I'd like to think there are places for both formats, though obviously one of them requires a lot more time - not only more sessions, but also (and this is the part that I find gets harder as the years go by) generally longer ones as well.

>2) Is the story of the recovery of Kei and the punishment of the
>guilty parties still yet to come?

That may not actually all be the same story, but in general yes, I'd like to hope so.

>3) Have we seen the last of CSI:New Avalon? Of the Mythbuster's? Of
>Kaitlyn, Corwin, Utena, and Miki?

It's possible that the CSI thing has run its course as a series of separately labeled stories, but the characters and the division of the IPO they work for are established as part of the universe now, so even if that proves to be the case, they're not likely to disappear entirely. They'd still appear as and when appropriate - much like, in fact, the way the UF cast of Mythbusters have historically been used.

As for the Symphony 5 cast, Christ, I hope not. They still owe me the last bit of their arc plot, and it's holding up a bunch of stuff that's supposed to happen after it.

>Does it play out that way?

Not.... as such, no.

Look, guys, I'll be honest with you - hm. The problem with phrases like "I'll be honest with you" is, they always make it sound like the speaker's admitting he hasn't been up to that point. Maybe "I'll come right out and say it" would be a better way of phrasing it. Anyway.

The thing is, it's not just that I'm working on not one but two degrees at the University of Maine at the advanced age of nearly 40, which is taking up a lot of my time and most of my mental bandwidth; and it's not just that I live at almost precisely the wrong distance from the University, such that I end up having to waste about three hours in the car on any day when I have class; and it's not just that I incidentally spent the summer nearly getting killed by a surgical equipment malfunction while having a cancerous kidney removed and now spend virtually all of my time in a mildly to moderately paranoid froth that something's going to happen to the other one.

All of that is in the mix, but there's also other stuff at work that doesn't get talked about as much around here. The fact is, even the stuff that only has my name in the author credits is usually not the product of me working in a vacuum. On the rare occasions when I do go it completely alone from start to finish on a project, it tends to end up being something disastrous and ill-advised, like the early Exile material or the deleted-and-disavowed first version of The Vulcan Heart.

Which, well, fair enough, and I make an effort to give collaborator credit where it's due, but what you can't see from that side of the board is that even when they're not working on the material directly, the rest of the crew is a support structure that keeps things moving. I don't often address the flip side of that, because I don't want to come across like I'm trying to lay a guilt trip on people for having other stuff to do, but, well, frankly, those people all have other stuff to do, and as time goes on they develop more things to do and I... well... sort of don't.

So I often find myself, at the end of 2012, looking around and thinking, Well. It's got quiet in here, hasn't it. And this is not an indictment of anybody, it honestly isn't. I'm not stamping my foot and getting angry because my work and I aren't the center of other people's universes - but the fact is that people's interests get regularly reprioritized as part of the normal course of life, and what I'm up to over here often tends to slip down the list when that happens. People get married or stop being married or have kids or change jobs or move to distant time zones or all of the above - all of which is perfectly legitimately more important than this - and I presumably didn't help the situation any, 10 years ago, by moving back to this town, which is not just remote but dull and unwelcoming to outsiders, for an indefinite period.

So yeah. Uh. It's slow going these days, because my posse is far away and has its own shit to do, and the miracles of the Internet can only make up for so much of that. Online collaborators have always been part of the EPU picture, but it remains true that I did my most prolific work when I lived practically within arm's reach of a handful of people whose names appeared regularly in the credits, and nowadays I don't live within arm's reach of anybody. (And those people don't live within easy gathering range of each other any more, either, so it's not just that I moved to the woods. See previous paragraph.)

Couple that to the stuff I listed at the start, and add the simple fact that I occasionally do stop and just wonder what the hell I'm even doing, still courting lawsuits, 21 years on; and you get a situation in which I still have a raft of ideas, but they get put into finished form at what I fully agree is an unsatisfactory pace.

I haven't stopped, though. Considered it, while I'm being confessional, but never decided to do it. Because I just never know. I didn't know Weapon of Choice was going to happen last February until, well, it suddenly did. I have the key events of half a dozen pieces outlined, either in scratch files or my head; they're just waiting for whatever weird alchemy happens in there that leads to them finally getting fleshed out. That doesn't happen as often as it used to, for the reasons I've semicoherently laid out above, but it does still happen, and that - that's why I haven't given up.

And like I told the other fella recently, if and when I do decide to pack it in altogether at some point, I'm not going to be coy about it. You won't have to infer it from posted song lyrics or try to find the subtext in some snarky remark I've made in response to someone asking about a delay. It'll get its own post, and probably a red box on the site's front page too.

But don't fret. That probably won't happen until someone from the UMaine Career Center emails me to say, "I googled you as part of our résumé improvement counseling service, and let me tell you, if you ever want a real grown-up job, you'll do everything in your power to distance yourself from genre fandom, mate. That'll sink you professionally faster than that nude photo of you on Facebook, face-down on the card table with a lit candle in your ass.*"

TL;DR I write slow now 'cause I'm old and busy and stuff. Everyone is far away.

--G.
* no such photo exists... of me, anyway
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.