Hello readers,

I apologize for disappearing out of nowhere and leaving the book unfinished. As an avid reader myself, I know how rough it is when a story you love stops, and it was worse because I didn't communicate with my readers. It was a bad way to handle it, and I apologize.

I want to take this opportunity to explain what happened. The pandemic was difficult for me, as it was for many people. At first, I had extra time on my hands and was able to make good progress on the book. But as time went on, I became increasingly busy with family responsibilities and work, and on top of it all, I had a severe case of writer's block. To write this story well, it took me hours of research on top of the writing itself, and that commitment got to be too much.

The stress of it all got to me. I loved the story, but I got burnt out and while I had previously been staying up late into the night to write, I just couldn't do it any more. What was a love became a stressor, both for me and my family.

Recently, though, more and more, I just can't get the story out of my head. I've fallen in love with it again. I want to finish book one. And I have plans for book two and three, though I'm hesitant to commit to anything as I don't know where life will go.

In short, I'm sorry for abandoning this, I hope you can understand and forgive me, and let's see where we go from here. The next four chapters have been written, with the fifth one in the works, so I should have enough buffer to keep releasing chapters even when life gets in the way. I'm also going to be aiming for a more reasonable release schedule - starting at 1 chapter a week. We'll see if we can ramp up from there. I'd love to.

Thank you for your patience and continued support. I look forward to bringing you the conclusion to this story.

All the best,

RealityBend