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I'm now 131 pages into the second draft, which is 13 pages since the last update. I struggled a lot with the Pripyat, Ukraine mission. I needed to make a battle scene work and I kept getting stuck on how to make it work. Thankfully, I did end up finishing the mission, and it's like 25 or so pages. The next few chapters will be talking/briefing scenes and I think after that I'll have a mission where I introduce another from the Mayakovsky family.

Despite writing a bit less than last week, I actually did a lot of writing overall. I wrote two chapters for a standalone book and I added a few more pages to my AP5 brainstorming. So, not all my writing last week was done on AP3 exclusively. There's a lot of work to do all around. I'm also thinking about taking a break from AP3 so…

AP1's 7 year anniversary is coming up very soon. I haven't really been celebrating each year on the blog, but I hope any fans will rejoice with the series being around for so long. I think I'll try to make AP1-related Q&As on Goodreads. I don't think I'll return to VSS365 just for AP1, but I suppose it would be an easy way to celebrate. I've been working on this series since 2010, which is a very long time. It is very close to my heart for sure.

I'm now at 118 pages in AP3's second draft, which is 15 pages since the last update. I did say it was likely that I would end up writing less than last week. This time around, the difficulty was with a mission set in Ukraine. If you remember at the end of AP2, Sipho and team were on their way to an outpost Merlov Krachenko had in Pripyat, Ukraine. So, this mission was them finally reaching that outpost. They do run into some complications, but I had a hard time figuring out what sort of problems they should face. I do look at my first draft constantly to see how the original versions of scenes played out. Despite both versions having the same time and location, they both play out very differently. I did end up working through a lot of the mission, but I'm not done writing it yet.…

I'm now at 103 pages, which is 31 pages since the last update. This is the most I've written in a week so far. The first 27 pages were written in 5 days. I ended up missing two days in a row this last week, but I still ended up writing a lot. And I've finally passed the 100 page mark. I'm on page three of the outline, which is crazy to see that 100 pages only cover up to that amount. The outline is 151 pages, so how many pages in the second draft would it be once it's all finished?

Overall, this was a great week for AP3. But I predict I'll end up writing much less next week. Hopefully, these updates have been exciting for any AP fans.

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…