Author's Update - Not a Chapter

Hey everybody!

First, thanks so much to everyone for reading!

I have some stuff to say about Book 2 and my progress on Book 3 of The Legend. Feel free to skip it if you're just here for The Legend :)

I've heard what people have been saying about Book 2 (and most of the Dungeon arc) (mainly on Royal Road). I agree it has pacing issues, and I'm planning to give Book 2 a thorough editing pass that will likely condense some of the content to help the overall flow of the book and ensure that it's a good setup for Book 3 and enjoyable dungeon diving / survival horror(?) on it's own.

Originally I had planned for The Legend to be a single, regular length novel/romance. The length got away from me during the Dungeon arc, however, and so I decided to just expand it to a trilogy, padding out the length with Sarah's Story (which also got away from me, she's too much fun to write!). Anyway, the problem with this is that writing a trilogy is very different from writing a standalone novel: each book needs to be more self-contained, and the length of an arc matters more than I'd realized.

If there's any critique you guys have for Book 2 or the Dungeon Arc as a whole, I'd love to hear it. Particulars are the most helpful, such as parts you didn't like and things you felt were missing.

So, I am planning a heavy edit of Book 2. I haven't started yet. I've been focused on writing Book 3 since I got back to my writing room. It's been going REALLY well! I think it's some of my best writing yet. :^) I'll probably have all of Book 3 done in the next two to three weeks. After that I'll finish writing Sarah's Story to the end, and then I'll do the heavy edits on Book 2 and anything that needs work on Book 3, and then get into manuscript preparation for publishing.

Since we're here on Patreon and you guys are special, I'll share a somewhat secret plan I've got cooking: I'm thinking of writing a special prologue for Book 2 that is an in-universe school report (at the high school or junior college level) about Dungeons and the Dungeon the Smith was trapped in, to drop some more world-building. Is that something you guys would find interesting?

I also had the idea to write a super condensed version of The Legend in verse, but I have no confidence in my ability to write verse, so... maybe? But probably not.

And the posting schedule will remain unchanged going forward, but chapters of The Legend will be in the range of 1500-2500 words each, with almost all chapters being close to 2000 words or more.

Thanks again for reading and supporting! You guys are the best :)