At the urging of a good friend, I have once again opened myself up to the Pandora's Box of writing a book (lots of pain with the golden hope of publication). The first go around wasn't so good - I spent about a year preparing, writing and editing my first attempt, The Art of Modeling. This was the precursor to this book, where I tried to discuss the act of modeling in detail, theory and practice. Unfortunately, I bored the life right out of my readers! I was way too academic and text-booky. I though "hey! I think this way, so must everybody else!" Wrongo. Consequently, my first publisher (O'Reilly) dumped me after a number of poor reviews, even though I tried my best to make the requested changes. And so there I was, stuck with a book that no one was interested in. Yuck. And so I try again, but this time with a few lessons:

Lesson #1: Don't write it all in one gulp - iterate each chapter with review.

comment - I don't know why I was so stupid as to think "if I write it of course it will be published". Typical rookie mistake. Better to write a chapter a time, get it reviewed and adjust the next chapter based on feed-back.

Lesson #2: Know your audience.

comment - ditto on rookie mistake; the audience is who will pay money for your work - otherwise it's an exercise in self gratification and nothing else.

Lesson #3: Keep it light.

comment - "Death is easy, comedy is hard" as actor Edmund Keane was heard to say on his death-bed. Dropping into a lecture-mode is pure death to interesting writing.

So, will I learn my lessons? Will I repeat the past? Will batman escape the diabolical trap? Stay tuned and find out!