As you can already tell, the Trigger Locked series’ new book, The Virtual Mass Murder is already out now by the time this post goes live.

You can get this book in digital or in print on Amazon, other major retailers, and also on my Payhip store as well.

But if you’re buying any of my books from retailers based in Europe or China, you have to wait for a while, though.

I can’t say for sure when the book will be available on their platform. But I believe that it will be available in a couple of weeks.

And it may take even longer for it to be available due to the holiday season.

Putting that aside, I can’t believe that it took me this long to publish Trigger Locked series’ new book.

The last book that I published was three years ago. And that book was the second book from the Trigger Locked series, A Silent Killer.

Yes, it was that long.

For the most part, I try to get my book published within a year or so.

But for some reason, it takes so much longer to publish The Virtual Mass Murder than any of the books before that, though.

What causes the delay for the publication of the Trigger Locked series’ new book?

I won’t deny that this book is just as hard to write as my other books in the series. But I will say that this book is a lot harder to write considering that they’ll be facing a new enemy on top of the existing one.

Crazy, I know.

But at the very least, I don’t have to do everything from scratch since it’s the third book from the series.

The same character, the same setting, and more or less similar concepts. The only thing that is different this time is the enemy.

Since the only thing left for me to do is to come up with a profile for the new enemy, that should be easy peasy, right?

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at all. And yes, even with the fancy-schmancy books that I got from Amazon that I used as a reference.

Not only it was harder to create a new enemy from the ground up. But it also touches upon the one thing that I will never want to include in my story.

I won’t go into the weed here since I already talked about it in detail in the Author’s Note section of the book.

Suffice it for me to say that it was the main reason that took me so long to finish writing the book.

I have to rewrite most of the chapters to reflect the brand new profile of this new enemy. The original profile for the new enemy is way too uncomfortable for me to write.

Thus, the delay.

Just to be clear that I’m not afraid to write anything that I find disturbing. The last two books and my other book, The Diary of Modern Cinderella, are a testament to that.

But this is perhaps the only topic that I’m not comfortable talking about.

And I’m sure that many of you may find it uncomfortable too, not just me.

Does it have to be a new enemy?

If you’ve read any of the books from the Trigger Locked series, you may feel that it’s unnecessary to introduce a new enemy.

Why should Touka and the Kimizuki squad have to face another enemy on top of their existing one?

Isn’t their existing enemy is a mad man who is still on the loose? So why do they need to deal with another mad man?

It’s not that the Kimizuki squad is the only squad that exists in the Special Activities Division. There are four more squads that Minoru can assign to deal with this new enemy.

Is PSIA short-staffed that Minoru and his squad have to add another task on top of their existing mission?

If these are the questions that you have in your mind, then yes, you’re right about that.

It’s not necessary to establish a new enemy when their existing one is still on the loose.

But I find that the story in the Trigger Locked series’ new book will be a lot more interesting when we have another enemy who is just as capable as their existing enemy.

Not only that, but it can even lead you to this big kahuna going forward – which one of them is behind all this madness this time?

That’s a good question to ponder, don’t you think?

Will the next book from the series take this long to complete as well?

To be honest, I can’t say for sure if the next book from the series will take just as long as the third book to complete.

But I do plan to start writing the fourth book next year. And I hope that the whole publication process will take a lot less this time.

So, where am I in the publication process?

Right now, I’m currently in the process of finalizing the story for the fourth book of the series. If I managed to finalize the story within this year, you can expect me to get started with writing the first draft somewhere around next year.

As always, I’ll let you know about it and also my writing progress on this blog.

In the meantime, if you’d like to get the third book from the Trigger Locked series, you can get the book at your favorite retailer right here:

Buy Trigger Locked Book 3: The Virtual Mass Murder

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