Hello, everyone! Old readers, those of you who just subscribed. I wanted to let y'all know why those twenty-some-odd chapters have just vanished.

I started writing Hand In Hand WAAAAAY back in the tail end of 2019 as a side project that kind of helped reset myself if I had major writer's block on my main stories. At the time, I was pushing to get Colony 782 published and The Fourth Verse written which took a lot of time away from this series. There were updates, scattered around whenever I could get to them, but the story as a whole had a LOT of plotholes and was very lacking in several areas because it wasn't something I put my all into.

When I started growing as I writer, I decided to go back and start fixing my mistakes. Unfortunately, like it was with the new chapter updates, rewriting the existing ones fell to the wayside. But I'd already reuploaded three or for of them. Old readers knew about this, new ones didn't. Plot holes in the middle of being fixed became even worse as new readers met characters in one chapter that didn't exist in the next.

Recently, I got a new subscriber and finally decided it was time. I've gone through and deleted every chapter (after reading all your amazing comments before doing so) including the prologue. I do have both the prologue and chapter 1 nearly ready to be released, so I'll be keeping this story up so none of you guys have to go in search of it when it inevitably resurfaces :)

Until then, you can check out my other story The Fourth Verse: Rekindled. I have an older version of this story up on tapas labeled The Fourth Verse and I don't recommend reading it. The rewrite has a lot of new material, better writing, and more carefully crafted characters. This story ALSO takes place in the same "world" as this one, so you might enjoy the cameos that Hand In Hand provides. With that said, I'd also like to warn readers of The Fourth Verse that said cameos relay very important spoilers for that story. And I mean, VERY IMPORTANT spoiler that you absolutely DON'T want to find out before TFV finishes. This might lose me readers on this novel, but I'd prefer that over any of y'all learning about TFV's endgame.

I'm sorry for everyone I've let down, and new readers that came in confused and/or haven't had the chance to read this story. Again, I do plan on rereleasing every chapter and continuing the story (as soon as this month, in fact) but it will continue to be updated in a "whenever I have time" manner. My other two stories take priority as Behind Violet Irises is running late on its publication and The Fourth Verse: Rekindled will be slated for release after the Colony trilogy is completed.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who supported the series back when it first launched, and thank you to everyone who sticks around to see it revised <3 Remember to stay safe, stay kind, and hopefully I'll have the Prologue (at the very least) reuploaded within the month. Much love! ^~^