Writing Update - Apr 11th, 2025

Wasabi Gangsters!

Welcome to the official ME writing update.

As always, expect them every Friday morning 930ET along with a video talking about my reading and some other writing updates if that suits you better. These also will be going at as my weekly newsletter if you sign up for it over in my website—chancedillonauthor.com

Anddddd the newsletter is good to go with the short story and prologue + chapter 1!

My sister kicked ass on this website… its beauty speaks for itself.

I like to be as transparent as possible in these. I’m excited for you all to be engaged with the world of Mercy—so here. we. go.

Primary Novel Update:

Book Two — Mercy: (Title to be announced) — is on the CHOPPING BLOCK.

More like a revising block… but you get it.

Current Word Count: 183,097

Chapter 38/44 Revised

So as you can see—we added roughly 2,000 words to this week’s count. A couple cool scenes were improved and I can’t express how excited I am to get into the rest of this book.

With book one, going into my second pass of the manuscript was daunting. I felt scared every day in the chair seeing just how ugly my writing was and how not put together the story felt.

I liken the experience to learning the guitar in my weekly update video, and I’ll do the same here for those who don’t watch.

Learning the guitar, your fingers need to callous and the strings hurt. Navigating the fretboard and chord shapes hurt the muscles in your hand. And memorizing the concepts needed to learn guitar is hard in and of itself. Book one was a lot of “learning the guitar”. The process involved playing in front of people (sharing my story and getting feedback) and then finding professionals to help me get better (something I actually haven’t done with guitar lol).

Here in book two, with book one “going out on tour”, I feel so confident back in the lab. Alright, let’s not bring a science metaphor into here, too.

Point is, sitting in the chair has gotten me so much more confident with my work. And on this second pass, narrowing the story down to its necessary parts has been so much easier. And knowing where it’s going is so exciting having experienced the main things I’ll be navigating on the rest of this second pass.

I’ve altered the Alpha Reader structure for book two, now that book one is ready for public eyes. I have a handful of readers I 100% know will help me navigate my third pass. They will be reading it in May and getting me feedback in early June. With that feedback, I’ll dive back into the manuscript with my third pass—and that will go to an extensive list I’ve developed through my ARC reader form. I still have to go through and select a bunch, so standby there for emails if you’re going to be selected.

I’ll do my best to navigate those not selected for the alpha reading process in July. In this circumstance, the goal is you’ve obviously read through book one at that point and have a desire to read book two (naturally). Which I know is weird considering book one doesn’t release till July, but that’s why that advanced reader form exists!

Alright—let’s move on to book one.

Mercy: Tears of the Fallen

Post Copy-Edit, Post first proofread word count -

171,011

Abel Montero (the author of ‘The Crimson Fire’ which I’m currently reading) who I should mention also did my typography in my website and book cover, is currently getting the formatting finished for the book. The Prologue and chapter 1 will be available (chapter 1 for the first time ever and the prologue for the first time since its first proofread) upon my newsletter and up on Patreon. While I’ll ask is be sending my ‘Blood Rebellion’ short story on that initial newsletter along with the book one sample.

The E-ARCS will be going out either this weekend or next week… and I’m so excited to share them with everybody. I will be sending out emails with links through bookfunnel for you guys to download the ebook.

I will be printing physical ARCS (most reserved for reviewers for promotional purposes) but I also intend to giveaway 10. Starting the first weekend of May (though I have to see since I have a wedding that weekend when I’ll be able to ship). That gives me ten weeks until the books release. I’ll sign each copy and come out with more info related to how you can submit to win that giveaway! It’ll likely involve being a member of my newsletter, having a digital ARC, posting about it on social and tagging me and putting ‘#TOTF’ on the post and BS marketing ish like that… and yes… I called my own marketing plan BS. Because of all this is feels to me like the thing I’m the worst at. But I really do wanna chat with you all about the story. And I TRULY cannot wait.

I may be forgetting something…. OH YEAH! THE JACK SHEPHERD MAP. If you’re a Runeborn member, you saw this puppy already… but it’s up on Instagram and X at the point of this writing update being posted and available for all members of the patreon when this goes up as well. Wow…. The world of Maetlynd come to life… for the first time. Holy shit. Can’t express how cool this is for me, and for what’s more to come.

Let me know what you guys want to see from future Patreon Tiers. I have some ideas for post book release Tiers and rolling them out over time as demand increases to get people more ingratiated into the universe of Mercy.

Anyways—thanks so much for taking the time to read this. Grateful for everyone who takes the time.

Stay dangerous,

Chance