Q6. How did you two work together when writing? Are you geographically close? Oh, and how did the two of you meet? And how and when did you decide to write a book together?
We both live in the Portland, Oregon metro area, somewhere between 25 and 40 minutes by car, depending on traffic. It was easy to get together in person if we needed to, but usually we ended up in the same place for other reasons (hanging out with the guys on Thursday nights, for example).
We spent a couple of weeks coming up with a really great outline as part of the book proposal process, and then did it again when it was clear that the book needed to change dramatically from our original vision. That gave us several small sections for each chapter, and we divided those between us equally, where Jim would write the first draft and then I'd edit it, and vice versa. Occasionally we spent an afternoon in person making notes and plans for more complex sessions. For example, we took a couple of days to spread notecards around my living room to figure out the third section of the book when we realized again that our original approach wasn't quite right.
We originally met... well, Jim's girlfriend at the time (now wife) called my roommate (at the time) to invite him to Jim's 30th birthday party a few years ago. I tagged along. Somehow he found out that I was a programmer and I found out that he was a consultant and programmer and that was a few months before I started working on the XP Pocket Guide. He seemed like a perfect candidate to review it.
A couple of years after that, he had the idea of revising the pocket guide. I resisted for a while, but it eventually made sense, at least until we looked at the outline and said "This isn't a pocket guide anymore."
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