Hey Everyone,

This is going to be a bit of a lengthier post, as I am going to try and explain where book four is at right now and what the near and far future look like.

For some background, I wrote The Sword entirely in one document, with the chapter and plot breaks created as I went. It made editing it a nightmare, because I kept trying to sort out if I had properly paced events, put them in the right order, changed perspectives at the right time, and so on.

For The Shield and The Steed, I wrote plot threads and then “wove” them together once they were all done. This is how book four is also being written, but it has created a new problem.

In the past few weeks I think I have written in excess of 100,000 words, and that is about 40% of what each of the past books have been at completion. I think this may exceed 300,000 when all said and done, leaving me with a tough decision: release a monstrously large fourth book, or break it into two smaller novels that will come out fairly close together.

I know a lot of people have been waiting for book four, and I don’t want to drag out publication. I do not think that the publishing time will change depending on the choice of one or two volumes, so no fear there. What I don’t know is how much it might impact editing time if I decide it needs to be two books. I think I will know a lot more in a few weeks.

I also wanted to make a few quick announcements. The I Think You Should podcast is up on our own RSS feed here on the site and you should be able to get it on all your apps. If you go to the linked episodes, I believe you can copy the RSS code to any app you like. We are also working to get it to appear naturally on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

There is also a Patreon currently live, but I am not linking it here because at this point, I am not certain we will keep it. Right now, Bea and I are really enjoying doing the podcast and bringing on guests, and we might see if we can get sponsorship in the future. I just don’t know that I have enough high value content to support someone getting the Patreon. Yes, you can get my books after subscribing at a certain tier for a certain period, but I don’t know how much of a draw that is.

Which brings me to the next big thing I am looking to tackle: a return to conventions and public appearances. The idea is to be at some in 2027, I don’t think I will target anything in 2026 because I won’t have any new content then, but specifically for summer of 2027, I intend to have a regular presence at several places TBD. More coming later.

Thanks for reading,

T.H.