Delay, Admin Week, and More (Patreon)

Part 1, The delay:

Hey everyone, I hate to do this, but chapter 67 will be delayed for a day or two. I'm optimistic I can get it up Saturday, but it might be Sunday.

I didn't get much of a buffer going after my last admin week and I burned through it quickly. For a couple of weeks now I've been barely keeping up with my release schedule (and not giving my beta readers near enough time), which hasn't been helped by repeated issues with insomnia.

I'm truly sorry, I don't like having to do delays.

Part 2, Admin Week:

Very relatedly, I'm taking an admin week for the week of August 4th through August 8th to try to get caught up again! I'll be finishing 67 before I start it, of course!

Part 3, Coming tweaks:

You might have noticed that my books run... long. Book 1 was 310,000 words. Book 2 is currently north of 360,000 and climbing. I love chonky books, but I'm strongly leaning towards splitting them in two.

If I do this...

Book 1: Budding Rhythm will be chapters 1 through 30 of the former book 1, covering the start of Ranthia's journey up until her decision to try to become a Ranger.

Book 2: (Title TBD) will be chapters 31 through 60 of the former book 1, covering Ranthia's time in the Ranger Academy, Ranger Team 13, and Ranger Team 6; ending with the War Ranger Program's formation (the same as former book 1).

Book 3: The Grace of War will be Chapters 1 through... well, I'm considering 3 different chapters from the former book 2. Chapter 35 (Ranthia leaves Remus, kisses Avyna), Chapter 36 (the relationship contract), or 44 (Remera's founding).

Book 4: (Title TBD) will be the rest of the chapters from former book 2, and we've still got a fair bit to go! ...Yeah, there's a good chance former book 2 will (would have) end up longer than the OG draft.

Book 5: Bestial Arts, same as always, covering a story not yet written.

Why do this? Several reasons, but the biggest two are my books are currently too large for physical print runs and (quite possibly) audiobook adaptions! And now that I'm starting to more seriously look at this stuff, it's time I finally admit the same thing I had to with the OG draft—I wrote too much and I need to split things up!

Of course, the downsides are I'll need to commission Nozomi for two more covers and I'll need to actually figure out a back/side of the book stuff for print (so much for having earned more from Patreon than I've spent on art), but... yeah. Part of my admin week time will be spent figuring the logistics of this potential change out!

If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave a comment or speak up on Discord!

(Relatedly, Patreon updated to a new UI and I just noticed a "Allow comments" toggle hidden under More settings, which is by default OFF?! If you haven't been able to comment lately, I'm so sorry—I really don't know what the heck Patreon was thinking with some of the newest changes!)