The Book is HERE!!!

It's been well over a year of work, reviewing, consideration, submissions, rewrites and just plan waiting, but today, I officially received my writers copy of "How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing".

I've written about the process of how I got involved with the book, and the fact that I had a chance to get in because another author dropped out (never thought I'd be thankful that someone else couldn't commit to a project, but in this case, I am glad :) ), and through an initial draft, a few rewrites and reviews, my chapter was deemed good enough to be included with the rest.

Looking at the list of authors, I will admit I've swallowed hard a couple of times. Reading the back cover to see prise for "corporate test leaders, best of paper authors and keynote speakers" I keep thinking to myself "Wow, they got all those people... and me (LOL!)". All kidding aside, though, there is just something about picking up a book and turning it over, seeing that it has a SKU on it, and that you know that it is a title anyone can buy through Amazon.com or other outlets. Feeling the pages and seeing my name in the table of contents, reading the bio and the acknowledgments, and then going back to see the chapter that I originally wrote.

The closes thing I can compare this to is when I had a chance to have one of my band's tracks appear on a compilation album a  couple of years back, followed by a full length release of our own material. There is a giddy sense of euphoria, and then it's followed by that sense of self criticism that says "wow, but that was written a year ago. I have learned so much more since then." This is a natural thing, and I think it's good. Books, like musical albums, freeze the viewpoint of an individual in a set parameter. A blog is not the same. If I wanted to, I could edit a blog and fix things. I can't fix a released album, and I can't fix a released book. So they become artifacts of my thinking and of my experiences, sealed in a form of "intellectual amber" :). the wild thing is that, years from now, I may meet someone and they may actually say "Hey, I read your thing on 'Trading Money For Time'". they may like it, they may disagree with it, but the neat thing is, I'll be able to discuss it with them from the vantage point of knowing they actually read it :).

So yeah, today is a day of celebration, and it's a bright point in what has been a really challenging month. Today's mail brought a huge smile to my face. You know what else would bring a huge smile? Knowing my friends in the software testing world went out to get the book, read the chapters and enact the ideas in their organizations. Were that to happen, then we would know that the book was worth it to everyone out there. It's a labor of love we all participated in, and now it's out in the wild, we hope you'll hunt it down and use it in your day to day interactions. either way, it's an exciting time, I'm curious to see what will happen from here on out.