P.C. Haring's Blog, page 14
January 16, 2013
#WritingWednesday Update
For the Week of 1/7/13-1/13/13
[image error]Aloha from beautiful Ko Olina Hawaii! I’ve been on vacation for the past few days and while this picture doesn’t necessarily show it, the weather has been downright gorgeous. This specific shot was taken from where I had breakfast on Sunday morning. Yeah fine, you can hate me, I probably deserve it, but for the moment I don’t care all that much. I’m on vacation this week.
Even so, I’ve been working on the word count, mostly while in the air and with two flights each in the 4 -5 hour range, there’s been a LOT of time in the air. And while that time potentially made up for the hellish week I had both in and out of the office in the lead up to this trip, getting the word count in proved far more difficult than I’d anticipated and I fell well short of the 4,000 word goal I had set for myself last week. Even so, I managed 1,631 new words into Cybrosis 2, most of which were written at 35,000 feet over the Pacific.
But this and last week are about more than just writing.
They are proving to be more about taking care of ones self. While I won’t go into detail, this past week has proven to be a rough one for me on a personal front, and while I’m not thrilled by what ultimately happened, to an extent I’ve come to realize that they needed to happen in order for me to come to certain understandings about myself. This realization came at a steep price I didn’t want to have to pay and it successfully kept the muse away for most of the week.
I’m fine, both now, in the short term, and in the long run. This past week simply proved to be a hurdle that I need to get through. I suspect time will heal this wound and I’ll be stronger for it in the long run. So I’m doing my damnedest not to dwell. Being in Hawaii is helping without a doubt. I’ve only been in town for a day and a half as I write this on Sunday the 13rd and I’m already starting to feel the batteries recharging.
So with that I’m off to enjoy the rest of my vacation which will see me in Hawaii until the afternoon of Sunday the 20th. Given that I’m still on vacation, I’m not expecting a huge word count this week even with the 10 hours in the air I’ll have to get home. My prediction for this coming week falls in the 2,500 word range.
See you next Wednesday!
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January 8, 2013
#WritingWednesday Update
So, with the start of new year, I’ve decided to bring back the weekly #WritingWednesday post that I attempted and failed to do last year. But this year I’m doing to try something different. While I will still be taking advantage of the alliteration of Writing and Wednesday and posting during the midweek, it’s a horribly inconvenient day for me to put a blog post together.
That said, Sunday nights I’m usually taking some down time and putting thoughts together for the upcoming work week. Soo… what better time to compose a weekly writing roundup?
My thoughts exactly
So this past week has been not as productive as it probably could have been in terms of output, but I look at it as a good start and a good foundation for the rest of the year. The majority of last week’s writing time found itself consumed by rebuilding this site, and working on the blog posts. Between the Four posts last week, I logged over 3,500 words.
Words that weren’t written into fiction.
There’s a valid argument to be made about whether or not I spent too much time on these posts, but i won’t hear of it. I needed to write the posts. I needed the catharsis and I needed to share those thoughts. I do not regret it.
As to the fiction writing, I don’t have much to report there, just a meager 262 words. I spent more time than anticipated researching the scene I’m working on.
Like I said, it’s a start.
Looking ahead to next week, I’m hoping for 4,000 words. Most of the work week will be spent very busy at my day job and my night will be spent preparing for my trip next weekend, so i’m not expecting a TON during the week… But… I’ll be riding at 35,000 feet for a good solid 8 hours or so and while some of that time will be eaten by office work, there should be plenty to write.
See you next week, if not sooner.
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January 6, 2013
2013 – A look forward
With 2012 in the rear view mirror and the road into 2013 ahead it’s time to sit down and start discussing plans for 2013. And ohhh what plans there are.
At the top of the list is the completion of the first draft of the Cybrosis sequel, tentatively titled Virtuality. At this time I am just over half way through the manuscript’s draft and hope to be complete with the work by March 31 of this year.
That’ll be a good thing because around that time I’ll be getting warmed up on collaborative project with Veronica Giguere tentatively titled Prospect. She and I are still in development but I can tell you that it will be targeting to novel length and take place in the same universe as her short story Fear of Thought. At this time, V and I have no more of a time table other than to start sometime in March/April.
And as far as scheduled writing and podcasting projects that’s about it for right now. I’ll be working to produce a full cast short story written by a colleague of mine. It’s not my announcement to make, unfortunately, but I would expect that product to hit some time before March.
Also on the docket for the year in writing and podcasting is a potential business venture that I need to get sorted out and with luck the start of main production on Slipspace: Harbinger.
There’s also one more thing to mention that is going to have a significant impact on my upcoming year. I will be taking review courses for and eventually sitting for the Illinois CPA Exam. This will demand a significant chunk of my time starting in March and hopefully ending in October. This is a very ambitious professional certification and something I need to do if I intend to advance my career any further than it currently is.
This is also the reason I am unable to put stronger time lines together for the writing and podcasting as I’m unsure exactly what my life will look like with the weight of this exam coming down on me for the majority of the year. With a little bit of planning, some Organizing and a little bit of luck, there will be time for everything.
For those of you wondering, yes, I am planning to make it to Balticon this year. I’ll have a fairly good break from the CPA process in May and will be looking to kick back and enjoy some time with everyone, especially since I was unable to attend last year. Dragon*Con and/or Worldcon are up in the air at this time, but as I look ahead I’m guessing neither will end up happening for me. Just too much coming together in August and September.
So, that’s the brief run down of the plans for 2013. It’s ambitious… perhaps too much so, but at the moment I’m too motivated to try and trim it down. I will be keeping this site updated as best I can over the course of the year and it is my intention to make sure that at least a #WritingWednesday post is put up on a weekly basis and there may be a CPA rant or two as things get crazy.
But fear not. This will NOT be turning into an accounting blog. You’re welcome. Some accounting talk may creep in from time to time, but only in the context of the writing and podcasting.
So, with that, I’m off to go and get back to Ciris and the gang in Virtuality.
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January 4, 2013
2012 in Review (Part 2 of 2)
It was rightly commented in my previous post that there was not a lot of good in there. That was intentional. I wanted to get through the rough road in the first part and focus this second part on the few good things that this year brought.
As I mentioned before, 2012 started off very well. I finished the initial draft of the final book in the Slipspace Trilogy. While it might be considered foolhardy to write a second and even more so a third book in a trilogy before the first has even been edited, I felt it important to complete the full story so I could properly edit the first installment. It turned out to be the right decision and I can not tell you the elation and joy that came over me when I finished the draft. Three and a half years in the works, 450,000 words between all three installments and the trilogy was complete! On top of that, I was able to complete the edits to Book 1 – Harbinger and get scripts and word counts put together for the eventual podcast production.
Unfortunately, production is on hold for the time being. I’ll not go into the details here, but keep your eyes peeled for another post in the coming days as to what’s going on there. But as Harbinger sat idle, I started feeling the itch to put something new together once more and I started work on developing the first title in a brand new universe tentatively called Hunter. Ultimately I got it outlined and wrote12,500 words into the project before I lost interest and shelved it. It’s not going away… at least not permanently. But I just wasn’t feeling the project and something else was demanding my attention.
Rather someone else was.
In the meantime, Memorial Day weekend was coming up. But I was not planning for Balticon. As much as I would have loved to be there, there was no where else I would have rather have been that weekend than in San Jose to celebrate my best friend’s wedding. I’ve known Steve since we were in the same drivers ed class in High School and was honored to stand up at his wedding. Memorial Day weekend was fantastic, a true get away weekend complete with a ropes course bachelor’s party, a very aptly named stone, a beautiful wedding, an awesome reception complete with a gag gift from me and one of our mutual friends to Steve and his beautiful bride. As if that wasn’t enough there ended up being a very impromptu after party at the hotel bar/lounge complete with a live band and a very geeky rocking out to Johnny B Good that had almost the entire lounge staring at us by the time we were done. The fact that we had a table in the center of the room might have had something to do with it. I’m grinning from ear to ear just thinking about it and while I was sorry to miss Balticon in 2012, I would not have missed the experience of Steve’s wedding for the world.
One of the nice things about needing to escape the day to day drama and stress and having a lot of time after the dust settles to wait is that in those rare moments when you can push through the emotional cloud, a lot of work can be done. I cut short the conversation about the writing to talk about the trip to San Jose, because while I was on the plane, and flying over the rockies, I was putting together a new outline… for a certain cyborg.
Work on Cybrosis 2 started sometime in March. To be honest I can’t say for sure, but there’s a post from March of 2012 where I discuss it, so I’ll trust that I wasn’t trying to trick my future self. It started as a writing exercise to check in with Ciris, and see how she was doing in the aftermath of Cybrosis. I wasn’t planning on doing much. Just a scene here and there. But as 2012 progressed through the summer’s drama and the fallout in the fall and winter I now look at my scrivener file and as of today, the sequel is sitting at 65,000 words and projected to run upwards of 120,000.
At the same time, work continued on Slipspace: Harbinger as I commissioned Alex White to design both the cover artwork and the podcast theme music. Both of those items are complete, delivered and finalized. I’m not prepared to release or preview them yet, but trust me when I say these pieces of art are fantastic and I can not wait for Harbinger to go into production so I can start teasing these out to you all.
As the summer wore on, I received a call from my dear friend Tee Morris sometime during the July/August time period and was very surprised to learn that The Seven had been advanced to the Finalists for the 2012 Parsecs. I’d be lying if I said I remember my reaction though I suspect it was somewhat subdued. He did call me while I was at the day job after all. I had been so engrossed in family needs that I had not even looked at the Parsec nominees so my first realization that was even nominated was a call telling me I was a finalist. Holy Crap!
I gave brief consideration to coming out to Dragon*Con to see people and experience the con, but ultimately decided to stick to original plan and stay in town and experience WorldCon. After all it’s not often that this traveling convention sits down in your stomping grounds, making the decision both easy and difficult.
I was at the Escape Pod meetup hosted by Mur Lafferty when phone in my pocket started buzzing it’s fool head off. Had it been anyone else except possibly my mother, I would have silenced the phone immediately. But when I saw that Tee was calling I felt the need to take the call. It didn’t even dawn on me as to WHY he might be calling from a convention…surely he had better things to do that weekend than to chat with me. But he was calling.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very proud and very excited to tell you that you are reading the blog of a Parsec award winning author!
To say I was stunned when Tee called from the stage at the Parsec awards would be an understatement. I was surprised enough when he called the first time to tell me that not only had The Seven been nominated, but that it had made it to the finalist list and in truth, given the amazing talent of the other finalists, I had no real expectation that the story would ultimately win.
To be listed in the same group as Abbie Hilton, Starla Hutchton, Tim Pratt, and Jason Sanford was amazing enough and I congratulate all of them once again for their fine fine work.
Suffice to say the news of this, put a huge wind in my writing sails and gave me some much needed motivation after a very long and very rough summer. The challenges of 2012 were definitely not over on Labor Day weekend, but there was a new spring in my step, a new motivation and a new resolve which I carried through the rest of 2012 and now into the early days of 2013.
So how does one rate a year like this? With these personal successes, can I really call it a ‘crap year’? With the hurdles and setbacks discussed in my previous post, can I really call it a ‘good year’? Does calling it an “average” or a “mediocre” year give a proper context on my life during the Earth’s last trip around the sun? Are there any words that I could use to properly encapsulate this year? Probably not.
So I’m not going to judge 2012.
It was not a good year… it was not a bad year. It was a year. It was a year of intense highs and intense lows. It was a year that felt both like a quick breeze and a lifetime. It was a year that, dependent on your perspective, was either epic, horrible, or both. But most importantly it was a year that I will eventually look back on, and see as one of necessary personal character building, life lessons, and reminders about how quickly things can change, both for the better, and for the worse.
So, that is 2012 in review… and what a year it was.
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January 2, 2013
2012 in Review (Part 1 of 2)
January 1, 2013
Three Words for 2013
December 31, 2012
This is a Test Post
March 3, 2012
Happy March
Wow…has it really been two and a half months since Cybrosis went live on Amazon? Why yes…yes it has. Which means it's high time for an update from me.
For all the work I've been doing over the past 75 days, It seems that I've failed to formally announce my next major project. If you're following me on Facebook or Twitter, you've probably heard references to it, but I've never actually discussed it. So, lets fix that straight up.
I am very happy and excited to announce that my next full cast podcast novel is and will be Slipspace: Harbinger.
Ten years after the sudden and undeclared end to a long and brutal war with the Ralgon, the Interstellar Planetary Alliance (ISPA) launches their newest battlecruiser, the Mjollnir. However, Captain Cody Amado and his crew's celebration of the ship's maiden voyage is cut short when a fringe colony goes dark. As Amado and his crew investigate they find themselves falling down the rabbit hole as galactic alliances shift, shadowy organizations plot agains them, and a new player enters the galactic stage. But the question remains— With the colony gone, have the Ralgon returned? Has a new threat presented itself? And, most importantly, the loss of that colony merely a harbinger of darker events still to come?
Weighing in at 150,000 words, Slipspace: Harbinger is firmly entrenched as a space opera and the first installment in a fully drafted trilogy. Edits to Harbinger were completed shortly after the first of the year and I've been hard at work pulling scripts together and finding voice talent to fill this very large cast of characters.
I'm not prepared to name drop…yet…as I haven't signed any of the cast officially. But from what I'm lining up this will be another all star cast filled with some voices you've heard around the audio fiction circles, and some that I promise…you have not. Still, I'm very excited to announce this project and start the flow of information as production moves forward.
Keep things tuned here, as well as on my Facebook , Twitter, and Google+ pages for all the latest on this and other projects in which I'm currently involved.
I would also be remiss if I didn't discuss Cybrosis and the future of everyone's favorite Cyborg secret agent.
First and foremost, thank you so much for all of your support of the E-Release of Cybrosis. I am very happy with the sales progress so far and I continue to encourage you to tell your friends and give copies as gifts to friends and family to help spread the word. The book received reviews on both View from Valhalla and My World…in Words and Pages and I both Odin and Melissa for their time and attention to the story.
Although my attention is primarily focused on the podcast of Harbinger, I am doing some work on the as yet un-named sequel to Cybrosis. There's no formal outline yet so I can't say much right now. But I can say that I have a villain set out, and a few scene treatments batting around my head including one at a dark and racy night club, the port of LA, and a Catholic Church. You all can expect to see Chen, Briggs, Tecgui, Wass, and, of course, Ciris return in this new adventure.
So, that about wraps things up and I'm going to put my head back down and knock out the scripts for the last dozen chapters of Harbinger. But keep it tuned here in the coming weeks as I deliver more production news and more updates regarding Slipspace, Cybrosis, and even more.
December 15, 2011
#Cybrosis is here!
It's been a long road and I'm very happy to announce that Cybrosis is now available and for sale for an E-reader of your choosing.
As I mentioned in the announcement posting last month, there are some minor edits in this version that came out of the original podcast. Some are so minor that only a word or two has changed and unless you know where to look, you might not even notice.
At this time, the book is available through both Amazon.com and should go live on Barnes and Noble.com sometime tomorrow. The novel is also available at www.pcharing.net/purchase where you will have the option to purchased an inscribed and signed copy of the book for the e-reader of your choice. All purchase options will be available for $2.99
After you pick up a copy of the book, please help me spread the word! Write a brief review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or even Goodreads. Tell your friends, tell your co-workers, blog about it, podcast about it. If you have an audience who you think would enjoy the book, please let me know and I'll be happy to make promotional material available or schedule an interview and/or appearance. Even if you only tell one friend, I promise I appreciate all of your help. I will be needing all I can get!
As always you can feel free to contact me. My E-mail is still pcharing at cybrosisnovel dot com. I'm around facebook, twitter, and, of course you can leave a comment on the blog.
Thank you for your support of my writing. Im very glad to have you along for the ride.
December 12, 2011
Just a quick update
