The training plan.

There are about a million half-marathon plans on the Internet (rough estimate), and I picked the Another Mother Runner: Half Marathon Finish It plan from the Train Like A Mother book.

I'd recommend the book for its training plans, which were designed by a coach.  It has two plans for each of the 5K, 10K, and half and full marathon distances,  The "Finish It" plans are designed to get you into condition to finish your first race at that distance, and the "Own It" plans are more intense, designed for achieving a PR.  The book is less helpful with respect to nutrition and cross-training, so if you want lots of help with that, you'd need another book.

I read about half the Internet trying to find a plan that fit where I was.  I can already run eight miles comfortably, which I define as "finishing the run without wanting to die and having sufficient energy to get through the rest of the day", but I'm a complete beginner at this distance and I've been running only seven months.  As a result, I was in the position of being just a bit advanced for some beginner half plans, as I don't want to cut back to a 4 mile "long run", but not nearly ready to think about serious speed work or tempo runs, mostly because I have no idea what a good pace is for me.  I think this plan hits the sweet spot for me of being challenging without requiring a lot of running know-how.

The one difficulty is that I also want to do some moderate strength training, and fitting it all in without compromising energy levels or ramping up the time commitment is tricky.  

Right now, my plan is to use the cross-training and "fun workout" days as weight-lifting days, but the deadlifts from Wednesday are still beating up my legs, so we'll see how that goes.