Hello everyone. First off, I'm sorry if this got your hopes up for something new in this story. I wanted to post here to let you know what's going on with me. When I put this story on hiatus, I needed a break. I'd been pushing myself to publish a chapter every week, without being able to keep up. So as time went on I wrote faster and sloppier, and felt like I'd written myself into a corner that I couldn't fix. This was compounded by the fact I never planned out anything for this story. I intentionally started writing without any sort of outline, and just wrote based on a very vague idea I'd had in my head. I don't think this was necessarily wrong, but it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped.

Since then, I took a break from writing entirely. During that time, I was laid off from my job and spent a lot of time just trying to be present with my spouse and our pets. We adopted a new dog Twig. He's terrible, we love him. I sat back and re-evaluated what I wanted to get out of writing. And I landed on wanting to write something that's an adventure, that's fun to write. Because at the end of the day, this is a fun hobby that I pursue just for enjoyment. I'd love to publish a book someday, but that is secondary to just having a good time. So I started planning something new. I took about a year to write an outline, then another year to start putting pen to paper on a draft. Since then, I've written quite a bit more than I ever did for AM, and started publishing that draft here (if you're interested, its on my author page. I won't link it directly here, as that feels wrong somehow). I've written 39 chapters total, and I'm approaching what I think will be the end of the first book in a small series. Its got a different vibe than this story for certain, though I believe my style is relatively consistent between the two.

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I've recently had some new ideas for book two, so I will be doing some re-planning before pushing deep into book 2. Currently, I think the story will end up being a trilogy, though every time I write I am always surprised at how much longer things end up being than I originally planned, so that may change. I'm posting this update here, as I want to be honest with everyone who is waiting on this story. As of this moment, I don't plan to come back to this until I've finished my other series. All of this is subject to change of course, as life is always throwing wrenches into our plans and maybe I'll be struck by inspiration one of these days. Anyways, I hope you and yours had a good holiday and a happy new year, and I hope you're all hanging in there in a world that sometimes can be harsher than any imagined apocalypse.