Happy Easter!

Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail... :)
   I hope everyone is enjoying your Easter, whether you are religious or not. (I'm not, it's family time)
Okay, on to the news:
   Gord and Jacob passed Princess Rescue Inc back to me, I passed it on to be proofread by another person. That person will pass it back to me for corrections and then I'll pass it on one more time. Hopefully you will see it by the end of April, if not sooner. :)
   I'd like to welcome Thomas to proofreading, he just finished proofing the short story "Nohar" aka "The Adventures of Nohar PI." An immediate prequel to Plague Planet. He said he'd shoot it back to me next week. :)

   Speaking of Plague Planet, I finished the rough draft on Monday, then Tuesday I cleaned up PRI and sent it off, then did a spellcheck of PP. When I was finished I started the read through. I usually take 3 months to do a read through, spell check, edit, read it again, then spell check with Word, then pass it on to the proofers. (I hate it. It takes longer for me to read it and correct stuff than it does to write it)... I really buckled down though this time (with Gord and Jacob asking for it) and got about half way through and then started slipping into scan mode on the third day. On advice from a couple of the proofers, I passed it on to Gord to have a go at it. Like they said, I can always add more later, and fresh eyes will see what I've overlooked.
    Gord of course has already thumped me about how little I did in corrections. Actually the has/had one is the biggest 'oops' so far. lol

   I'm planning on playing Heart of the Swarm later next week, but Friday and Saturday I had a bit of free time and started pecking at Jethro 2, First to Fight. I cleaned up some past tense errors and added 3 pages to it. It's funny, that book is already nearly 80 pages long and it's got a lot happening in it. I'm going to have a lot of fun writing it. :) Even the simulated combat has me grinning. The real combat is going to be... fun. >:D

   Oh, for those of you asking or talking about Irons and why he does what he does, some of the psychology comes to a head in Plague Planet. But I will leave you with these two paraphrased missives.
1 You cannot govern without the consent of the governed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed

2 An officer doesn't give an order he know won't be obeyed.
http://everything2.com/title/Never+give+an+order+you+know+will+not+be+obeyed

Okay one more,
There is a method to my madness. Muhahahaha....

Princess Rescue Inc

Wow!
Gord my alpha proof reader sent PRI (Princess Rescue Inc) Monday, I made his recommended corrections and then passed it on to Jacob who just finished and sent it back to me a few minutes ago. COOL! lol (giddy here)
In anticipation of this I fixed the cover art scaling, cropping the left side to form it into a rectangle. (and getting rid of the 6 legged rat that took hours to render... grrr)

The cover art has material from various sources. The animals (except the horse) were sculpted by me in Sculptris, the marines are from Mixamo? Most of the outfits are from Renderocity and ShareCG and are owned by their creators (who generously released them publicly) Some of the props were made by me, some like the buildings in the back came from ShareCG I think. Textures are from various sources including the web.

 

If you are wondering down the road (after the book is released) Princess Zara is the woman in the left corner, the soldiers and others I don't remember off the top of my head, but on the right is Eugene Ryans the protagonist, and Princess Diedra.

I will be making any recommended corrections the first week of April, and then I will see if someone else is willing to take a go at it... or if I can put it out as is. We'll see. Either way I'd like to release it by or before May 1st.

Last week I finished the rough draft of another short story: "Hauling Freight". That's 6 out of 13 stories for the short story book, I'm almost half way there on that front. So far 3 have been proofed, 1 is up for proofing for who ever wants it, and the other 2 (including Hauling Freight) are unfortunately going to have to wait until after PP and Jethro 2 are released before I let them be proofed. They have wwaaayyy to many spoilers in them. :D

I also added a couple more treatments for other short stories in the other time blocks. The stuff after book 7 is... wow. 14 stories planned so far, and a lot of them have combat in them. They are going to be fun to write... when I get around to them. Some are already partially finished, though raw. :)

This upcoming week is Spring Break for most of the family... which means I'm pretty sure my productivity is going to take a nose dive. I am on chapter 19, it's 1/3rd finished, a mixture of notes and finished writing. I'll try to get the last 4 chapters of Plague Planet completed... but no promises. Sigh. I so want the rough draft done though! (do you have any idea how hard it is to keep from getting nauseated with Andrew Bordaine talking about eating awful things in the background.... yuck!)

In other news Mechmaster finished proofing Chapter 32 and 33 of Afraid of the Dark, I'm not sure if I reported that in the last blog post or not. ... and I'm too lazy to check. The good thing is that he is finally half way through the book. :)

I finally received the collector's edition of Heart of the Swarm from Amazon, and they finally shipped the strategy guide yesterday. As soon as I send PP off to Gord I'm taking a sabbatical to have a bit of fun with the Zerg. :)

That's it for now!

Ghost Station Finally Released!

Yup, I finally went and did it.

You can find the book on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Station-Wandering-Engineer-ebook/dp/B00BSG0LF4/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363100654&sr=1-7

And Barnes and Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-station-chris-hechtl/1114821961?ean=2940016297781&itm=4&

I still haven't gotten onto Smashwords, Google, or anywhere else. Sorry. I keep meaning to work on that, but reading the directions to convert things to each preferred file format is a bit like reading VCR instructions. Clear as mud. lol

Besides, I'd rather write. :D

-In other news, no, my arm wasn't broken, though the doctor did say I strained a ligament. Resting it helped. I'm back to normal now.
-Plague Planet has entered Act III. I have part of Act III written already, I just need to fill in the rest. Right now I'm doing a bit of research and talking with Jacob about things. :)
-Speaking of Jacob, he's taken it upon himself to proofread the entire Engineer series starting with New Dawn. His last progress report said he was a bit over half done which is cool.
-Gord informed me last night that he is half way through Princess Rescue Inc. Hopefully I can find someone else to proof read it as well before releasing it.
-I've finished 2 more short stories. 13 Degrees of Seperation (no nothing to do with 50 shades of gray) now has 5 completed short stories, 2 of which have been proof read. The other 8 are in various stages of completion, hopefully I'll get around to them soon. :)

I haven't heard anything about Afraid of the Dark from Mechmaster. I'll check in with him this week.

Future Plan: Once I get PP (Plague Planet) done I plan on doing a bit of 3D work and some short stories, then get my existing books into Smashwords before I dive into Jethro 2. Jethro 2 and Pirate Bane have been partially written already, Jethro is already 74 pages. In fact I've been working on Jethro 2 off and on for a while now, even before I finished Jethro 1. (Jethro 3-5 aren't nearly as finished)
I'm also coming up with scenes for the next series after Wandering engineer. (some of those books are also partially written) The latest scene takes place even further from them though it's about....
Oh, nope, sorry, forgot, no spoilers! :)

Good news bad news...

Good News Bad news... I hate that routine, but here goes.
In the Good news, I've finally 'finished' the cover to Plague Planet.

 

If you are wondering about the ships... I'm not telling. :D

I am also up to page 133 of 168 in writing the book. Chapters 1-11 are completed. I am hip deep in Chapter 12 right now, which is near the middle of act 2. The epilogue/last chapter are already finished as well, as is part of the climax. Right now the last 30 odd pages are a mix of notes and completed scenes. Mostly notes. Each page of notes can translate to 3-5 pages of finished text so I've still got my work cut out for me, though the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight. lol
I am still on track for getting this done by Mid March.

I also have several more Federation short stories blocked out, 54 in the 4 time periods as of this morning. Several are in various stages of completion.

I also have a doctor's appointment Friday to check out my arm. Yeah, it's still bugging me, though less now. It sometimes hampers my writing ability.

Now for the Bad News.
Unfortunately, I jumped the gun on giving a release date of Ghost Station, it will not be released tomorrow. I am not certain when, hopefully by mid March. It's my fault not Rob's, he's got his hand's full and I guess I got excited about announcing it. Sigh. My bad. Sorry folks. (Yeah yeah, Gibbs, I know, don't say your sorry. :P I'm not you)

Also, a friend of the family was hospitalized Saturday. She was rushed in Saturday night by ambulance. She's going in for emergency Surgery today, they discovered a tumor and they are fairly certain it is cancerous. I spent part of my afternoon helping her daughter clean her kitchen yesterday to lend them a hand since she is going nuts dividing her time between the kids and the hospital. I am keeping my finger's crossed Julie will pull through okay. This is her second round of this form of cancer, but they think they may have caught it in the early stages. Here is hoping anyway, sigh.

Best laid plans of mice and men...

Don't you just hate it when you get into something, plan it out, and then something unexpected hits you and it all goes to heck?
See, Irons and his officers would say you have multiple plans and anticipate, and adapt. I'm all for that but I'm sidelined by something annoying and out of the blue, my right arm.
I'm not sure how I injured it Tuesday, pulling weeds, push ups, or lifting something heavy, but I did. I so far haven't managed to make a doctor's appointment to figure it out either. (nothing available until the last week of the month)
Fortunately it doesn't seem to be broken, though it felt that way for the first couple of days. A wrist brace my sister loaned me seems to have helped, I'm no longer in constant pain anyway. I'm hoping that by keeping it braced for a couple more days will give my body a bit more time to heal... but it makes it rough to type. sigh.

It's aggravating, I got to 104 pages in Plague Planet and I've been forced to stop. The first 8 chapters of Act 1 are almost finished.

So, I'm puttering around with other projects in order to cope. Interestingly, I came up with another (hopefully final) short story titled 'Hauling Freight' for that short story book. It ties a lot of stuff together, which is cool, and it has ties to the beginning of book 5, near end of Jethro 2, and hints at stuff in book 6. :)
But again, this is where the plan issue comes in, in blocking out this short story it caused a chain reaction of plot point shifts to occur in Jethro 2. lol Not a big pain, I hadn't gotten to those parts yet, but enough to make me rethink a few things there.

I'm going to do a bit of rendering and minor plot clean up the next day or so. Speaking of the former, here's a Zoid image I did the other day.

I am also working off and on on another one, this of my Liger Zero 1.5 model. It's not working out that well though. And for some strange reason it's the first image to set my temperature alarm off! I've got liquid cooling, it's a simple scene... I'm confused! I think I need to do a bit of PC cleaning here too.

I also want to get the Phoenix modeled for the cover art of Plague Planet.

But first, time to rest the arm... again! grrr

Federation story arches

There have been several questions about my progress and my future books.
I have a lot of books planned, and a many are in various stages of completion.
Here are the books for the Federation Universe.
The Federation Universe is broken into 4 story time periods. (arches)

 Founding of the Federation:
Just what is sounds like, this series deals with the founding of the Federation. It will touch on a lot of various subjects. Here are the titles:

1 First Steps -completed
2 To touch the stars (Forthcoming, 1% complete)
3 AI war (Forthcoming)
4 First Contact (Planned)
5 We the people... (Planned)
6: Short story book (Forthcoming 10% complete)

Twighlight of the Federation trilogy: (Gottenburg)
These books take place during the Xeno War. None of these have been written, just blocked out.

1 Sparks
2 Inferno
3 Embers
4 Bonus: short stories book (Forthcoming 1% complete)

Wandering engineer:
This is the main series (for now)

1 New Dawn New Dawn -completed
2 Fools Gold -completed
  A: Jethro goes to War -completed
3 Destiny's choice  -completed
4 Ghost Station (Rough draft complete, currently undergoing corrections before 2nd proof read)
5 Plague planet (Forthcoming, 25% complete, undergoing research)
  B: First to Fight (sequel to Jethro, currently in production, 25% complete)
  C: Short story anthology book  Currently in production, 12% complete)
6 Pirates Bane (Forthcoming, 10% complete)
  B: Jethro 3 No place like home (forthcoming)
7 Ghosts of the past (Forthcoming, 5% complete)
  B: Jethro 4 (Forthcoming) Recruiting drive

Federation reborn:
(books 8-12 of the preplanned Wandering Engineer story arch, and then others)
These books take place right after book 7 and Jethro 4 (no timeskip) and will detail the new Federation and the start of the Horathian/Federation intergalactic war. I had planned them as part of the Wandering series but then broke them off when the focus changed to the bigger picture.

8 New beginings, POV book (Forthcoming)
9 Pirate Rage (Forthcoming)
 B: Jethro 5 Ares god of war(Forthcoming)
10 Enemy of my enemy
  B Marines of the reborn Federation (2-3 stories)
  C: short stories (Forthcoming 10% complete)
11 Federation Academy (Forthcoming)
12 Short stories (anthology) 2% complete
13 spec ops

The short story books are recent additions. (well some are, book 12 and the marines were planned) I've been juggling them around to the right time periods and breaking them down in order of priority of writing. (right now I'm focusing on those that take place in or right before established books or before book 6 and 7)

If you are wondering about my system, it's just something I made up to keep me going. Anything as a treatment is 1-2%. Usually that means it's at least a page or 2 of plot with a bit of dialog as well as notes. Anything above 15 pages is 10% (that means I've got a handle on the plot and am comfortable enough with it to proceed further),  75 pages or more is 25%, above 150 pages is 50-60% and rough 1st draft is 75%. The remaining 25% is me editing, cleaning things up, doing rewrites, and doing my own proofing and spell check passes before I pass it on to the proof readers. (yes this is where I am having trouble, I'd much rather write then edit!)

Other books:
I recently came up with a book (sequel/parrellel) idea for Bootstrap, and a couple other series down as treatments as well as a bunch of short stories for various universes. I also wrote a Terminator Salvation book I submitted to Titan publishing that probably needs to be resubmitted... to who ever owns the rights now. lol
Lets see, the Forgotten Heroes series... The star Empire at war... um... Who done it(working title), Penence alien (working title), Elementals, Last assault of the Emperor, the cull... ugh the list goes on and on.
Don't even get me started about the other series I started writing! lol Let me stay focused on the Federation if you want them done soon!

If you are wondering what the release order... um... I'll get back to you on that. What I can say. Here is what I'm currently going off of:

Ghost Station: Gord (Thank you!) has passed it back to me and I've finished the basic corrections he sent me (the last this morning while also helping my landlord replace our leaking hot water tank) and I've started looking for any additional errors. I'm going to make a few story corrections he recommended (minor things and a loose plot point to clean up) before I pass it on to other proof readers. Hopefully we can see the book hit the stores by the end of the month. (Yeah, hopefully!)

Untitled Wandering engineer short story book: currently I've got 10-12 short stories in various stages of completion for this book. This project has exploded in the past 2 weeks. I've got 2 short stories done and off to the proof readers, with another 2 I'm working on. If all goes according to plan I'll have this done by the end of the month. :) (Hopefully!)
I've been coming up with short story ideas for all 4 (yeah all 4!) story arches every other day it seems. Last week I came up with 7, 2 in one day.

Afraid of the Dark: Mechmaster is currently working on proofing it. He is on chapter 27 of 63. (yeah, my longest book to date!) When he passes it back to me I need to reformat it and add a few bits I've thought of before I pass it on to anyone else. I'd say don't expect this book anytime soon.

Princess Rescue inc: Mechmaster has had it since last summer. I'm dangling it before the other proofers. :)

Plague Planet: Um... I need to do a bit more research here. Still working on it. Hopefully I'll have it off to the proofers by March or April. (Hopefully sooner!)

Jethro 2 First to Fight: I was working on it but then I switched to editing and Plague Planet. I may switch to it since it's a lot less complicated to write. (and there is a ton of action in it!)

Pirates Bane: This is where everything changes for Irons! The begining of the end of the wandering... I've been working on it, Ghosts from the Past, and Pirate's Revenge off and on. Hopefully I'll get it off to the proof readers by the end of summer. The others I dunno. We'll see.

To Touch the Stars: I started it last year but then I put it down in order to do some much needed editing and fixes to other books. Hopefully I can pick up where I left off and get it off to the proofers by the end of the year.

That's it for now! The rest well... we'll see how the next 3 or 4 weeks go!

1st proof read of Ghost Station is in!

In a monumental effort showcasing his willpower and skills Gord has finished proof reading Ghost Station this morning. One week to complete 32 chapters. Wow! He has been sending me corrections daily, I in turn will now be implementing the corrections before I pass it on to someone else to proof read. Thank you thank you Gord!

I have jotted out a half a dozen short story treatments and finished 2 short stories this week. I've also made some progress with Plague Planet. (Few!) I passed the short stories on to the guys to read. (Thanks again!)

I have also started work on the cover art for Plague Planet. I'm having some funny AA rendering issues so Mechmaster is lending me a hand.

I'm about to be invaded so that's it for now!

Daddy long legs encounter

I did this the other evening. It came out darker than I had intended, mostly due to tree shadow. Oh well, it works.

The Alien (daddy long legs) is a herbivore I sculpted for Afraid of the Dark. I unfortunately do not have it rigged so it seems off balance in other pictures.

The trees and humans are stock Cinema 4D assets. The rocks are stock Inspire 3D assests.

Now that Google is allowing pics again lets try that shipyard wip shot again...

 

The idea is that the ship under construction is built in blocks in the modules around the exterior of the slip. (pic 2) They are fed by tubes connected to the main station. (yet to be built) Each block is added to others moving downstream to the larger cube to form into Grand Blocks. These are then moved into the main slip and joined to the growing ship.

It's still a work in progress, it has a long ways to go before completion obviously. :)

 

You will be seeing this shipyard design in a future Federation book cover as well as any wikipedia, or tech bible I put out. ;)

 

In other news Mechmaster has given me an update, he's on chapter 27 of Afraid of the Dark... (of 63, hey it's a long book!)

 

I'd also like to thank Gord, Mark, and Jacob for volunteering to proof read. Thanks guys!

Progress report

Hello!
Sorry for the lack of progress reports, I've, well, I can't really say I've been that busy, just distracted.

Ghost Station: Ghost Station is currently out of my hands, (literally) Mechmaster has had it since August of last year. He is currently proof reading Afraid of the Dark though, so it's going to be a while before he gets to Ghost Station. Afraid of the Dark is one of my longest novels. It's pretty ambitious.

The same goes for Princess Rescue inc. He has all 3 books btw, I turned them over to him in August and September of last year. I tried a few other people as proof readers, they failed miserably. (one tried to cheat me by claiming he did the work when he didn't even open the file, grrr) So until I can find someone else who is reliable (and cheap) Mechmaster is my only option. He is a good friend for putting up with me. Unfortunately he is swamped with other projects (like his Dalek comic) so he is very apologetic about being so slow. He said he's doing one or two pages a week.  He is thorough though.

Book 5 Plague Planet is slowly coming along. I do mean slowly, the other books were a lot easier to write than this one. This one is about 25% done. I've sometimes skipped around, writing bits into book 6 and 7 to keep working. (book 7 is the frosting, it's what everything is building up to) That should help finish them faster when I get to them. I've also jotted out some other ideas for stories, including a possible sequel/parallel story to Bootstrap Colony.

I think I need to do a bit more research into some of book 5's subject matter before I get too deep into it. That may take some time. Book 5 is a bit of filler, but it also sets up some characters and a planet for book 8 and some of the short stories. (and there is a cameo in it from book 1)

I think I'm getting carried away with all the tongue and cheek stuff. We'll see what you folks think of it when you get your hands on it. :)

In art news I've been working on the design for book 5's cover art, and I've been working on the shipyard, something I've wanted to do for over 10 years.

Oookay...  the blog wont let me post a pic. Strange. I'll try again later.

I want to thank all of you for pointing out my errors and being patient with me. I admit, synonyms are my downfall. Thanks J. Eaves for pointing a few out. By the way any relation to the John Eaves of Star Trek fame? If so I'm a big fan! lol

So, to summarize, there are books in the pipeline but it's out of my hands folks, thank you for your interest and hopefully something will be finished soon!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

I've been busy jumping around in various manuscripts, working on reformatting and rebuilding my system again, and rendering a bunch of Starcraft projects including my noncanon Terran Destroyer.

I did this just before changing over to windows 7 64 bit so I was limited on what I could do. I took the Hybrid BC I built a while back and tweaked it. :)

Anyway, have a safe and happy holiday season everyone!

New Liger Renders

   I'm still having teething issues, most specifically with Cinema which is hampering my efforts and making things difficult, but I did get these two images done.
   I started the Hot Foot image back before the crash. I thought it was done but there was an annoying glow. Rendering the scene all in one with my new 8 core solved the problem.

   Liger by the sea was the culprit that destroyed the Phenom, when I tried to render the land it died for the last time. I was a bit leery about rendering it but gave it a shot. The waves are post blur effects combined with splash effects Mechmaster taught me, not perfect, but better than my initial efforts.

   The water was a major annoyance. You can't see it but there is water under the layers of the bottom third of the picture.. and that took hours to render. Also the first time I rendered the Liger and the land it took my PC over 8 hours to render... which made for a very painfully bright room to try to sleep in. (leds) I'm not going through that again. grrr.

    Once I get Cinema and some other issues sorted out I want to decal the liger, make a few different versions and then knock off a couple more of these scene ideas before returning to writing.