In 2004, Maillard returned to the raw Bildungsroman material first published in The Knife in My Hands and Cutting Through and rewrote and reshaped it into the Difficulty at the Beginning quartet, which appeared in four volumes between September 2005 and September 2006.
2004 kehrte Keith Maillard zu dem Rohmaterial zurück, das er zunächst in The Knife in My Hands und Cutting Trough veröffentlicht hatte, schrieb den Stoff neu und formte daraus Difficulty at the Beginning Quartet, das zwischen September 2005 und 2006 in vier Bänden erschien.