Lois’s answer to “Maybe unfair to ask since your books don't fall into this category, but what makes an author abando…” > Likes and Comments

I, too, follow several authors who I wish would write more, and more often. LMB is at the top of that list. Passing on all of the business-side reasons, you have to figure if the author doesn't want to write it, I not going to like reading it. They gotta follow their Muse, wherever it takes them. I don't get a vote.

I could, but won't, mention one author that I have loved, who has obviously lost interest in their series, but is finishing it for the fans (and maybe the money?). The last two books have been awful. If your only two choices are incompletion(sic) or dreck, skip the dreck. Life's too short.

@Kate --

"(Example: 18 months between each of the first 14 books. 5 years since the last one, a semi-cliffhanger.)"

This sounds like the Dresden Files. ;-)

In Jim Butcher's case, his books have certainly been selling well enough. But as I understand it, he's had a whole lot of life happening to him in the last few years. Though I'm tapping my toes impatiently, I have confidence that he'll get back to it eventually!

Agreed re; Dresden Files. Check out http://www.jim-butcher.com/faq/upcomi... for information regarding the delay.

Thank you, Steve Berliner, for posting that. Perspective is always good.

From what i've read from other authors (and it makes total sense to me), it seems the longer the span gets the more pressure the author feels to write an "amazing" or "perfect" follow up, especially if it is to be the final book. Therefore it takes even longer and the pressure increases even more for perfection, and more years sneak by. Us readers clamoring for the next/final book in a series dosn't help :) But we can't help it...

There are lots of series that I started off loving, but which I stopped reading when they didn't keep growing. I want writers to keep being interested
, and my interest will follow.

Plain old block too.

Thanks, Steve Berliner - I've been keeping an eye on the butcher site and getting frustrated at the lack of news. I knew about the 'lot of life happening' but hadn't spotted the good news that he's back to work!

All valid plus some I hadn't thought of, and maybe it's just my own OCD, but if you are done with a world, for whatever reason and you have an obvious unfinished through-line, even a short story or coda to bring things to a logical pause, if not a finale, would be nice. Dorothy Sayers' PDB Whimsey story "Tallboys" comes to mind. Even though there was no unfinished line in those books.

@ Kate D. -- Prior to the internet and self-e-publishing, there would have been almost no way to place or publish such a work. There may also be dead-hand contractual constraints on free work for a particular series, if the author has a bad contract. (Sometimes, authors can wait out such contracts, but if it's really bad it will be for term of copyright, which won't run out till decades after the author dies.)

L.

Bummer.

Yes, I know at a couple cases where the author has written the sequel but the contract prevents them publishing it (even though the holder of the contract has no interest in doing so).