Hey everyone,

  It has been a long time since I gave an official update outside of the discord server and a comment here and there.

  Short version: I've been working a ton on the story while I've been paused and made a lot of great progress. I'm expecting to be completely finished with the editing/revising phase in about 1-2 weeks, which means I'll be back to writing brand new chapters at that time. The only catch is I still don't want to start publishing those chapters until I've actually finished the next book. That probably sounds like "until forever," but I do write pretty fast. There's a decent chance I could finish the next book in anywhere from 6-12 weeks. It just depends how long it ends up being.

  Longer version: I built a pretty massive editing/revising to-do list as I was writing Level One God. Some of the key areas I really wanted to address were:

  1) The lack of satisfying progression Brynn makes all through the opening chapters until Beastden dungeon. I didn't want to break the order of events or introduce new skills/levels etc, but I did find several ways to make it feel like he has a growth arc in terms of his combat abilities starting much earlier in the book. The end result is that I was able to make the fights and encounters a lot more satisfying in subtle ways, mostly with the ability to pivot away from so many purely "clever" solutions that at times felt like plot armor. I also feel like the new subtle progression elements lead into the Beastden events in a more believable way, too, which is a nice bonus.

  2) Character dynamics in Riverwell. From the early days of publishing, I got a lot of complaints about elements related to Brynn's arrival in Riverwell. Specifically, his trusting nature was a big one. Another was how Lyria went from cold and angry to friendly so quickly it felt a bit like whiplash. I've smoothed all of that out in a way that feels like it still fits with the story, but Lyria's progression is a lot more believable now. She doesn't start quite as aggressive toward Brynn, and there are several new moments between them to help kind of justify the growth from adversary to ally.

  4) The Infested ruins. This was probably one of my biggest sore spots out of everything I've published. It started out as my attempt to show a kind of brutal, slap-in-the-face moment for Brynn about how dangerous the world of Eros is. I also wanted to establish early that main characters were allowed to die, which I hoped would add an edge of tension moving forward. The initial version of this chapter kind of worked to that end, but when I went to put it up on Royal Road, I made the mistake of thinking it was too short and tried to beef it up with more detail. The unintended side effect was it made it appear that I was reveling in the death of Circa, which definitely wasn't my plan. I ended up spending a few days working extra late on a kind of band-aid fix, which was changing the entire infested ruins sequence to give Circa's death more meaning and make it more dignified. In some ways, I thought it worked, but it also introduced a new problem: now there was this massive, semi-epic sequence of events like 20% of the way into the book. It was kind of a pacing disaster, and it also introduced a downer moment where Brynn understandably had to mourn her death and have this slow moment very early in the book.

  So I reworked it all again, but not band-aid style this time. I completely re-wrote the infested ruins to accomplish a few things, tone down the epic undertones so it feels less like a climax in the beginning of the book, and added some slight doubt about the circumstances of Circa's death so Brynn doesn't "have" to mourn or have the down period afterwards anymore. I also found a chance to add in a little new world building and some interest within the newly written ruins scenes, which was a cool perk. Another bonus of the re-write was it gave me a chance to more naturally introduce some of the party Brynn will travel with in the Black Wood later. So, now he meets Kass, Perch, and Minara and has to fight with them for a few days (side note: I also found a few opportunities to extend the timeline where it felt natural. Now it doesn't feel like everything happens in 2 days, but more like a week or two. It's not a major difference, but it gives some breathing room for our minds to imagine more development happening off camera as well).

  4) The randomness of Minara/Kass/Perch/Bloody Steve. It now makes more sense for Brynn/Lyria to join their protection group heading into the Black Wood after the ruins because Brynn knows all of them except Bloody Steve. I also found a lot of opportunities to develop their characters more on the trip through the Black Wood so they feel a little more fleshed out than before.

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  5) Turning the Black Wood into the ending of the book instead of the middle point. This one was probably the biggest reason for the revisions. At some point, I realized book 1 was two books pretending to be one book. The only problem was the "climax" with the briarwraith wasn't a proper climax. It wasn't built up in the way a climax should be, and Brynn had some agency in the way he tipped over the bait potion and started the chaos, but the briarwraith's defeat felt too convenient.

  Basically, it would not be a satisfying ending to the book, and I wanted to fix that. So I restructured almost everything about the Black Wood, keeping the good stuff and creating new things to bridge gaps and create new moments when possible. There's a whole new element where we get a brief PoV from Rake just after the Black Wood starts, which introduces the threat of Brynn being hunted early on. This part adds some cool moments of conflict and tension that build up throughout, and now there's a new ending to the carapax scene that kind of bridges into the briarwraith scene. And the briarwraith scene has been pretty much reworked from the ground up. Now it's a relatively epic final battle with proper foreshadowing and hopefully satisfying elements of seeing the progress Brynn has made so far come into play for the fight.

  6) Pruning unnecessary parts. It sounds like all I did was add new stuff, but I've also been going through and removing anything that felt more like exploratory writing when I can. I do tend to write with a rough idea of where I'm going and just figure out the rest on the way. That means my early drafts can tend to wander at points if I don't find out where the chapter should go fast enough, or if I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with a section of the book. I also had a few parts where I introduced concepts/ideas with plans to make use of them, and in my re-read, I was able to say... "we don't need Brynn to find a Potion of Life or Flipweed, because he never actually uses this stuff in a fight." Removing something simple like that cleans up a bunch of clutter from several chapters.

  Anyway, my biggest task while I've been paused was incorporating all of the above and all the things I've forgotten to mention. I was honestly a lot happier with what will now be "book 2," which is his arrival in Thrask and transition to Beastden dungeon. I did still want to clean up and make the early parts of his arrival in Thrask less wandering and aimless, though, so I have condensed some of the arrival and trimmed down the potion shop/some unnecessary details that made it all longer and more winding than it needed to be. I'm currently editing the part right where he runs into the Sekmeti and human slaves within Beastden for the first time, and I've been cruising through about 70-120 pages a day, which should have me caught up to the ending of book 2 really soon.

  After that, I'm guessing I'll settle into a pace of about 3,500-5,000 words a day Monday-Friday in writing book 3. With a goal of about 150,000 words That could be pretty quick if it goes smoothly. That'd be 25,000 words. per week, so maybe a minimum of 6 weeks. Realistically, there's usually a snag or two, and I'm also going to want a week or two to re-read what I write and make any changes before I start publishing.

  But it still feels like I'm in the final stretches and pretty close to being ready to start posting new chapters again. One bonus is nothing I've added means you need to re-read if you're already caught up. That was important to me. It's still the same story, but it's just a lot smoother of a start now in my opinion.

  So if you're sticking around and still excited for the story to come back, that's awesome and I really appreciate it. If you're not (you probably didn't read this wall of text anyway) no hard feelings at all. I know it's a long pause and there are a ton of other awesome stories to read. I don't expect anybody to sit around waiting for me. Mostly, my goal was to clean the story up and get it to the point where I'm happy with it before it starts publishing on Amazon, which will probably start about 5 months from now.

  That's pretty much the whole update. Thanks again for those of you who have been asking about the story and excited for it to come back. I've definitely been working at it full-time since I've been paused. So it's coming, just not super fast :P