C James

A belated happy birthday, Steve!!!! Congrats on the big 3-0!!!!

Y'all did a FANTASTIC job!

ACK! Shadowgod!! I must say, I'm shocked, truly shocked, that Shadowgod, of all people, would imply anything regading cliffhangers in my stories! I mean, that's the very definition of Irony, coming from him! (Hrmmm, maybe one of his names is Clump??? He's known by many, many names, after all!) ) And Changing Lanes (formerly entitled Changing Lanes In Full Force) should start posting next week, if all goes well.

Welcome, Peter! Cliffs? Cliffhanger? Me? BTW: To everyone, Sorry I've been gone lately; I've been swamped with work and I also cleverly got sick. Just a cold, but it, combined with working long hours, made me exhausted. The first chapter of Changing Lanes (the LTMP sequel) should, as promised, be posted before the end of this month. I'm aiming to return to the old Tuesday posting day. I'm still only 6 chapters into it, due to my recent problems, and also taking a break and working on "Jake" for a few chapters. (that should be appearing in August). CJ

ROFL!! OK, I give! I'm now officially on hiatus. It will be a long-term hiatus of indefinite duration, and the only thing I'll say is that it will end before this month (July, 2008) does. Last night I decided to take a couple of days off of writing, but with the time pressure off, I found myself wanting to write rather than feeling I had to write. Result? Instead of tapping out my obligatory 1000 words a day, I tapped out 3000. Plus, I feel better! Changing Lanes is difficult to write at first; there are a lot of story arcs, so I've had to make some changes. Due to this complexity, which often results in the need to change things around, I'd like to get ten or more chapters written before I start posting. I've got six now. I write for fun; I don't like TV or video games so writing, and this forum, are my main recreation. I don't plan on taking a hiatus from writing (I enjoy writing too much; when I couldn't write for a couple of weeks due to an injured hand, I HATED it!), I'm only taking a break from chapter posting. This will let me get the story right and take the pressure off. CJ

Right here, Your Majesty!

Michelle, we call him "Fossil" for a reason.

Wow, thank you all, you're the best! I'll try and answer some of the questions as best I can, but I need to be vague or the anti-spoiler Echidna will turn me into a pincushion (I fear the spines!) Okay, The Scar... All I can say is take a very close look at the final sentence of the final chapter of LTMP. Also, he still had just under five million in personal funds remaining, and those would be in seperate accounts, so he, if alive, would still have it. Wildone said that no one can say for sure of The Scar is alive or dead. I disagree! I can, and I will do so right now! The Scar is alive or dead!! See, Wildone, it was easy! Just to clarify a few things (Note to Echidna, no spoilers, just mentioning what's in the posted chapters) there were four men in the warehouse; the two customers, Yuri, and The Scar. There were three sets of remains found; the two buyers, and The Scar's arm. The arm also matched a paternity test for Joe... It's The Scar's arm. BTW, if The Scar is alive, don't assume he'll be in Changing Lanes; he could appear in a short story of his own... Of course, the same is true if he's dead... (there's a ghosts theme coming up, if I recall...) As to when the sequl will appear... I just posted about that a few seconds ago here. BTW, my apologies for not answering more of the posts here individually; I'll try to do that soon, but work has been h3ectic and my Muse has been calling, so I've been super limited on forum time.

Absolutely! "Changing Lanes" will deal with many of the aforementioned things. Let The Music Play was about the nuclear plot (that's why the title line was The Scar's), so to me it just didn't seem right to continue the story after that was settled. However, there is much left to be told, so that's how the sequel got started. The writing has been going very slowly lately. For me, I find the first chapters hard, because in them I need to lay the groundwork for all the follows. For example, Lump being a good for The Shadows had to go in the first few chapters of LTMP. I also sometimes write non-linearly, and I'm indulgi9ng that now by writing some parts of Changing Lanes that are about halfway through the story. I did that with chapter 36, 37, and 38 of LTMP: I wrote those back around ch 24... Anyway, long story short, I've fallen behind due to both offline life and taking a break. Sometimes, I do take a few days off of writing to think things through; I find that helps and recharges by batteries, so to speak. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I only just finished Ch 5 a few minutes ago. I hope to have chapter one ready soon, but it might be a bit late, or, I might end up not being able to keep a weekly schedule for a while, (sometimes there might be a ten day gap, for example). At the moment, I'm also just finishing up Ch 1 of "Jake", so that's another project. CJ

I'll reply to the rest later (I'm working today), but ever since chapter 47 posted I've been itching to comment on that hospital scene.. Guess what? Seriously, I didn't write that., Shadowgod did. What he actually wrote was; He sent that to me during LiS, when he was considering the final scenes. I fiddled with the wording a little back then, and it stuck in my memory. That scene never made it into LiS, but I loved the concept (describing it so it could be either a hospital or funeral home). And, as I'd already become soft-hearted and decided to save Helen, it (both the wording and the concept) fit perfectly, and a quick search of my g-mail turned up that year-old e-mail . I did ask for, and receive, his permission to use it, so I re-wrote it and it became; So, you see, this is truly all Shadowgod's doing. It was EEEVIL in both concept and execution, and as with all evil in any form, it stems from the Shady One. Now, in light of this revalation, surely y'all can see that Shadowgod deserves to have his throne back? As for the words themselves, to me they fit a hospital; the greif, fear, and mourning, the flowers, and the doctor's names in endless rows, and definitely the lurking specter of death. And, um, "masked and steralized" sure seemed like a doctor in a gauze mask. As for Helen... She did die; she arrived with no pulse. People do survive wounds like that, it just depends on how severe the bleeding is. She had a chance. To be honest, in the original epilogue, written alongside chapter one, it was Barbra who urged Brandon and Chase to go forth, in Helen's memory, and come out. Helen didn't survive in that version. However, I changed it, for two reasons. One, I'd grown to like her and I'm soft-hearted, but more to the point, when I wrote the original epilogue, I had no idea Eric would be as popular as he's become (he grew on me, too), so I had no notion of a sequel focused on Eric. I needed Helen for the sequel, so, she managed to survive. CJ

I liked the interlude with coffee. Granted, it lacked the snappy dialog, but IMHO it was needed; it gave us more background, and thanks to my tardiness I read it in the right seqence. I also feel that it was an innovative way of giving info, which i appreciated. Loved the park scene, especially the comments about parks not being a good place to storm out of. Hrmmm.. One of the other things that caught my eye as a great idea: I loved the usage of the term "Baristas" for bartenders. Okay, on to Kevin's question about Mick. I've wondered about him from the start. He's not homophobic, obviously, but could he be in some kind of denial? His actions towards Aaron do seem incongruous for a pure friend. To be honest, at this point I hope he and Aaron end up together. CJ

But, but, but!! It's really Shadowgod's fault!! He's evil like that, you know.

Well, yes.

Well, posting day was Tuesday (in some parts of the world) and today is Thursday... That's two, right? I'm doing the hTML now... and if we could just blame the Shady One, I'm sure I would be motivated to hurry. CJ ?

Could be, if he was referring to Living in Surreality, which has 28 chapters. That's easy; it's all Shadowgod's fault! Oh, and before I forget,

:worship: Now there's a statement I support! LTMP has a prologue and epilogue, so it's technically 49 chapters, but the 42 is utterly unrelated. It is, however, if one gives it a little deep thought, the answer to everything.

Silence of the Goats! Well, actually, that fits! I am a quiet and sy lurker, after all. Hi Old Bob!! You won't have long to wait. I'm currently typing away at Chapter 5 of "Changing Lanes", the sequel to LTMP. I hope to have chapter one online in under two weeks, but Emoe will be unavailable for a while due to the passing of his father on Sunday, so I might need to delay a little (which will help me too, by giving me time to increase the buffer of written chapters). The Epilogue should be posted soon. Due to Emoe's situation, it is unedited, but Bondwriter has used his keen eyes to catch my typos. I wrestled with the decision, but I felt it best to post the epilogue soon rather than put the story on hiatus at this point. Thanks!! The ending was one I planned from the start, sort of. I'd always planned for Vladimer to use a bomb to exact his revenge, and in the section where he's stealing gold it's mentioned that he's also taking explosives. However, I was unsure as to where the bomb would be until I wrote the part where The Scar was saving some of the machinery and shipping it. You might want to make that Southern California, given the location of the culprit. I won't! It should be online soon; at a minimum before the regular chapter posting day. For good reason, oh Shady One... And here we have the true cliffhanger: what happened to that check!?!? I fear you may be right, the Shady One may have taken the funds for himself! All can say is; Eric sent the check. Okay, now is about the time when i release the name of the coming chapter... or in this case, the epilogue. It's entitled "Epilogue." CJ

Yep, Joe's joining The Shadows was intended from the beginning. His "look" was never a good fit for Instinct, but it does fit The Shadows. Not everything will be tied up in a neat package, and perhaps some things that appear to be won't be. And Ooops! Thanks for the catch on Brandon's tech job! I'll fix it! And Lol; switching loose and lose is a bad habit of mine. And you are correct on the acceleration rate of terrestrial gravity at earth's surface. I rounded the wrong way. BTW... on the story index page, there is a listing of the story genres. That might serve as a clue as to some of what remains to be handled in the Epilogue. ROFL! Nah, Jerry's sexuality, as far as i know, is straight. He's just a little egotistical, and prone to theatrics. I'll post about that scene after the epilogue. However... I'll say this much... It's not my fault. It can only be attributed to certain dark forces...

I very, very much want to echo my support for the Living Will. Everyone should have one. There's even more to it than sparing your loved ones an agonizing decision; you may also be sparing yourself a slow and lingering death. Modern medicine is wonderful, but when hope of recovery is gone, in many cases it merely prolongs the agony.

I liked it! Of course, it does make one wonder about amphibians...

But, but, but... That one bit I suspect you refer to was not my fault!! And I'd never misdirect!! The answer here is simple; it's all Shadowgod's fault!!

Good point about the Americans in Toowoomba. That would be enough to get him a US Federal death penalty, i think. BTW, this reminds me of an issue I want to bring up in the post-story discussion; I largely ignored Australia after the big boom. There were no scenes with the OZ authorities, etc. I did that because it wasn't the focus of the story, nor relevant to the outcome, but I felt bad doing it. BTW, do I take it that you don't like ?

Benji!!! What a thing to say about poor me!! And what, me, misdirect? Would I ever do such a thing as that? It's not misdirection if something is written that leaves several possible interpretations, and the reader assumes the wrong one, now is it?

I hereby deem this thread ?

At shorty after eight o'clock on Sunday evening, Emoe's father lost his fight to recover from surgery, and began a journey that we must all one day take. My sincere condolences to Emoe and his family. Please join me in keeping Emoe and his family in your thoughts and prayers. CJ