Finished (well...almost)!

Like my friend, Steve Smith, I've reached an important milestone in my latest writing project. The initial revisions of my books, Microsoft® ASP.NET Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET Version 2003 Step By Step and Microsoft® ASP.NET Programming with Microsoft Visual C#™ .NET Version 2003 Step By Step, are complete. This brings the books in line with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and version 1.1 of the .NET Framework. All that's left now is the editing passes, and the books will be complete.

Highlights: coverage of the major API changes important to ASP.NET developers, including Request Validation, a new feature designed to help prevent cross-site scripting attacks, the addition of the ODBC and Oracle data providers to ADO.NET, and numerous others. All step-by-step procedures and screen shots have been revised and updated to include any changes to the Visual Studio .NET 2003 IDE.

Unlike Steve, I'm not ready yet to swear off writing, but I can certainly identify with his feelings on this topic. For anyone considering being a writer for a living, I offer this advice: never underestimate the ability of a writing project to expand (and ultimately overflow) to fill the amount of time available in your life. That's not to say that writing can't be satisfying and worthwhile, but life has a way of throwing up obstacles to meeting deadlines in the best of circumstances.