News

Well, I certainly didn't think I'd be making another news post so soon, but here we are. After receiving a few messages from readers on my Royal Road account, I have come to the realization that I'm not supposed to be hosting the entire book for free online according to my agreement with Amazon. Because I have the book enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, that's the only place it's allowed to be free in its entirety. That's my bad, I definitely should have read my terms and conditions much more closely. 90% of the book has been removed from Royal Road, leaving the first three chapters as a teaser to potentially get people interested (I'm allowed to post up to 10% for free). I'm a bit bummed about the whole thing, but I've gotta follow the rules I agreed to.

To make up for this, I've decided to post my rough draft of Volume 2 on Royal Road as I edit it! One chapter will go up per week (Sundays at Noon EST) until the entire project is uploaded. I'll probably be getting close to publishing at that point, at which time I'll start uploaded the rough chapters of Volume 3, and the cycle will continue forever. If you follow these news updates and have been anxiously awaiting more Restart Again content, this is your chance to get it!

Sorry to any of my Royal Road fans who this has affected in a negative way. I really enjoyed being able to get the wider audience on the project, but my preexisting arrangement with Amazon takes precedent here. Plus, if I'm being honest, I think I get more eyes on the project through KU than I do through RR, so if I'm shooting for "the widest audience possible", I think I've made the right decision. Regardless, thanks for sticking with me, stay tuned for more news, and as always, thanks for reading.

~Adam

"The Algorithm" is a wonderful catchall for anytime I don't know how things work on the internet. It's sort of a meme at this point to blame it for anything that goes wrong online, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure it's the entire reason I've found any level of success with my writing. When Volume 1 first went live on Amazon, I was surprised that I sold even a single copy to someone I didn't know; watching it sell a copy or two every day while I struggled to get the paperback formatting finished was pretty exciting! Once the physical edition was live, I purchased some ads through Amazon to try and promote it, and unsurprisingly, more people started to find my writing after that! The ad campaign didn't end up making money in the end (if I'm reading the graphs right, I think it cost me more to run it than I made in sales), but I think it planted the seeds within the Amazon algorithm.

Fast forward one month: it's Easter Sunday, and my ad campaign is about to end. Three days before the budget runs out, I sell two and a half times more eBooks than I ever had before. The day after that, it spikes to 3x sales. The day after that, my ad campaign ends, and the sales continue to hold steady at double what I had been selling before. I did absolutely nothing to force it, but the algorithm had seen fit to bless me. As those sales continued, the pages read through Kindle Unlimited increased in turn, and I had a great month and a half streak (at least, I think I did. I don't have any numbers to compare it to, but they seem crazy to me). At my peak, Volume 1 was #19 on the best selling "Fantasy Adventure eBooks", beating the likes of Game of Thrones and the Witcher (I still find this hard to believe, but it's what Amazon says, and the internet has never been wrong). I've since returned to a 'respectable' average, higher than where I had been before the spike, but not nearly as hot.

The algorithm saw fit to grace me with its presence a second time, much more recently. To anybody who follows me on Royal Road, you may have noticed that I recently had a severe uptick in views on the project; this influx of readers came three chapters before the finale of Volume 1, seemingly out of nowhere. I had been gaining 4-5 followers whenever a chapter dropped up until that point, and was sitting somewhere around 75-80 when chapter 17 came out. Suddenly, I was gaining 10 followers a day, even when new chapters weren't going up. This spike in traffic pushed the book to the front page "Trending" tab, which increased visibility even more. As of now, I've gained 400 followers since that spike. I think the flood is slowing again, but it's been a wild ride.

Those new eyes brought plenty of reviews, many of which were quite angry by the time Volume 1 wrapped up (again: I get it). Whereas I usually got two or three comments per chapter from familiar usernames, I was suddenly buried in comments, ranging from "thanks for the chapter!" to "I hope your main character kills himself so he stops torturing us, your readers". Certainly two unique trains of thought there! The reviews have averaged out to about where my ratings are on every other website (3.75-4.00 out of 5), so I can't complain too hard. It makes sense if you look at it like the unique system it is: my book exists among tens of thousands of others on Royal Road, all available for free. The people reading it based on the tags and description most likely read a lot of fiction in that vein, and as such already know what they're looking for and what tropes they'll encounter. It follows that they'll probably have some strong opinions on the matter.

All of this rambling has a purpose, and it's these two points. 1: To anybody who's reading this that found me from Royal Road, I really appreciate your support! I had originally been in the comments responding to the familiar users, but I can't do that anymore (both for my mental health and for the vast number of people commenting). I hope nobody feels ignored, but I feel like this is how I have to proceed. The last of the three preview chapters for Volume 2 comes out tomorrow, and I hope you all enjoy it! 2: I feel as though I've been extremely lucky with the success I've found with my book so far, and it's been a constant invigorating force in continuing my work on the project. I'm not sure if I was blessed by the machine learning Gods, or if small factors I can't notice all added up to the surges in popularity, but whatever the case, I certainly appreciate it!

Now, update time! Volume 3 is moving along much faster than I would have expected! This is mostly due to a combination of having more free time to write lately, and the fact that I've been planning this particular section for a while and am excited to get it written down. As of today I have crossed the 7,000 word mark, which puts me pretty close to 1,000 words a day. I think that's about double what my usual pace works out to be (I aim for 250 per night, but get a lot of extra writing done on Friday and Saturday nights that bumps me up to around 500/day). I certainly don't have any plans to slow down, so expect more progress soon.

This ended up being a much longer post than I had planned, but that's usually how it works. One final bit of news, and then I'll leave you: I won a raffle on Twitter recently from one of the many artists that I follow, and will soon have another art piece of the lovely Amaya. Whenever it's done, I'll make sure to post it on my Twitter, as well as the artwork page on here. Until then, stay safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading!

~Adam

Hey all! It's been a while since I posted an update, but I come with some significant news: as of this weekend, the first draft of Volume 2 has been completed! With a final word count of just over 118,000 words, it extended much farther beyond where I thought it would go, but I'm happy with the results.

So, what does that mean for the future of the series? As of right now, not much! I'm sending it to my close group of friends/editors, and I'll be reading over those notes as they come in. In the meantime, progress on Volume 3 has officially started! I may only have a few hundred words written so far, but that's a few hundred more than existed yesterday. It's interesting starting from zero once again; reading through Volume 2 was an neat experience in terms of seeing my progress as a writer, and I'm curious as to where I'll be at the end of Volume 3. I'd like to think I've become a bit better since this whole project started back in March 2019, and look forward to where I'll be in March 2021. But I digress: while the editing process happens, I'll be consistently working on Volume 3, while also looking to get my artwork commissions for the hard copy of Volume 2 started. More news on that when it comes in, but don't expect it anytime soon!

Switching gears a bit, the final chapter of Volume 1 was posted on Royal Road today, to expectedly mixed results. I'm well aware that the decisions made in my final chapter are a bit divisive, both in how I left the cliffhanger and how my characters acted. I agree with the disappointment about the rough cliffhanger, as I've said multiple times before, but all in all I don't regret how I published it. That aside, if anybody is reading this who hasn't followed the project on Royal Road, I'd recommend going to check it out! I'll be publishing the first three WIP chapters of Volume 2 over there over the course of the next few weeks, so if you're looking for more content from this project, that's where you'll find it! (Link Here!) The release times are Wednesdays at 6PM EST and Sundays at Noon EST.

I think that's all I've got for now. Judging by the dates on my previous news posts, I've finally run out the lingering ideas I wanted to post about the project, so the future of posts here will most likely be fewer, but more dense and exciting updates. That's probably a good thing! I'm not sure what news I'll have next for all of you, but this will be the first place to hear it. Until then, I hope you're all safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading.

~Adam

As the title of this post might have implied, I have some exciting news! After a few weeks of emailing and e-signing documents, there is now an official Restart Again audiobook in the works! I was contacted by someone at Tantor Media about the potential of acquiring the audio rights to the project via my Royal Road account, which is another great indicator that I made the right choice in posting my work there. I'm excited to work with Tantor, in large part because they're doing basically all of the work. They have a large cast of narrators they can choose from, and after they pick a few people who they think are right for the book, I'll get some audio samples and have final decision on who my narrator will be. Once that's finished, the recording begins, and eventually, I'll have an audiobook available through all major outlets (including physical media at libraries and stuff, which is crazy to me!). I don't have a timeline on when each step is estimated to occur, but I'll definitely make an update on here when any big changes happen.

Now, time for a progress update on Volume 2! If you'll indulge me, I'm going to go on a slight tangent here, so buckle up. I'm the sort of person who likes to have noise in the background when I sleep, and my noise of choice is Futurama (shout-out to r/futuramasleepers). Recently, as I was laying in bed on my phone when I should have been sleeping, I watched the episode "When Aliens Attack", where the Omicronians, led by Lrrr (Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8) threaten to destroy Earth unless they get to see the final episode of an old 2000's drama, "Single Female Lawyer". As Fry was the one who accidentally knocked it off air, he decides he can write the script and the Planet Express cast can record the episode. About three minutes into the taping, Leela finds out that Fry only wrote three pages of dialogue for the entire episode, and when questioned why, he answers:

"Well, it took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read."

What the Hell was the point of that tangent? Well, aside from the fact that I love Futurama, that quote has resonated with me rather strongly in the past few days. My plot outline for the rest of Volume 2 hasn't changed at all, but it's very clear to me that I am not, in fact, writing the last chapter at the current moment. I always tend to minimize how long dialogue takes to write (at least for me, in an attempt to make it sound halfway natural), and what I thought would be the last chapter has expanded to the point where I have no hope of concluding things within it. I've added another 5,000+ words since my last update, which was what could be considered a long chapter in Volume 1, and I still have a bit to go before I conclude this particular chapter, followed by another full one to wrap up Volume 2.

I was always a bit worried that I would run out of steam somewhere in the middle of this project when I was writing Volume 1, and I'm happy to say that nearing the end of the Volume 2, that is definitely not the case. Even on bad days where I hit some particularly tough writer's block, or I read some harsh 1* reviews on Amazon, I still feel energized to sit down and add more to the story of Lux and Co. If you're willing to stick around until the end, whenever that may be, I'll be right there with you. Until then, stay safe, and as always, thanks for reading.

~Adam

So, this will actually be a short update, I promise. I hit that fabled 100,000 word mark as of my writing session last night! I figured with as many times as I referenced it in the past news posts, I should probably announce that the feat has been achieved. I'm in the last chapter of the book (for certain this time), so the end is definitely in sight, although it certainly won't be by the end of April. Look forward to another post here in the next few weeks (hopefully?) for the official proclamation that Volume 2 is finished!

The only other bit of news is that I made an artwork page on the site here. As of now it only includes the artwork from Volume 1, but it'll be a great repository for when multiple volumes are out in the future. Plus, if I ever find any sort of fan art of any of my characters, I'll definitely post it here too!

That's all I've got today. I hope you've had as much fun reading the project as I continue to have writing it. Thanks for reading!

~Adam

Well, here we are. Another Sunday, another update post. I've actually been thinking about writing this up for a while, but it's especially prescient tonight: How do I deal with criticism?

When I decided to publish my story online, I knew that I'd be opening myself up to criticism. I wasn't particularly sheltering myself from it beforehand; I gave the rough draft to basically any of my friends that would give me the time of day, and I asked specifically for notes on what I could improve and things that didn't work. But there's a big difference between my friends and the general populous of the internet. For one, the internet strangers don't know me, so they have no reason to hold back from saying anything and everything they're thinking. The biggest thing though, which most people are familiar with, is that the internet lets you say whatever you want without fear of repercussions, and that sometimes gives people the playground to just be mean jerks for no reason. I knew all of this going into it, but the positives of publishing it greatly outweighed all of those negative aspects, so I went through with it.

It may be a weird thing to say, but I've enjoyed most of the criticism I've received so far (in the form of reviews on Amazon and comments on Royal Road). I agree with most of it. Yes, it's short, and it ends on a cliffhanger! It wasn't the greatest place to end things, to be sure. I do certainly spend a lot of time describing scenery, food, and other things that don't progress the story, and I totally get how that can be boring. These are the sorts of things I can take in, digest, and hopefully do better on in my writing going forward. I'm just an amateur writer, with no delusions that I'm crafting an epic masterpiece or that this is going to become my full-time job. It's just for fun! I hope people have fun reading it too, but it's okay if they don't. I wrote it because I wanted to, and had fun doing it. I'm not trying to sandbag you with all of this; most of the comments and reviews have been very positive! It's a great little dopamine hit to see a new five star review and a nice comment from a total stranger. Having the ability to check that at any time via my phone is a bit of a dangerous concept, but that's not a topic for this post.

"Why are you rambling about all of this?" I hear you ask. If I'm being totally honest, the real catalyst was that I got a one star review today from someone saying my characters were whiny and boring, and that it was a waste of time. That's like the opposite of a dopamine hit. Naturally, I checked out the guy's review profile, and was slightly heartened to find that he's given out a very large amount of one star reviews. I'm not the only terrible writer on the internet, it seems! Joking aside, it finally brings me to the reason I decided to write this: How do I deal with criticism?

As it turns out, pretty well! It's certainly no fun to see somebody trashing on something you're proud of, but at the end of the day, what do I care? I did something that I think is really neat, and that doesn't change because someone else has a different opinion. Especially someone on the internet. That place is awful. I'm not the sort of person who'll go back and look at the review every day and sulk about it; I'll just sulk for the 10-15 minutes after reading it, and then move on with my life. Now it's just part of the overall score, and will fade into obscurity with the rest of the reviews. If you can glean any sort of takeaway from this word vomit, let it be this: If you're doing something that you truly enjoy, don't let anybody else's opinion affect that enjoyment. Take any constructive comments you can find into consideration, and dump the rest. You're the one doing something cool.

So. This wasn't the most informative "news" post, was it? It was a rather cathartic exercise though, and it let me vent about something that was bugging me, so it gets published alongside the rest of it. I'll definitely have to look into re-branding this page as a "blog" instead of just "news". Another thing for another time. If you read this, thanks for taking the time to listen to me complain. Rest assured, progress continues on Volume 2, regardless of how many one star or five star reviews I get. I finished a chapter last night that I've been working towards for a long time, so that definitely feels good. At 97,500-ish words, I'm probably only one chapter away from finishing the first draft. My original estimate of finishing before the end of April seems...generous, at this point, but by the end of May is still a likely target. Updates will continue alongside progress (most likely on Sundays).

As always, thanks for listening reading!

~Adam

P.S. I do see the humor in saying "I deal with criticism well!" and writing a huge blog post about said criticism.

I'll do my best to keep this one brief, I promise! I've been making some great progress on Volume 2 this past week. The last few chapters have been percolating in my mind for a long time now, so it's been an exciting time to actually get them written out and flesh out the details. Currently sitting at just over 94,000 words and 198 pages on Google Drive, the end of the first draft is definitely in sight!

After a month of holding off, I finally made my own post about the project on my social medias. I had never really intended to do so, and I had a lot of friends and family share the book when it first released on my behalf, but it felt like something I should do for myself as well. I'd never want to look back and regret that I didn't do the things easily within my power to promote my work. I've also updated the release schedule on Royal Road; chapters now release twice a week on Sundays and Wednesday, instead of just on Sundays. I thought about it over the course of the past week, and seeing as most fictions hosted there update daily, I knew that a once a week update probably wouldn't hold interest very well in that ecosystem. There's definitely a balance to be found between giving away the whole project for free right now, and not posting it anywhere aside from behind paywalls, and I think twice a week updates is good for now.

I'm considering purchasing a real website to host all of my content that isn't just a Google site. I mainly picked this service because 1) it's free, and 2) it was convenient at the time. Now that I have a few social accounts, I'm realizing this site can't really do everything I want it to: I can't link to specific news posts, I can't add sections where people can leave comments (as far as I know), and my formatting options for the pages are a bit limited. This is the only official site linked to my book, so I'm a bit hesitant to leave, but the upgrade will happen someday. This spot will remain in perpetuity, as a record of where I was in the beginning, and to redirect people to the new and improved site, so keep this spot on your radar for any announcements.

That's about all I've got for this one. When I sat down to write this, I noticed that most of my updates have come out on Sundays, like this one. That's been purely coincidental, as I didn't and do not intend to make these posts some regular occurrence; Sunday just happens the be my most unscheduled day when I have the time to make an update. The news posts might come less frequently in the near future now that things have mostly settled down, but know that I'm always working on Volume 2 (and soon to be Volume 3, hopefully!) regardless of how often I tell you my word/page counts.

Stay safe out there folks, and thanks for reading.

~Adam

P.S. After writing this, I realize it's one of the longest posts on here. I refuse the change the title.

Hey everyone, quick update for you! I have officially created a Twitter handle for all things Restart Again. You can find me there @RA_Adam_Ladner. It's not the most ideal handle, but unsurprisingly, all the combinations I could think of for "Restart Again" were already taken. Go figure. If you're reading this post, and Twitter is a service you use, head on over to say hi!

At the suggestion of one of my reviews on Amazon (Thanks Darrin!) I've also set up a page on Royal Road. I had never actually heard of it before the review; it's a website where authors can go and post their work to a community of dedicated readers, with a bunch of features like commenting/following certain authors/other things that I haven't found yet. It seems pretty nifty! I did take a moment to think about the value proposition of the whole idea: if I'm selling copies of my book on Amazon for real hard-earned currency, should I be posting it for free as well? I didn't write this book to make money, so my decision is yes! With a caveat: using the lovely scheduling tool, I'm uploading one chapter a week, every Sunday at 00:00, until the whole book is posted. If I've done everything correctly, the final chapter of Volume 1 will go live on Royal Road on August 2nd. That seems incredibly far away. Volume 2 will DEFINITELY be finished by then (maybe even through editing and art commissions, who knows!), and I'll most likely be well under way on Volume 3. The Royal Road account might be less useful for anybody reading this post in a timely fashion, as you've already purchased a copy of the paperback edition on Amazon (I assume).

I said I'd make an update when the socials are created, and I've now fulfilled that promise. I'm continually curious as to anybody is actually reading these news updates, so if you are, head over to the new Twitter and let me know! I'd appreciate it. In the meantime, I'll be chipping away at Volume 2: as of the time of this post, I've just crossed 90,000 words and am still going strong. Until then, I hope the social presence is of use to some of you. As always, thanks for reading!

~Adam

Things are a bit weird right now. I'm writing this post from work while most businesses are shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As I'm considered an essential employee, not much has changed for me. There are some posters around the lab telling us to wash our hands, and certain hallways/locations are off limits to us now, but otherwise it's business as usual. It's weird to feel "normal" at a time like this, but I've barely noticed the effects of the pandemic if I'm being totally honest. Aside from a brief period of bare shelves at my local supermarket, my usual routine is unchanged; I've always been a homebody, and I get most of my social time via my computer, so both my work and downtime rituals are intact.

This also means my writing routines are unchanged as well. It would be nice to be working from home with the ability to pick away at new chapters all day, but I'm fortunate enough to have a steady job without the threat of being unemployed lurking around the corner, so I certainly won't complain. Progress continues as always: at the time of this post, I have just passed the 87,000 word mark, officially making Volume 2 longer than Volume 1. Based on where I think the story is going, I probably have two or three chapters left, so it looks like that 100k mark is more likely than ever. My writing process changed slightly between books, and chapters run much longer in Volume 2 than they did before; I haven't measured this, but I think that the longest chapter from Volume 1 would equal the shortest chapter from Volume 2 at this point. Maybe I'll have the rough draft wrapped up by the end of April! I'm certainly not holding myself to any sort of schedule, apart from ensuring I write something every day, but that outlook seems reasonable. Definitely by the end of May. Probably.

Switching gears a bit, I'm considering making a social media presence for myself as the author of this series. I have my personal accounts, obviously, but if the book continues to grow at the rate it is now (which has amplified quite a bit since I started a few Amazon ad campaigns, go figure!), I thought it might be a good to have a place where people could get in touch with me more easily. If you've managed to find this post, it most likely means you bought a paperback copy of my book; I'm pretty sure the QR code from the back cover doesn't exist in the eBook copy, and I did a terrible job of making this site known apart from that. If people try to find me to get updates, or share any feedback about the book (positive or negative, lay it on me fam), it might be a bit of a struggle without traditional social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. I don't really plan on using the accounts to seek out new readers, because I'm not really in this game to make money, and I have my own personal accounts for daily use, so don't expect to follow them for my day-to-day or any hilarious memes. If it ever comes to pass, I'm sure I'll make another post about it here with links to whatever sites I pick.

I'm not sure how I always end up rambling so long in these. I never intend for them to be this long. To anybody who actually follows this page, keep your eyes peeled for some official Restart Again social media channels, maybe coming soon to an internet near you. I'll always keep this spot updated as my number one source of information, mostly because it's the only source officially listed on my physical media. That will probably change with Volume 2. Anyways, thanks for all of the (completely unexpected) support on the project, and as always, thanks for reading!

~Adam

Hello again! It hasn't been too long since my last update, but I had something on my mind that I wanted to share. This entry is going to be about formatting, spellcheck, and grammar rules, so if none of that interests you, I suggest you turn back now. I don't blame you if you do.

For a bit of context: I've done all of my writing for this project in Google Docs. I initially started this whole writing endeavor as a fun project with a friend of mine. We both had ideas we wanted to write about, and we decided that we would read each other's work along the way and leave comments. Google Drive is sort of my standard go to for any sharing files nowadays, and it's great for working with collaborators, so it was a pretty easy decision. However, Google Docs isn't the greatest for standard formatting, so I decided to transfer the project into Microsoft Word for the final edits. (Side note: Why is the Microsoft Suite subscription based now? Ech.)

The spellcheck software for Google Docs is very different than the spellcheck software for Microsoft Word. When the document first loaded up, I had thousands of little squiggly lines to go through. The first issue was that Word decided my default language was "English, Australian", and it would revert to that setting no matter how many times I changed it, so I would always have piles of corrections saying "color" should be spelled "colour", and so on. I also had to re-add all of the made up words and names to my dictionary that Google had remembered for me. It was a bit of a process.

After all of this, I finally had what I thought were the "good suggestions". A lot of them made sense to me; I had a habit of saying "look to" instead of "look at" for some reason, and Word was kind enough to point that out after Google had failed me. A few other quirks popped up in the same vein, so it became pretty easy to run through the spellcheck and hit "accept suggestion" to a lot of things. The trouble is, it also changed some formatting from the way I had correctly written it into incorrect forms, and I apparently approved those suggestions.

If you are a strict grammar adherent, you may have noticed multiple places in my book where quotation marks that should have ended with a comma actually ended with a period. Example: [“No, can’t say he does.” Chortled the other guard.] I know that it should be written as: ["No, can't say he does," chortled the other guard.] Looking back to my original document, I can confirm I did write it that way originally, but somewhere along the line, spellcheck changed it. There are many, many instances of this error now peppered throughout the entire story. There are also spots where the correct form of this formatting was not changed, so I don't know what caused this issue in certain spots and not others.

I should have caught it, but I didn't. Changing it now would be a massive waste of time: it hardly affects the readability of the book, and with print copies already being sent out, the damage is permanently done. It's a silly thing to be irked over, but yet, here I am writing a MASSIVELY too long post about it. In the end, I've learned an important lesson about paying more attention to what I let spellcheck change, and about adding more proofreading passes when I make big editing changes. Hopefully, I'll apply these lessons to when Book 2 goes into editing.

This was a silly post to write, but I can't just let myself be WRONG on the INTERNET without acknowledging it and blaming a computer for the mistake. If you've stuck through this post to the end, you're a dang hero, although I would suggest you do literally anything else, as it would be time better spent. It is currently 1:30AM on Sunday morning for me, so I'll be heading to bed after a successful writing session on Book 2 and a less successful writing session on this news update. I've crossed the 80,000 word mark, and am fast approaching the page count of Book 1 (170 Google Doc pages of 173). I guess there's more dialogue in this one padding out the page count, as I'm still about 6,000 words shy of Book 1's total. Interesting!

Thanks for hanging with me on this one, and as always, thanks for reading!

~Adam

After many days of tweaking the cover file to the exact specifications that Amazon requires for physical copies (thank you Kyle), the paperback edition has finally been released! I'm a day late posting this (it officially went live at about 5:00PM yesterday), but as the link to this website only exists on the back of the physical copy, I've got time! I don't have a unified page for both the paperback and the eBook yet, but the system says that should happen automatically within a few days, and then my work on Volume 1 will be entirely finished. It feels a bit surreal to think that; I started writing it in March of 2019 as a fun creative writing project, and here we are a year later with physical editions shipped out from Amazon.

I need to give a huge thank you to my friends and family who have been showing their support of the project since it released yesterday. It means so much to me reading all the messages of people excited to receive their copies in the mail. I hope you all enjoy it! Also, thanks to all of you who have no idea who I am, but still decided to read the book anyway. That's still a weird concept to me.

As always, my work continues on Volume 2 every day. Volume 1 ended somewhere around 86,000 words, and I'm nearing the 80,000 word mark in Volume 2. While the end is in sight conceptually, there are still many words to be written before I get there. Could it cross the 100,000 mark?...Maybe! The book will end wherever it needs to end, regardless of whether it reaches an arbitrary word count goal.

One final thought before I go. I set one important rule for myself when I started this project: always keep looking forward. I've attempted creative writing projects in the past, but I always got bogged down on repeatedly editing the passages I had just written. That didn't happen with this project, but it did have an interesting consequence. After writing for six months, I found that I was much more confident in my writing abilities, and my style had changed a bit from the beginning. Reading the first chapter again was a very strange experience, and I had a strong urge to re-write the whole thing. I got over this eventually, as I know it's inevitable. When I go back to read the first chapter of Volume 2, I'm sure I'll cringe as hard as I did back when I reread the first chapter of Volume 1; as confident as I feel now, I'm sure future me will do the same reading the first chapter of Volume 3. I guess that's just progression.

With Volume 1 officially published, I'm not sure I'll have much more "News" to post in the news section. I plan on popping back in here at least once a month to give updates on the project, or just drop any random notes I think up in the meantime. Maybe it makes more sense to title this section "Journal". We'll see! Thanks for all the support so far, and of course, thanks for reading!

~Adam

Hey there! If you've found your way to this page, I'm guessing you have read at least part of my book, "Restart Again: Volume 1". If that's not the case, head on back to the home page for a description of what it's all about (and the Amazon link to buy it!). It seemed like a good idea to make some sort of online space where I could update any interested readers with news on the project, and as I do generally everything through Google these days, I settled on Google Sites. Make sure to check back here for news on the latest entries into the "Restart Again" series!

This is a pretty landmark day for me as an author: as of this morning (at around 12:30AM EST), my very first book was published on Amazon. I even made my first sale (thanks Australia)! Only the eBook is available for purchase right now, but there will be a paperback version coming soon; once the test copy reaches me and I make sure that nothing went wonky with the formatting, I'll hit the button to send it to processing, and it should be up for sale within a few days. Amazon's self-publishing tool is not the most user friendly in terms of formatting, especially in regard to artwork, so I want to ensure everything is exactly the way it should be before any physical copies get sold.

This is also the day that this whole site is going live with any real amount of content. I expect it will be a bit barren for a while, apart from announcing when the above paperback is ready for sale, but I figured it was a good idea to at least set up some basic pages now so it's ready for updates as they come.

Speaking of updates, I'm going to try my best to post here every once in a while about how the project is progressing. At the time of this first news post, I'm well on my way to finishing the second entry in the series (already 70K+ words written). It will definitely end up longer than the first volume, so I've still got some writing ahead of me for sure. After that, I send out a few copies for friends to read and give editing suggestions (thanks in advance, Maria!). Then comes artwork, and the whole formatting process for going from a Google Doc to a real book. I started writing Volume 1 in March 2019, finished the initial draft in August, and published it in March 2020. Following that logic, maybe Volume 2 will be ready to publish in August?

This is getting pretty lengthy for a news post, so I'll cut it off here. Check this space for the latest news on the series, and of course, thanks for reading!

~Adam