As for Montrovant – sadly, White Wolf fiction is work for hire, and they owned him. My trilogy loosely intertwined with another trilogy – mine in the Dark Ages, and the other in modern times…the other author brought Montrovant back and then killed him.

Jeannie – I’m there every year. I think several other Storytellers are as well. My user name is Shadeaux if you want to “buddy up”.

David

As I was saying, very incisive summary of the way things deteriorate in a series. It also strikes me that you are essentially describing the problem of keeping track of details in any extended work. Creating what you call an uber-outline is a working method I had to adopt even in something less than a series — CASE WHITE, a historical novel that I researched and fictionalized for 4 years. Sometimes it’s much easier to invent than to go back and connect with accuracy. But of course that’s fatal. I actually keep folder files of individual characters, settings, plot threads, fragments, etc. in all the novels I build.

And you are on the money with your statements about people who live extraordinary lives versus mundane and boring lives, methinks. There are associations between that and writing. Sometimes writing becomes a substitute for an extraordinary life, I think, but in my experience it’s much better to walk the walk and experience extraordinary firsthand. A lot of my columns and newsletters attempt to describe how to do just that.

And one last detail, re: Montrovant/White Wolf owning the character and killing him off. Why don’t you clone him back and then contrive some sort of genetic memory to fully restore him, past intact? The act of merging him with past events and characters could itself spawn many stories and quality revisitations. Cheers…

– Sully