Book's Almost Done

I just finished Chapter 16. I'll give it another read-over in the morning then it will go off to my writing partner for his review, then we'll bat it back and forth a few times until we're both happy with it. There are only two more chapters left, and one of them should be tiny.

The book has ended up being a lot longer than we first envisioned it. Our original concept was a very basic, very beginner-level book. What we ended up writing was almost a soup-to-nuts book that will end up being over 500 pages including front and back matter. The current manuscript is at 470 pages with two chapters left, and that doesn't include the index, TOC, preface.

I'm a little bummed, we ended up cutting a chapter that I would have liked to write. It would have made the book too long and it didn't really belong in a book with "Beginning" in the title, but I thought it was important and kinda wish we had the luxury to include it.

Looks like we missed our deadline by probably ten days. Not bad considering it's over 150 pages longer than our contractual requirement. We probably could have made the deadline, but I think the quality would have suffered, and since the NDA is still in effect, we can't deliver the manuscript anyway, so I think we did the right thing by taking an extra week or two.

I'm actually really, really happy with the book. Dave's a great writer and our tech reviewer is phenomenal, so having the two of them keeping me honest can't help but make me look good.

Man, am I tired. I haven't had a day off in two months, and I haven't had a day shorter than 13 hours in six weeks. Once I send the last chapter to Dave, I'm going to jump for joy, and then sleep for a week.