Update: Progress on All Fronts

Hello again! Did you miss me? It’s been a while since my last post. I generally aim to post an update on here about once a month, just to reassure everybody that I am indeed still alive and working on Restart Again. When it came time to post something in August, I felt like I didn’t have much to say, so I decided to just wait until I had more than a simple word count update.

Speaking of, though, word count update! As of today, I find myself at over 114,000 words. That’s another 20k+ improvement from my last post, albeit over a slightly longer time period. I just finished a very exciting action scene that’s been stewing in my head for a while, and I feel really good about it. It’s difficult to gauge where that puts me on overall progress: My notes for the remainder of the book now fit onto one page (at size 8 font, mind you), but we still have plenty of beats to hit before we wrap up Volume 4.

With that being said, there is a small elephant in the room I’d like to address (He’s been getting a bit bigger with every blog post, and I’m getting tired of feeding him). I’ve talked about this before, but I always held an idealized publishing schedule in my head of around 8 months per book. That worked out surprisingly well for the first three volumes! I was already over halfway done with Volume 2’s rough draft before Volume 1 was even published, so I had an incredible headstart there. Similarly, Volume 3 had a sizable portion written before I finished getting 2 ready for publishing, and I was able to use that time to my advantage (Notice that Volume 3 came out just six months after 2, yet it was nearly 33% longer!).

That’s not the case with Volume 4. When I finished writing Volume 3, I dove straight into editing. As my working documents are on Google Drive, I had access to my editor’s notes in real time, and worked through it a chapter behind them. I had some time to work on Volume 4 during the formatting and art commissions, but I barely had 30,000 words by the time Volume 3 released. Since then, I’ve been working on Volume 4 as much as I can while also maintaining a healthy work/life balance, with some R&R in there, too: no burnout over here!

So, where does that leave me? My 8 month release window puts Volume 4 releasing in February of 2022. Can I do that?……I’m not sure. 20K words per month certainly says the rough draft will be done, but editing/artwork/formatting might push it over that “deadline”. I’ll never rush the end product to meet arbitrary time goals, so if I do end up missing that date, please bear with me. You have my 100% guarantee that this series will remain my prime focus until the day I write the last word of the last volume; you just might need to re-read some of the older books in the meantime.

Okay, enough griping about the passage of time! If you’ve made it this far, I have a treat for you. ARTWORK! I actually had this piece done a month or two ago, but never got around to throwing it on my socials or website. You haven’t met her yet, so I’ll leave you with this fantastic art of a mysterious new character coming in Volume 4:

As always, this amazing character art was done by @4hnyu on Twitter!

Although she may undergo a few more changes as the book crystalizes, expect to be seeing MUCH more of her in the future! Artwork commissions for the official release have, as of today, been started, which is another huge milestone for Volume 4. It’s all coming together, piece by piece!

I’ve run out of things to ramble about, so I’ll end things here. No matter how long it takes, Volume 4 will be finished and released for your reading pleasure as soon as it’s ready, so stick around for more updates on that. Until then, though, stay safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading!

~Adam