Book Update

You may have wondered how things were going with the book. Currently, I’m in my final review pass. In this phase, I review the fully typeset PDFs for every chapter. In addition to this, I review the almost final artwork (that is far better than the art I drew myself!).

Once my notes all go back to the production team, they will incorporate them before doing a test print to make sure everything turned out properly. If it did, it’ll be off to the presses and out just before the new year.

I’m also busy developing the supplemental materials that will be available on Pearon’s course portal for the book. This includes PowerPoint slides as well as a sample course outline.

Draft Complete

Last week, I finished the first draft of my manuscript. Now I begin the much shorter revisions phase where I’ll be returning to teach chapter and making any changes based on the technical reviews. Many of the chapters will only have minor changes here or there, but there are a few where I will be doing some larger overhauls. However, the revision process time period will be much shorter than the initial writing period.

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Draft Now Available on Safari + Pre-Order on Amazon!

An early draft of my book is now available here, through the Safari “Rough Cuts” program.

Rough Cuts basically gives Safari users access to the draft manuscript as it’s being written. This draft is literally the same one that goes to the technical reviewers, which means the text might be rough around the edges, and there might be some errors. But the great thing about Rough Cuts is it allows any Safari user to become involved with the review process.

You can also now pre-order the book on Amazon!

My Writing Process

I thought that people might be interested in learning a little bit about what happens behind the scenes while writing a technical book. I finished the text on my physics chapter yesterday, so the process is still fresh on my mind.

I already have a rough outline of what are all the chapters I want to cover — I had to develop this months ago, before the book deal was signed. So I know what chapters will be where, and how I want them to tie in together. The order of topics is fairly similar to how I’ve constructed it for ITP 380 (Video Game Programming), which I’ve taught for 10 consecutive semesters at this point. In any event in this instance, I knew I was writing a chapter on physics.

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