Chapter 27 of A Healing Love is now live on Ream!
I finished the chapter last night, bringing the book’s total word count to 122,500—just a few hundred words shy of A Tortured Soul, which remains the longest of the first three books in the series, and my longest book to date.
From a timeline perspective, we’re nearing the end of this part of Paul’s story. There’s about a month left in-universe, and I estimate that I still need to write eight significant events until we reach a natural break-point in the narrative where I end Book 4 and begin Book 5.
This means we’re probably looking at another 8 to 10 chapters. With the current average chapter length being about 4,500 words, that’s roughly 30,000 to 50,000 more words to go.
I expect the final word count of the first draft will fall somewhere between 150,000 and 170,000 words—significantly more than I initially anticipated when I began this journey.
So, how long will it take to finish?
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess. Since posting Chapter 25 on December 10, I’ve completed two chapters, so if I keep up the pace, we’re looking at about two weeks per chapter. That would put the first draft’s completion around May—though I’m not making any promises or setting firm deadlines.
My hope is to finish the first draft before then, but once that’s done, I plan to set it aside for about a month before returning to revise and edit.
Speaking of revisions, I have something exciting in the works
I’m planning a future post about using AI to analyze my chapters and suggest improvements. I’ve tested this with a couple of chapters, and the results have been fascinating—I think it’ll make for an interesting discussion.
Back to Chapter 27
As always, the text I posted today is raw and unedited. There will be mistakes in the text and there will be changes before the final release.
But that’s the beauty of early-access posting. You get to experience the story as it evolves, and once it’s officially released, you can say, “I saw the rough draft!”
