For a long time, it was just white noise. A jumble of voices, images of gray village squares, and the blinding light of a grand stage. Now, that noise has taken shape. The Price of Applause is finished. It feels like I’ve accompanied Leo and Max for months on their painful journey, documenting every bruise and every triumph, just as Klaus does in the book. I watched rivalry turn into friendship, and two lone fighters grow into a unit that defies the world’s expectations.

As an IT professional, I live in a world of logic, algorithms, and code. I see every day how rapidly technologies evolve, and artificial intelligence has become an indispensable part of modern IT. It is a brilliant tool for automating processes and solving complex problems.

But precisely because I know this world so well, I draw an absolute, insurmountable line when it comes to my other great passion: writing.

The Machine Doesn’t Co-Write To put it very clearly and leave no room for speculation: I do not use any AI for my texts. No ChatGPT, no Gemini, no hidden algorithms churning out plots or writing dialogues for me. Everything written in my manuscript comes 100 percent from my own pen—and my own mind.

I did it. After reading the manuscript what felt like a hundred times and rearranging countless sentences, the email to the agency went out. The synopsis and the author bio also took forever until I was truly satisfied with them. But now, the package is sent. From now on, it’s all about waiting and hoping.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the Busy Beaver concept. To put it briefly: It is a thought experiment from theoretical computer science. With such a machine, you never know in advance whether it will eventually produce an output (i.e., halt) or run endlessly. That is exactly how I feel right now. The agency will naturally come to a conclusion internally – but I don’t know if that output will ever reach my inbox, or if I’ll just be stuck here forever in an endless waiting loop.

Leo and Max have reached a limit. A limit everyone knows. A limit that inevitably arrives when you love something with every fiber of your being.

„Ich halt’s nicht mehr aus“, sagte Max am Samstagnachmittag, als sie nach dem Training aus dem Gemeindehaus traten. „Ich kann kein einziges Plié mehr sehen. Ich brauch mal was anderes, und wenn es nur für einen kurzen Moment ist.“

Leo nickte nur stumm. Die Freude am Tanz war für einen Moment einer tiefen, grauen Müdigkeit gewichen.

I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek into my upcoming technical book. What exactly is it about, and what tone does it strike? To answer that, nothing fits better than the preface itself. So, here it is. Enjoy the read!

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„Und … was machst du eigentlich genau?“

Wenn ich für jedes Mal, wenn ich diese Frage gehört habe, einen Euro bekommen hätte, müsste ich dieses Buch hier nicht schreiben. Die Antwort ist meistens kompliziert. Ich bin kein reiner Software-Entwickler, der den ganzen Tag Code in eine schwarze Konsole hämmert. Ich bin kein reiner Admin, der „Nein“ sagt, sobald jemand einen Server anfassen will.

The fact that it’s been so quiet here on the blog over the last few weeks definitely wasn’t due to a lack of motivation. Priorities just had to shift temporarily. Besides writing, my main profession is as a software engineer – a job I really enjoy. Currently, a large project there is demanding my full attention.

We aren’t just writing simple scripts; we’re building a complex architecture. The fascinating part is that it’s damn similar to writing a book. Everything has to interlock, the common thread needs to be clear, and the structure has to hold up. And just like with writing, there’s always that one moment in IT: on paper, the idea looks brilliant – but in reality, you look at the result and just think: back to the drawing board.

My website is finally coming together. The tech is in place. But I’m still tweaking the speed. My goal has always been to keep loading times as low as possible. Nothing is worse than pages that take 20 or 30 seconds to load and still aren’t fully rendered.

That also means—and I’m a huge fan of this approach—not using any bloated software in the first place. So: no CMS, no cookies, no PHP. If something needs to be computed, the visitor should have everything under their control. Sure, a little bit of CSS and JavaScript is necessary, but no heavy lifting that the server has to calculate. And what was and still is absolutely crucial to me: zero cookies. I’m happy if you read this, but I don’t want to track you or, even worse, spy on you. Anyone who does that lacks confidence in themselves and, worse, in their readers.

Is it just me? Yesterday, I was in the zone. 5,000 words. Just like that. Compiled and deployed. Sure, the plot still has more holes than a bad firewall config, and the story is shaky, but the core is there. I finally know what the characters want: They don’t just want one life; they want them all. One moment submerged in the underground, the next in high society. They want to change personas like other people change underwear.

You know the feeling: You’re watching TV, reading an article, or just walking around, and pop—you have a new idea for a plot. The problem? It doesn’t fit into any of your current books. Not with the dancers, not in the dystopian zone, and certainly not in the server room.

So, what is the only logical (and completely unreasonable) thing to do? Exactly: You start a new book. A new world, new characters, completely without a past that’s already written in stone. You just start typing, and the character decides who they want to be.

The plan this morning was simple: squeeze in a nap after the early morning feline Olympics. Well. Wanting and doing are running on two entirely different operating systems, unfortunately.

But fine. To make up for it, the cat spent the rest of the day in a coma. I get it, totally—elite athletes need their recovery phases, after all. I, on the other hand, got to work. A bit of thinking, shuffling some Python and RabbitMQ packets around. Someone has to pay for the premium wet food.