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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