Hello, children.

Lately, there have been a peculiar number of people who have written me directly to ask about "Bright Soul", along with a smattering of requests for the story on recommendation sites.

I'm going to throw some random info out there, for those of you who are still interested in this story, which will hopefully help answer some of the questions that have been floating around over the past few years.

1. "Was it ever finished?"

More-or-less. Less, perhaps, rather than more.

"Bright Soul" was in a very roughly edited, but largely finished condition (all 3 books), even before anything was first posted at fanfiction in June of 2003. The story was never posted in its entirety, at first due to the incredibly long time it took to discuss and add any corrections suggested by my beta(s) that I happened to agree with, and the extremely clumsy and difficult interface for uploading files at fanfiction.

If you followed it from fanfiction to geocities (which happened quite quickly), you did get to read the first 6 or 7 chapters of Book II, in addition to the unedited Book I. There then followed many various complications with trying to ensure only adults were reading it (due to the explicit nature of many scenes), and in the end, geocities was taken off-line, so it lost its home. I never found another suitable place to post the unedited story, and there didn't seem to be a tremendous demand for it by that time. It had lost a lot of readers due to the various difficulties during the last months at geocities.

Even towards the last days at geocities, the un-posted books and chapters were still being edited down (yes, I know it's an impossibly long story-realize that the posted chapters still don't reflect its true, monstrous length!) and prepared for posting. The three books were spread out over a few different laptops and desktops, and went through (at least) two complete hard-drive crashes. It did not take long before I had 4 or 5 versions of almost every chapter, in different locations, all at different stages of editing, and no real idea which ones were the "current" edits. To be honest, I've never been up to the task of comparing them, editing them together, and creating master files. It's daunting just to write about doing it, let alone actually doing it. This is not an easy story in which one can keep a keen handle on every detail, even when you're the one who wrote it. Once you let it get away from you through inactivity or inattention, it s that much harder to remaster it and get it back on track.

Plus, I no longer had all that free time that college bestows.

Thus began the long twilight languishment of "Bright Soul".

2. "Is it available anywhere?"

Not that I know of. If anyone out there saved copies of what saw the light of day, they've been very subtle about sharing it with other people. I appreciate that; the story has been revised numerous times, and the only true, "final" (I use that term very loosely) version of it, was the one available at geocities. Any chapters people saved between 2003 and 2005/6 are now much-outdated, especially if they grabbed copies of Book II's chapters. Some of those chapters have seen fairly extensive re-working since geocities was killed.

Yes, I myself still have the story. No, I have not made it newly available anywhere. Some of you who wrote to me in the first years after went off-line, might have happened to get some scenes and snippets from unpublished Book II or III chapters via email as a silly kind of "reward". I hope you enjoyed them.

3. "Will it ever be posted again?"

I don't know. Is there that much interest, even on my part? Graciousness. It's SO much work. Yet I do continue to edit it, however intermittently. I've never quite stopped fiddling with it. It would be nice, after all the work that's been put into it, to have at least a few people see how it all finally ends. Some of you are so loyal-don't you deserve it!

If I do upload it again, it won't be here at fanfiction, but any new information will be posted here first.

It s been over 10 years since this story was first posted. I hope that you re all in a good place, and you ve all managed to achieve at least some of the things you were dreaming about, way back then... college graduation, kids, retirement-any of it and all of it.

Love, cheers, and a wonderful summer to you all, my lovelies. You are adored.

-beckett