08:26 – I’m still cranking away on the biology book, still in the plants group. I hope to finish the lab session on mosses and ferns today and get started on one about gymnosperms and angiosperms. After that I’ll move along to the next group, invertebrates, and do two or three lab sessions for that group, then some lab sessions for the chordates group, and finally some lab sessions on the human body. Once I finish all that, I’ll jump back and start filling in additional lab sessions in the groups I’ve already populated to fill the available time.
The drop-dead deadline for the book is 31 January, so I’ll continue knocking out new stuff until about 24 January. That leaves me a week or so to do a final run-through, incorporating comments from tech reviewers, rewriting as necessary, adding more images, and so on. At that point, it’s ready to go to production, although of course I’ll continue making changes through the editing process. At some point, Brian Jepson, my editor, will have to drag the manuscript away from me, despite my kicking and screaming. At that point, I’ll wave good-bye to the book, take a day or two off, and then start work on the forensics manual and kit.