Hi Everyone,

I haven't forgotten about you all over here on Royal Road. I started working on my 2nd draft of the book on April 12th, and that has been consuming much of my attention and diverting me from posting more chapters here. In the process, I've added about 10 chapters worth of content in the early stages of the book. This means that what was once Chapter 15, is now Chapter 25. It's also lead to a realization, that my first draft of this book is really wanting to be 2 separate books. I had been feeling this inkling for a while but was resisting it. However, resistance is futile. My original aim was to make book 2 about 150k words, or about 50% longer than book 1. By the time I got done with the first draft I had 132k words and knew that I was going to add quite a bit of content on the second draft, so I thought I was on track. However, I also knew that I had substantial problems with the end of my first draft even though I liked the broad strokes of it. Aside from some plot and structural issues, it felt rushed.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

So, at this stage, what I'm planning is to split things off substantially. Prior to Zee and the gang reaching Corvin (or perhaps, shortly after they reach Corvin), I'm going to have them off on a new adventure involving Lucas from earlier in the book. The Chapters involving their trip to Midnight and most everything I have after that will end up being in what I hope to be Book 3.

The plan now is, instead of shooting for a single 150k word book for Book 2, I'm shooting for two approximately 100k word books, books 2 and 3. The upside of this being, I feel that I have the broad strokes of both books worked out and will hopefully have them out in relatively short succession (compared to the gap since book 1).

I'm still debating what to do with my Royal Road postings. I'm tempted to archive all the posted chapters and start from scratch. Or leave up what's there, but start posting the "second draft" chapters from the beginning. I'd be glad to hear from you all. So comment below and/or click on the poll I'm adding to this post.