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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!

I've been reading through the first draft of AP4. It's crazy to see how the book evolved throughout the years. There are a lot of inconsistencies and plot holes that I'll need to fix for later. The beginning is rough, especially due to there being a lot of news stories in the News Roundup and a chunk of them don't add anything meaningful to the story. Also, some of my writing was confusing to follow with how I described things. However, I find the book gets a lot better the further I get into it.

I will likely write an outline for a second draft like I did with AP3 last year, but I don't foresee that draft being radically different story-wise. I've been writing some notes in parts of the draft to fix for later. I won't get a second draft done anytime soon since I need to publish…

I will be taking a long break before starting the second draft of AP3. Like I said in the last update, I did a lot of work on the AP series this year. I like to game, but I had to do a lot less of it in order to work on AP. By looking at the first two AP books, you can see that I put a lot of effort into this series. AP3 will be a massive endeavor, and so will AP4 when I get to work on its second draft.

I also have another standalone book that I started in 2023 but haven't finished yet. I want to return to work on that and if I keep the same momentum I had with AP4, I can finish it very quickly. I'm also thinking about writing a quick blog post about AP3/AP4. It has been a long wait…

So about a day after the last updates, I finally finished the outline for AP3. It is 151 pages long, which is the longest outline I've ever written. I've been writing the outline almost everyday since September, and I did put it on hold so I could focus on AP4. I've been taking a break since finishing the outline but I plan to get to work on the second draft soon. This has been a very busy year for the AP series and I accomplished many goals. I'm very excited to see how AP3 will turn out and I can confidently say it will be the biggest book I've published so far.

To add on top, the AP3 outline is officially longer than the original draft of AP2. That is pretty insane to have an outline that long. I think my second draft of AP2 was above 260 pages, and I doubt the outline will surpass that. Despite the heavy workload, I'm glad to have made so much progress with AP3 and AP4 this year.

I'm above 130 pages for the AP3 outline and I have less than 40 pages of the original draft to go through before I can finally start the second draft. So, I wrote over 30 pages since the last update, which is the most amount of pages added to the outline in a week. However, it was very challenging because I scratched out ideas a few times. As I said before, recontextualizing the book has been a difficult process. For example, I'm at the second last battle of the book. In the original draft, the battle played out one way, but for the outline it has to play out a different way. This caused a lot of writer's block that took a lot of effort to overcome. At the very least, I'm nearing the end of the outline. Either I finish the outline this week or next week.

I'm now above 100 pages on the AP3 outline. This covers up to 1075 pages of the original draft. I'm past the Germany segment and am getting close to the final plot points of the book. It seems I keep adding 20 pages to the outline every week. Hopefully, I can finally finish the outline in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Also, it is kinda crazy that the outline is so long. This is longer than the first drafts of Nibowin: The Island of Death and AP1. The second draft for AP3 will surely be an interesting task for me.

I'm close to 80 pages on the AP3 outline. I made a lot of progress since my last update and I'm nearing the end of the Germany segment of the book. In the original draft, nearly half of the book took place in that country. A major character died in the end of the Hamburg arc, but for the outline I decided to keep them alive and bring them for Berlin, the last arc in Germany. I also chose to redo how another group of characters get introduced. I think things will get a lot easier once I get past Germany.

I have to be vague because a lot of things happen in this book. There isn't any way you would be able to predict what happens next after reading the first two AP books.

I have an idea for another book and I'm considering tying it in to Nibowin. Like have T'lok natives in the story, but they abandoned their faith and are living as "normal" people in Canada. The book would be a detective-thriller with the protagonist dealing with missing natives in a small community.

I think it would be cool to have that tie-in. Would be the first book to do that.