I'm very sorry. This time, I'm not increasing the word count, but reducing it.
I remember telling you readers when this book first started that, during the month off between my last book and this one, something happened at home, and I didn't get a single day of rest. I didn't think much of it at the time, but starting around October, the more I wrote, the more I felt that I simply couldn't keep up energy-wise.
Back then, though, I still seemed to be managing, just barely. I even wrote some well-received chapters about Raphael's battle with the "Demoness of Affliction," and my handling of the emotional scenes wasn't as jarring as before.
But in late November, I suddenly lost my feel for writing.
You probably noticed that, from that point on, every chapter I wrote seemed to have no soul at all-that might sound a little abstract. To put it more concretely, the feeling was probably that you'd read those chapters, yet it was as though you hadn't read anything at all.
It was a very strange thing. My goals for the writing were perfectly clear, and I'd already worked out how the plot should develop, but what I wrote just wasn't good. Sometimes I would sit staring blankly at the computer for more than half an hour, unable to figure out where to begin writing a scene I'd already planned.
Over the past month, I've been trying to get back into form, but over the past few days, I've realized that this time, it will probably be very difficult to recover.
Continuing to write in this bland, uninspired way would be letting you all down. So many readers have supported me all this time, and I'd feel truly ashamed to keep giving you work like this. It