I’m back with a vengeance, my magnificent friends. It’s been 173 days since I last posted here. Almost six months of silence. If you figured the Kickstarter faceplant finally put Frank King in the ground, I understand. I’d have reckoned the same thing. Here’s what actually happened.

Back in April, when the campaign came up short, I told you two things. I told you Frank King doesn’t quit. And I told you I’d come back in December with new books. December turned out to be a lie.

The Legendary Vol. 2 drops October 31st. Halloween. Two months early. Turns out when you stop campaigning and start working, the work gets done. So that’s where I’ve been. Not hiding. Not licking wounds. In the cave, every night after my day job, building the thing I promised you. And here are the receipts.

Vol. 2 is finished. Parts 9 through 16. Fifty-one chapters. Every page written, torn apart, and rebuilt until it stopped fighting me. It picks up where Vol. 1 left Frank, wrecked and stubborn, and drops him into a role he didn’t ask for, under a General he doesn’t trust, with a team that includes two new members and, of course, Take.

While I was in there, I also wrote the entire third season of The Legendary. Eight episodes. And the Bad Girls spinoff, which is the meanest, most fun thing I’ve ever put on paper.

And Vol. 1 came back with a critic’s report from the BookLife Prize, from Publishers Weekly. Overall score: 8.5 out of 10. Plot 9. Character 9. The critic wrote, “The novel distinguishes itself by treating superpowers as extensions of deeply personal wounds,” and that “King draws these influences into a superhero world with its own identity, moving beyond many established origin-story conventions.”

So no. I didn’t quit. I just stopped talking about it and did it.

The Next 14 Days

I learned my lesson from Kickstarter. The book was never the problem. The problem was I showed up with a finished thing and nobody knew it existed. That doesn’t happen twice.

So between now and October 31st, I’m going to be shouting from here. A lot. Here’s what’s coming:

• The soundtrack, track by track. Why each song is where it is.
• OX promo art. The minotaur. You’ll see why he’s on the cover.
• The musketeers. Bladeline and Trekarn promo art and the real people they’re based on.
• The full cover reveal.
• Launch day.

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Stay frosty.