I know that I haven&#039t been working (at all) lately on getting more of my novel up here for you all to read or even just to get more of it typed up so I&#039d be that much closer to completing the first novel. I&#039m slow. I&#039m busy with school and work and am easily distracted. So it makes me feel bad enough that I don&#039t have my first novel completed when I started it three fucking years ago. Maybe I need to leave for France for another six months before I&#039ll be able to get anywhere on it again. Who knows? Regardless, there&#039s a lot of work to be done on it and recent events just made me suddenly feel like I shouldn&#039t even bother.

What would these recent events be? Well, I&#039ll try to be brief, but we all know that&#039s not going to happen. Essentially, Robert Lynn Asprin is the inspiration for my stories when his Myth Series went unfinished for a few years. Recently, he completed his series with a huge question mark at the end as to whether or not he&#039d write any more adventures with the crew from the Myth Adventures. Well, he decided to do more work with the characters, but he&#039s doing so with a co-author, Jody Lynn Nye. I haven&#039t read any of her own personal work, so I can&#039t really comment on that, but her work with the Myth Adventures is, well, disappointing. Here are my favorite people in the world–Skeeve, Tananda, Massha, especially Aahz–and they&#039re no longer who they once were. The worlds are different, the situations are different, and the witty banter which was my reason for coming back year after year has been replaced by puns and girly fashion shows. I read the first book co-written by Asprin and Nye, and it was okay, but I haven&#039t gotten around to book two, and when playing on Amazon and found the third, I wasn&#039t even sure I was going to buy it. Well, my loyalty to the Myth Series (albeit tainted Myth Series) won over and I ordered it. It came in the mail today and reading the back, I suddenly felt saddened and doubted whether or not I&#039d ever finish my own novels as a result.

See, in the Myth Series, there&#039s this entire world which is entirely devoted to shopping. It&#039s an outdoor Bazaar run by Deveels (Devils, essentially), and when I was modeling my book off of Asprin&#039s, I decided I wanted a similar world but that mine would be entirely indoors (called &#034Mal&#034) populated by Malvermin (i.e. from MallRats). An homage to Kevin Smith and Asprin, had I continued typing up my own novel, within the next chapter or two, you all would have been reading about Mal and its inhabitants. It was different from Asprin&#039s Bazaar, so I felt justified in using it. Until now when reading the back cover of this latest book which talks about Aahz having to go to the dimension &#034Mall&#034 which is populated by &#034Rat people.&#034 <Insert deflating sound here> Ian tried to make me feel better by saying that maybe this is a sign that I&#039m so in tune with Asprin that I&#039m thinking up similar ideas as he, but I can&#039t say whether the &#034Mall&#034 idea was Asprin&#039s influence or Nye&#039s. I dunno. I mean, it&#039s not like my novel&#039s ever gonna get published anyway, and even if it does, it&#039ll be years down the road and maybe not even read by Asprin&#039s fans, but still, it just feels like I&#039ll get accused of copying the idea even though I had written about it first. Although I&#039m sure that many other people have come up with the idea of giant vermin as characters in a Mall because of Smith&#039s movie, I actually incorporated it into an Asprin-like world. Shit, I don&#039t know what to do. I don&#039t know if I should not care and finish my novels or if I should alter it (drastically) to remove any more resemblance with the new version of the Myth Series. Guess I&#039ll think about it. It just really makes me sad.