Many years ago, I wrote several of these beasts under my real name (Chuck White — my fiction editor for MagicLand was concerned this would not SEO well, so we did a pseudonym, which I use here on Medium).

The editors quite literally (I use this word in recognition that the word is overused) stripped out any personality from the first books I wrote, and if I tried to sneak in some, they relentlessly stripped it out of those attempts, too. There was a very specific formula that they insisted on in those days. I have no idea if that is still true. Sounds like it is.

Ironically, I learned almost none of my computer programming from a book. It was all through your younger brother's approach. Banging out code. It wasn't rare for a company to change its software stack while I was working for them, in which case I still didn't buy a book, and just learned by trial and error.

Happy reading!