Reader mail! Only massively delayed!

I just read the AO book Prophet Without Honor, and I loved it, but now must ask the question, What is the time frame we are looking at for the next book? I want to continue the story, and want to know when it's coming. any info would be great. Thanks again.

Ah. Yes. Well. (Cough).

There are chapters of the next novel on my hard-disk. There is a beginning. The story - probably a trilogy-thingy, the kids seem to like that these days - is plotted out in stunning detail...inside my fat head. The background story for Anarchy Online stretches back millions of years, and it'd be nice to dig into some of that in a new novel, because a lot of it isn't suitable for the in-game story (it's a little far-fetched to believe that an NPC in Omni-1 knows the inner thoughts of a being that lived and died before intelligent life first emerged on Earth).

The next novel even has a provisory title: "The Garden of Eden". And the plan was for it to be more linear, with fewer jumps across time and characters, and with more emphasis on current day Rubi-Ka. In other words, I've listened to the criticism, and I wholeheartedly agree.

But it might never see the light of day. "Why?" you ask.

Well, see, it takes a lot of time to write a novel. More time than, for example, making a baby, which is pretty weird when you think about it. Babies, after all, are a lot more important and a lot more fragile than novels, and so they should also require a lot more time and effort to make. But they don't. They're pretty easy to make, most of the time, as long as there are two of you, and not one, like with me...so, in fact, for me it's easier to write a novel than to make a baby. But it's still pretty hard. Which is my point, really. Without knowing whether or not Funcom wishes to publish another novel, or the readers to, uh, read one, it won't happen.

But! Here's the thing. If it doesn't happen - and it might not - I'll try not to leave my readers hanging. If there are no other options, and I get permission to do so (because, after all, I don't own the AO property), I'll post the relevant chapters on my website or the AO website - in due time, of course - and at least try to wrap up the storylines that need wrapping up. It won't be a full novel, but it'll be a fair number of chapters that, hopefully, will bring closure to the story that began with "Prophet Without Honour".

Then again, there might be a second novel, which might be named "The Garden of Eden", or not, depending on the decisions made by our marketing department.

Can I get more vague than this? Probably not!

Phew. Reader mail is hard. I need a break.  ¶ 14:39