and macros. WYSIWYG tools just don’t give you enough control to produce a quality result, and are not amenable to workflow automation beyond simple tasks. Even the industry standard commercial typesetting software is buggy and under-supported. If you’re patient enough to learn it, LaTeX overcomes all of those problems.

The worst part of LaTeX is error handling. With great power comes great ability to mess up a whole book with a small change. You get used to it.

I have several projects where I’m using LaTeX to mimic the typesetting of vintage computer books from the 1980’s. It’s been fun to notice how easy it is to do this in LaTeX, partly because LaTeX was likely used to typeset those books in the first place.

What is your documentation process? How do you go from specs to first draft to SME and QA reviews to production?

I’m too much of a software engineer to write prose based on specifications alone. I know that’s how it works at some companies just to give the writers some lead time, but final products are so different from their specs in many cases. If I’m documenting your software, I’d rather read your code, build the program, and keep my hands on the actual product for as long as possible. That’s the best way to learn what the user’s experience will be like, and what questions the user will have at every turn.

We had a chance to beta test the Commodore 64 Ultimate User’s Guide with a group of people, and I really appreciated their feedback. The material we used from the original User’s Guide has been time tested and that saves us on QA time, but we still found errors even in the vintage text that we were able to fix.

Is the user guide translated? If so, how do you work with localization teams? What languages do you produce?

As of this writing, the Commodore 64 Ultimate User’s Guide is only in English, with the safety and regulatory text translated to multiple languages. Commodore’s legal and safety people managed most of that process, I just did the typesetting. I did have to learn a bit about non-English alphabets to make sure the typesetting was accurate.

What do you want Commodore users to experience by using your products?

My favorite thing about the retro computing community is that there are many ways to enjoy retro computing, from playing old games to writing new ones, from recreating vintage user experiences to exploring computer science, from collecting to restoration to electronics engineering to novel product development. So my first wish is that you find the thing you enjoy.

My second wish is that once you find the thing you enjoy, you allow it to introduce you to more things you might enjoy. Computers like the Commodore 64 Ultimate are an open invitation to try anything and everything. You use the same blinking cursor to LOAD and RUN someone else's program as you do to write your own. Computing is not just a utility like water or electricity, it is a creative medium like clay or acrylic paint or words on a page or the vibrations of a violin string. There are people who want you to think there's an inevitable gulf between you and computational power, and you should leave it to the professionals and pay for the privilege. That wasn't how it was, and it's not how it has to be.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue technical writing as a career?

The most important skill of a technical writer is to see the world from the perspective of the reader, the person who is considering adopting a piece of technology to solve a problem they have, or has adopted it and is figuring out how to use it. This person has questions, and forms new questions based on what they learn. Good technical writing anticipates the trail of questions and makes the answers easy to find and easy to follow.

Most professional tech writing jobs won't train you to do this, so you need to pursue it yourself. Be curious about technology, learn what problems people have and how technology can solve them, and understand product design. Get your hands on the product as early as possible, and pay close attention to your own learning paths so you can clear the way for others.

And learn to code. Most of my technical writing career has been with products, tools, and services for people writing software. In that field, you are expected to know how to write software yourself. Gone are the days where a software engineer will tell you what to write and your job is merely wordsmithing. You have to be a one-person band, from outlines to prose to code samples to content management systems. You have to know how to use the product. Thankfully, this isn't wasted effort: it's also how to write the best documentation.

Indie Author Day returns to the Anaheim Central Library on Saturday, November 7, 11:00 am–4:00 pm. Enjoy a full day of local authors and panel discussions, like the one I moderated about AI last year. Next week, I'll meet with the organizers to put together panels for this year's event.

More author events are coming soon, including a release party for Christina's Portrait. Look for details in upcoming newsletters.

I've interviewed a number of authors including N.J. Mastro, Nicole Zelniker, Jann Alexander, Karen E. Osborne, Joseph Lewis, Bailey Johnson, and Lucy McLaren. Recently, I interviewed bookstore owner Lonnie Owens and school librarian Amanda Prosin.

If you are an author or someone associated with the book community who wants to be interviewed, send me an email to admin@matthewarnoldstern.com with the following information:

• Your name.
• A brief bio (100 words or less).
• Your books.
• What you would like to talk about in your interview.

By supporting each other, we can all grow!

I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. If you have any comments and suggestions, feel free to email me at admin@matthewarnoldstern.com. 

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I'll be in touch again next month with more news and content.