At 12 months of insane workload, Grails In Action (aka SanGria) is finally off to the printer! It’s awesome to finally have some time and headspace again after such a long slog of going over and over the manuscript with tons and tons of edits. But I’m so happy with the end result!
Peter and I have always had a vision to write an “in the trenches” Grails book that would help people get up and running quickly, and cover a lot of the practical corner cases that developers face when transitioning to Grails. We couldn’t be more happy with the results.
Manning put an insane amount of effort into their books. Peter and I worked closely with a Manning Dev Editor (Cynthia Kane) would did an amazing job getting us focussed on the “Do people need to know this?” questions. There was a lot of stuff that hit the cutting room floor (you know what it’s like to throw code away, right? Imaging throwing away dozens of pages of stuff you’ve written? That hurts!).
Then there were the numerous fixes that turned up when Burt Beckwith reviewed the book for technical accuracy. Then the copy editor (Andy Carroll) starts his work - fixing nearly every sentence in the book. Finally the proof reader (Maureen Spencer) goes over it again (a few times) to make sure everything is accurate. It’s pretty exhausting just watching! I’ll blog up the process of writing a book in a future post. It’s an interesting exercise in personal discipline if you’re so inclined (I’m not the insanely disciplined type, so it was extra hard).
People who have pre-ordered the book through the MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) will get an updated copy of the manuscript (with all the correct formatting goodness) around May 20. The book will be available in hardcopy around May 30 and will debut at JavaOne on June 2! I’m see if I can rustle up a few to give away at the Grails Podcast BOF on Thursday night at JavaOne! Make sure you’re there!
It’s time to put my feet up and relax for a while!