I went back and fiddled with a couple of things in Book 2 that were annoying me. I feel like you can tell when I took a break from writing, because all of a sudden I introduce 15 new story points that come from nowhere, don’t really fit, and don’t go any place. So some pruning and streamlining there.

Then I started up on Book 3, which has 21 chapters (20 + epilogue). I believe it’s the first editing pass on the book, and yes, it’s definitely a lot rougher than Book 1 or 2.