I'll have to agree with Lurker and Jeremy Bennet on that one.  For the past
couple of years, I've shuttled aside my fanfiction in order to work on my
original stories (there are, admittedly other reasons, but I won't go into
those here).  As well-received as my stories have been (and I thank you all
from the bottom of my heart for all the years of support), there is a next
step that I must take, as must many others.  Someday, I'd like to get back
to my other stuff (especially A Duet of Pigtails, since I'd made a promise
to Libby Thomas that I'd like to keep), but for now, it's infeasible.
  
But my point is that sometimes you can't make a story work unless you can
sell yourself on it.  Many people here and elsewhere have been waiting for
my sequels to Hikage, everblue, and White Butterfly.  To this date, I
haven't been able to write more in them simply because I haven't found a way
to make them work.  Until I do, they'll lay fallow.  

Those of you who knew about my other project, Shibuya Beats, won't see that,
either.  It's not that I don't see that as "self-sellable", or even
commercially viable, but the bane of all creators everywhere, parallel
evolution (the case where someone else comes up with the same idea you do
without ever seeing your work) has already proven that my idea would work.
Unfortunately, so much of the recently released Shingetsutan Tsukihime is
90% identical to Shibuya Beats, that there's no real way I can release it
without seeming like a copycat or a plagiarist.  Oh well, so goes the world.

Right now, other stories that I do see as "self-sellable" are Hatsukoi (my
original supernatural murder mystery), Realtime Digital Girlfriend Maya (my
retelling of the Pygmallion/My Fair Lady legend) and Hana Road Fruit Party,
a shojo tale that's been in development for nearly a year (and involves
rewrites of parts of my old Project Shimmarui, for those of you who remember
the brief stuff that I posted on the FFML back in 2000 - 2001).

One of my biggest fears is that the story I'm writing right now, Hana Road
Fruit Party, may not gel and sell for me later on down the line.  Yet I have
to make it work, or else the other people involved in it will suffer.
That's because unlike my previous stories, Hana Road is a webcomic, an
entirely different writing animal that requires something new for me.

In short, it's a new style of writing discipline that I am focusing on to
improve my writing.  While I am not going to disparage those who are still
working on their own fanfiction while writing original stuff, it just
doesn't work for me.  That's not to say that it doesn't work for Krista
Perry, Gary Kleppe, DB Sommer or any of the "Big Name Authors" that have
graced this list for years, or for those rising stars that are yet to come.
For all of us who write professionally (in demeanor if not by the commercial
definition), it's a calling we're all built to, and one entrenched enough in
our blood that I doubt we could deny it if we wanted.  If not fanfiction,
then in RPG freeform.  If not there, then in blog posting.  If not there,
then in some other location.

I realize that I've started to take this off-topic (and in a sense, it seems
more like an update on my status than a real response), so I will quiet back
down again and return to my work.

Ja ne,
-Rob
www.mitsukai.com (which will get updated sooner or later, really)
hanaroad.megamistudios.com (Hana Road Fruit Party - coming March 2004)



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