Chris Henley: A Published Author!

I really can’t believe i am writing this post.  I never thought I would be a published author.  I have always been interested in writing but never really thought I would actually do it.  Well, I did!  The result is the really cool looking book you can see in the post.  I got to work with Matt Hester, one of my best friends and co-workers, and over the course of the summer we were able to write what I think is a great guide to administration in Windows Server 2008 R2.

The process of writing the book was challenging.  When my wife and kids were out at the beach playing in the waves i was writing a chapter for the book.  When they were out enjoying a long day hike I was writing a chapter for the book.  I even spent time writing during a fishing trip.  The process taught me a lot about what I like in a good technical manual.  Matt and I had technical editing help from Harold Wong.  Harold is great! His expertise and gentle suggestions about ways to make the book better resulted in a better product that is much more user friendly.  On one occasion I can recall thinking it would be fine to have just lines of command line text in the book.  Harold wouldn’t have it.  He wanted pictures of the text and its outcome when executed.  I listened (somewhat reluctantly) and the book is better because of him. There is a life lesson in there for me.  I need to listen closer to my friends and family.  My family was very supportive during the whole process and put up with a lot of “Sorry, I need to work on the book.”  More than anything I guess I learned that the process of writing a book is a process of learning, relearning, and teaching concepts.  Hopefully we got it right!  Enjoy the book!