I've restarted book 1 of my trilogy every time I make a change to book 2 or 3... Or whenever a character decides to go off and do something I didn't tell it to 🙃

@Dani Rosenblad James Yes, my ideal reader is always in my mind, you're right that's so important for direction. Otherwise the squirrel jumps into the story and runs off with it on a tangent🤣 I originally wrote this as a 50k word middle grade novel, several agents requested the full MS and three came back with exactly the same advice: write three shorter (15k-20k) chapter books from this that will appeal to younger readers. So I've been reworking the original book into that trilogy, and I'll requery those agents again when they're done. I want to wait until they're finished and polished as I tend to leave my writing in a drawer for long periods while I'm focusing on the business sometimes and I don't want to end up with an agent-imposed deadline that doesn't suit me right now.