>(She makes him feel so old. One of these days I'll have to
>have him moan about it to Kei. :)

Is that like the moaning about age around the New Year's celebrations? ^_^

>friends by the end of the hols. But then, that's how I know when
>things are really working, when the characters start messing me about
>that way. :)

For me, that's both one of the most rewarding things and most frustrating things about being a writer -- that moment when I realize I don't have a clue about where the story is really headed. I start writing a project when I have one or more of three things: a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Out of the three, I prefer starting with an ending, because, to cop a phrase from Neil Gaiman, it's pretty much a process of aim and start writing. Of course, I rarely end up quite where I thought I would, but them's the brakes. Beginnings are somewhat easier to deal with but are the most likely to stall out on me; all of a sudden, the characters just shut up and I have to go and do something else until they feel like talking again. (Which is why I always have a number of projects in the works -- currently, I have about nine or ten.) Middles are the easiest, as it's fairly simple to sit down and start asking questions about how they got there, but working the bugs out of those answers -- usually by turning them on their head in some respect -- can be a disheartening process, and there's still the possibility of running out of steam before you know how it ends.

>it comes out (and it does come out - I hate the way so many shows
>nowadays leave things like that unresolved forever).

It seems like few writers know how to resolve sexual tension into a relationship, and then keep the chemistry happening. Mostly they tend to forget that the same kinds of things often happen in a relationship as do when the relationship is forming.

>available in English. I'm attempting to structure it so that
>one doesn't need to know what goes on in the last two-thirds of
>the series in order to understand what's happening in the
>Symphony, but foreknowledge will definitely make the experience
>richer, since the entire original series did happen as backstory
>before Wounded Rose.

Considering that I probably won't see any of RGU until I can reliably get the whole thing, I'm hoping so. So far I haven't had much trouble inferring what I need to know.

>St.Clair is actually a mister (reportedly; I confess I haven't met him
>face to face, but I take his word for it :), and that credit means

Ah. Every Kelly I've known personally has been female, although I've heard of male Kellys. My apologies to Mr. St. Clair; no offense intended (and please don't misinterpret that as a mysogynistic statement; when I first started wearing my hair long, I didn't have any facial hair to speak of -- I wasn't even shaving yet -- and I started getting annoyed by all the times I was addressed as a female).

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog