Book 10 complete, one week off (Patreon)

TL;DR: Book 10 is complete, no chapters next week, book 11 starts the week after.

Chapter 790 (which just dropped for silver-rank patrons) brings book 10 to a close. It's another long one, behind only books nine and one for length. There will be no chapter releases next week while I take a break.

My original intention had been to go straight into book eleven, giving myself a week off using buffer chapters I already had written. I'd built up a stock of them, courtesy of my new writing schedule. Unfortunately, real life intervened.

The end of a book is always hard for me, with every chapter taking longer than normal to write as I struggle to get everything right as plot points converge into a hopefully satisfying conclusion. Add in deadline stress, which itself hurts productivity, and I found myself spending fourteen, sixteen hours in front of the keyboard all week, just like last year.

This had some unpleasant effects, starting with burnout that just left me writing slower than ever. Worse was the fact that age is catching up to me and I can't spend all that time hunched over a keyboard anymore without my body crapping out.

Twice in as many months, my back has ended up completely wrecked, leaving me awkwardly typing out chapters on my laptop while in a recliner, which sounds a lot nicer than it is. It's not a great way to write.

Just to be clear, I'm nowhere near the condition I was in last year when I was in a constant state of ruination. The new schedule is doing wonders, which is why all I need is a week off, not two months like I kept taking all through 2022.

By the time this is scheduled to go out, I will be happily catching up on sleep. I hope you all enjoy the conclusion and I'll see you in a week.