I have been stuck for progress in this series for a while. In order to get back into it, I decided to start working through past chapters and editing my way through them as I go.

I am beginning to see why it is that my ability to write after chapter 13 dropped to just about zero. In my editing, I've been seeing very clear signs of rushed descriptions and very poor characterization. Most of the earlier chapters stayed more or less the same with only a few minor changes to phrasing. Around chapter 5, the edits started to become larger. About half of chapter 9 needed some very heavy re-phrasing.

I just finished editing chapter 10, and the edits were so incredibly heavy that it was effectively a complete re-write. A complete re-write that actually halved the total word-count of the chapter. I am actually going to have to break out chapter 11 content and steal a part of it for chapter 10 in order to continue with this process, and this will mean doing the same for the next two chapters after that as well before I can start with the new chapter.

The worsening quality as I go through chapter by chapter makes it very clear why I was having so much trouble progressing with this series. My quality had just been flagging severely for a while. But, I am correcting this problem now, Sam's character is getting more depth and more interesting interactions, and the story overall is going to have more points for contention and conflict to happen in order to help make things more interesting. This should give me a bit more to work with moving forward, so it should settle the issues I was having before.

I am working through the material fast at a rate of about 2 chapters per day. I will begin updating the chapters, replacing them with the new edited versions, after I have finished editing chapter 13 and then I will be working on chapter 14 in a couple days. So, you should expect and look forward to this.