We Aten't Dead.
Neither Empyrean Dreams nor its authors are deceased, though many circumstances have slowed us to an undead-like crawl. Both L.L. herself and Nathan's wife are in the thick of it, in health care professions. Nathan is working from home, which sounds great for a writer, but doesn't help to separate Work-work from Personal-work. Work-work includes the ongoing ghostwriting contract - the target publication date was May, but May has been delayed until the Summer - and some freelance editing, in addition to the full-time day job... editing. Full confession, also, he's been seen dallying with game design, including an appropriately futuristic-looking card game called HEXMAP that's about to be prototyped and offered to publishers. There may be some cross-promotion between these projects, with links to appear here on the site.
STILL! There are at least two and possibly three Empyrean Dreams novels edited, laid out, and ready to go to the printer. Once the stimulus checks arrive (if they arrive) or other income returns, we'll have those ready to offer for sale. To avoid confusion, we decided to split Tales of the Scape Grace #0 and #2 into two separate novellas, the Prequel, Escape from Grace, and the Sequel, A Change of Plans. That way, you can read them in order, and new readers don't buy them together and wonder what happened in-between. Also in drafts are a fourth Scape Grace story, Third Time's a Curse, and a second Stchvk Casefile, with two stories, Binding Threads and Biological Clock. That's not counting ideas for all-new series and more short stories.
So you see, we're far from dead. We're too overworked and tired to be dead.
That's assuming that Death is any escape from Work. If anything, maybe the afterlife has better employment figures right now.
-N.L.
p.s. we still miss you, pTerry.