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I won't be adding books directly to other sites. Stores like Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Barnes and Noble have threshold minimums. So, if you don't like Amazon or Kobo, then you won't be able to read any of my books. Like I said in my blog, if Amazon follows D2D's moves, then I'm done with self publishing.

I'm now 72 pages into the second draft of AP3, which is 22 pages since the last update. Things got a little rough but I'm glad I wrote two times what I did last week. I'm finally on page two of the outline. The current chapter is set in Moscow, Russia. I forgot to write a chapter before where a different group of characters get kidnapped. Thankfully, I found a way to add it in without having to do any restructuring. The Moscow scene is split into two parts: one that is essentially a briefing and the other is the mission. I put the kidnapping chapter between the briefing and mission.

I think I can get the Moscow chapter done quickly. The next mission will be in Afghanistan and I think I'm going to have challenges again with character bios of returning characters. So don't be surprised if I write…

There's been a development with Draft2Digital, a platform I used to publish to many different sites. For new authors, they're charging $20 USD to sign up. For authors who make less than $100 USD in a year, they'll charge $12 USD. To make matters worse, every payment option now has a payment threshold. For PayPal, there's now a $10 USD minimum in order to get paid that way.

I'll do a blog soon, but I've decided to delist all my books with Draft2Digital. I have direct accounts with Amazon KDP and Kobo, so those will be the only places you can buy my books for now. It's shameful that they're punishing authors who don't make much money. None of my books have made $100 in a year on any platform. I didn't even make enough money last year to buy a bag of Doritos. 99% of my book sales last…

I'm now at 50 pages for AP3's second draft, which is 11 pages since the last update. So, one page less than last week. I struggled with doing character bios for new characters. See, most of these "new" characters are in AP4 as well, so coming up with consistent details between the different books was challenging.

I also struggled a lot with the first battle set in France. I kept erasing and rewriting different parts. I keep overextending scenes compared to the OG draft. For some reason, I keep worrying about the action scenes not being too over-the-top. If you read the sample chapters of the OG drafts of AP1/AP2, then you'll know how over-the-top my old writing used to be. I don't want to fall into the realism trap where I can't write any fun scenes. I need to go back to being ok with writing silly scenes.

At…

So I'm currently at 39 pages written for the AP3 second draft, which is 12 pages since the last update. The main reason I wrote much less than the first week is because I've been having more difficulty figuring out what to fix. What I've written covers the first page of the outline, so basically one page for the outline accounts for 39 pages for the draft. In comparison to the OG draft, it would cover around the 20-28 page mark. Not having the beginning parts in great detail on the outline has made it hard to go through this part in the second draft. However, I do have ideas of how to continue so this slump won't last long I hope.

Some weeks I'll write less than others despite writing almost every single day. This is the process with writing. But doing these types of updates will help me…

So I finally made a paperback version of Nibowin. Check out my latest blog post for more details.

I procrastinated for a long time before starting the second draft of AP3. My mental health went down again and I'm still dealing with stress. I wish I could change my environment so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore, but that's not feasible right now. However, just like with AP4 last year, finally working on AP3 has given me a boost and working on it has been the main thing I look forward to doing everyday.

If you followed my updates last year with AP4 and AP3's second draft outline, then look forward to more updates with AP3's second draft. I know it's been 5 years since AP2, so I hope you'll bear with me as I try to get this next entry out.

I finally started working on the second draft of AP3. I started at the end of March and as of now I've written 27 pages. I didn't write a full detailed breakdown for the intro section in the outline, so I had to do a lot of filling in the blanks. It will get a lot easier down the line for sure. Another challenging part are the recaps. In this sense, I have to reintroduce characters from AP2 but not make it too lengthy. These books tend to have a lot of characters, so I shouldn't get too bogged down in the details.

What I've written so far would cover the first 7 pages of the original draft. There is one news report, instead of the typical news roundup. In the OG, it was one page. In the second draft, it's 3 pages. It's also different because I wrote it…

I will likely write updates on here when I start writing AP3's second draft like I did for AP4 when I first started this group. Though, I want to try to do weekly updates so I can easily track my progress. With AP4, I only wrote an update when I made a milestone, like reaching 1200 pages or 1370 pages.

I predict the second draft will be 600-800 pages. Though, that's how long I thought AP4 was going to be. I have an outline to follow this time so the only thing I really need to figure out is the details for each chapter.

I may also write another novella so I can have something out this year. Perhaps if I focus, I could get the second draft at least typed up on Word by the end of the year. We shall see!