These middle-of-a-book progress updates are always awkward because I figure you guys (and gals) want something more than the generic update like "I'm working on it."
If you're perfectly satisfied with that as an update, then by all means; I'm working on it.
Still here? Okay, fine. You can have a little more detail.
I'm currently about 60-70k words into my current draft of book four (10,000 words is about 1 hour of spoken audio according to audiobook makers). The exact count is iffy because I have a couple of scenes that may or may not make it into the book. Those words are out of an estimated 120,000 word total, though I may once again have to stretch that word count to fit in everything I want to cover. You might say I'm a little over halfway done with the drafting phase, but pulling the ending together properly always takes me more time than writing the middle.
I've got more time off these days thanks to Covid-19, which has definitely translated to getting more of the book done faster. I'm significantly ahead of schedule, and combined with the fact that this book is going to be (hopefully) significantly shorter than book 3, I should be able to get it out a lot sooner.
I'm not going to make any definitive claims about how long this is going to take until I'm well into the editing phase, but for now I just want you to know I'm ahead of schedule.
Edit: I should also mention that I do have a patreon. As of writing this, 10 chapters to book 4 are up, and I'm posting new chapters every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. Keep in mind these chapters are from my draft, and aspects of the story will almost certainly change when I head into the editing phase of writing the book.
