Well, as promised, the audiobook of The Harbinger is available on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon! Infinite thanks to voiceover actor Eric F. Martin for remaining patient with an author’s foibles during the process. Hearing the story come alive in a new and exciting way was something beyond my wildest dreams for where The Harbinger would go when I first sat down to write it all those years ago.
Since publishing back in December, it’s been a weird (albeit exciting) journey. To be entirely honest, I thought writing the damn thing was going to be the hardest part. Ignorance is bliss… little did I know, I had just opened up the most frustrating can of worms yet. I had all but closed my social media accounts (they were deleted off my phone and I hadn’t looked at them for months), but as I tried to figure out how to market the forthcoming publication, it seemed inevitable to have to dive back into them. Ugh. I won’t be so banal as to say something like “social media is the Devil,” so I’ll say this instead: if there is a Devil, he/she/it thrives on the steaming pile of rodent shit that is social media.
Woof. That got a bit tangential. This wasn’t supposed to be an anti-social media rant. Writing is hard… marketing sucks… social media is lame… what the hell was I talking about, again? Ah, yes… the post-publishing journey.
As I write this rambling bit of nothingness, it’s snowing outside. Yes, I know it’s May 8th, but it’s Montana we’re talking about here. And not just snowing. It’s positively NUKING! Four inches on the ground and still coming down hard. I had hopes to get out and do some climbing today or tomorrow, but that doesn’t seem likely at the moment. Who knows. It’ll probably be melted off by the afternoon.
Anyway, I’ve been struggling with motivation in my writing lately. This is the first thing I’ve written in a couple of weeks that wasn’t dragged kicking and screaming from my brain. Feels good to let the words flow. I’ve thought a fair amount recently about what got me motivated to write The Harbinger in the first place. Largely, I think it was a coping mechanism for those lonely three-four month voyages at sea. Hell, there was nothing else to do. There are only so many times you can diddle yourself before you just get bored… let’s not go down that rabbit hole.
The hardest thing has been to find consistency. With only two days per week where I’m not doing daddy daycare or trying not to have my face shoved into a computer around my family, it ain’t much time for house projects, cooking/cleaning, etc (while still taking the time to do the things that keep me sane – i.e. climbing), let alone any significant time for writing. 30 minute stints are hard for me to get into a good flow in that short amount of time. My dad brain grinds along at about 47.6% peak efficiency these days…
Despite all this, I am still working on Book Two of the Infinite Darkness series. I had a lot of anxiety about getting a rough draft done by the end of 2024, but I have since dispensed with that metric of success/failure. I would rather take more time to create something I’m truly happy with than try to keep up with what social media/reddit/author equivalent of unrealistic body expectations that keeps getting pumped into the “void that binds.” Don’t worry. I’m not going all George R.R. Martin on you. It’ll be done this century. For any other authors who might read this and have good advice to stay motivated, I’m all ears… or eyes.
H.K. Farrell 