Hi folks.

It's the 6th of November, and (in the UK) it's only 25 days to go until the release of DJing for Dummies. It's been proof-read by various people (including me luckily), the images have been checked, and I've had one last panic about letting my baby go into the real world. There's nothing left to do that sit back, and wait to hold it in my hands.

It's been a long time coming really. It was more than a year ago that I got in touch with the Dummies folks after reading 'Final Cut Pro for Dummies' and wondered if they had a DJing for Dummies book. As they didn't, and I currently run what is considered the fore-most place to go on the internet if you want to learn how to be a DJ, I thought I'd chance my arm and see whether they'd be interested in DJing for Dummies - fortunately for me, they were!

So, writing began in early 2006, with the first submissions completed by July 2006. A quick holiday to Ibiza for some final research (and a visit to a lot of good clubs) and all the changes and suggestions from the editors were dealt with, with the book hitting 'completion' by the end of September.

By the end of October, the book was proof-read by the Dummies people, and handed back one more time to me for more proof-reading - which brings me to now.

With nothing to do...

It's really funny, I spent so long completely immersed in the book - I'd do my day job (an editor for a TV company), go home - write the book - go to sleep - wake up - go to work... you get the idea.

Now, I come home from work, and find I have so much more time on my hands. Sure - I've got 9 month's worth of housework that my (loving) wife had been doing to make up for - but once that's done, I still find myself with a couple of hours with nothing concrete ahead of me. Which is really odd.

And also leads to me overthinking the book too! "Did I miss something? Did I really catch all the spelling errors? What if Numark release something that makes what I wrote wrong? What if Vestax release the best cross-fader in the world?" and so on. You might not think it amounts to much, but it really does!

At least I still have the website to work on. Where it was once the place to go to read about how to learn to be a DJ, what equipment to use, what to look out for the first time you play live etc - all that's now in the book. And as loving as I am to people who want to learn to DJ, I kinda need to scale down the amount of info on the site that's also in the book.

So, the site will now be restructured to be a resource for the book. Audio and Video clips of mixing will be on there, further info (like all my worries mentioned above) will be on the site, so the book is 'technically' never out of date - and it'll be a place to come and ask me questions - or play a mix to me for some comments on how to improve your skills.

It's still going to be a place to go if you want to be a DJ, but recess.co.uk is about to come out of its shell and become a new being...

...if I can work out how I want it to look...

So - like I said, nothing left to do but wait. The book gets a UK release first, with a Feb 07 release for everyone in the States. I'll keep coming back here and post updates on how the book's received, how sales are going, what knock-on effects the sales are having for me personally, and just generally say hi and keep you all up to date.

I hope you either a) Enjoy the book, and find it a really good, entertaining, and helpful read - or b) Plan to buy it, and then go back to a) again.

C.ya
Recess (John)