Emerald Winter will be returning in March, 2012.  Tentatively March 1st.  I will complete this storyline, and then it will be archived as an optional back-story.   With a few edits, it will still be considered canon to the story.  So, don’t think of this as a restart.  Think of it as a new direction.

When the new Emerald Winter begins, it will start with Rien and Gisela in the port town’s bar.  If any of you remember back far enough to the original incarnation of the story, that’s where I left off before doing the current version.  So, I will be skipping ahead to that point again.

The comic is going to be in full-color, and all the characters and settings will have new designs. If you’d like to follow me on DeviantArt, you can keep up with the designs and give me your input as I go along.  They’ll mostly go into the scraps section, so be sure to click on that when you add me.

Rien and Gisela will share the “main character” spotlight equally, while secondary characters (like Nara, William, and Vere) will come and go for their respective story arcs.   The story will be presented in an episodic format, with each episode tying into a larger story.

The characters personalities and background stories will be tweaked to add better contrast and depth to the story, but most of what you know right now (which is not very much in retrospect) will remain unchanged.  I will keep you posted, and have the final pages of the current story up sometime in March.

Thanks everyone for your support and understanding.

So, I decided on a plan of action here.

I am going to complete the current storyline up to the point the story arc ends.  Old die hard fans may remember this as the point where Rien leaves his village.  That will give me a complete book to show.

After that, I am going to completely re-write Emerald Winter. I have to be clear here: this is not a restart.  I will not go through the same story again, ever.  The story will pick up pretty much where this one leaves off, where Rien leaves his village.  However, the premise will be very different (I don’t think the Emerald Winter of today even has a premise), and not all the details from the current storyline will still be canon.

I will continue ending this story and give you information regarding the new storyline as soon as I clear up some of my current projects for Filthy Figments and other sites.  What I can say now is that all the characters will still be in it, but they may have different roles.

I know that all of you who are dedicated enough to continue checking this comic after all this time may be disappointed with my decision.  I have to just apologize and go where my inspiration takes me.  Otherwise, doing this comic will be nothing but a chore, and that results in a story that nobody thinks is interesting.    But hopefully, once the spark of inspiration is rekindled, I can bring you a super awesome storyline that trumps everything else I’ve done so far.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Once again, it has been a long time since I updated. So I figure I should make a formal post to inform everyone of what’s going on.

I don’t like to post about personal issues on my comic fronts, but I think it’ll really help everyone to understand where I’m coming from. Put simply, this comic was started by me and another person while we were in a serious and long-term relationship, and now we’re not. So the strongest barrier to me going on with this story is an emotional one. It may be a long time before I can even work on this story without feeling instantly depressed.

Another obstacle I run across is that the more exposure I have to fantasy stories, the more I realize that it isn’t original, and I’d like to do something far more awesome. I’ve spent the last year catching up on stuff like Avatar the Last Airbender, Harry Potter, and so on, and thinking that those stories used certain concepts that I had also thought of independently, but way more effectively. Those of you who also follow Lavender Legend and Thorn Prince know that I’m keeping busy, I just don’t have a lot of motivation or good ideas to put into this comic.

So, while the comic is not canceled, it is on indefinite hiatus until I decide just what to do with it. I have a few different options I can do with it. I’m going to list some of these here, and you loyal readers out there can help me put this into perspective.

I can finish up this story and treat it as a one-shot, then continue other storylines using Rien as one of the characters. His back story would be canon, but all together not related to the rest of the plot. This would require me finishing the rest of this first story arc before I can get the plot rolling, but at least then I won’t have to throw out 100+ comics.

I could disregard the comic so far and jump to the part of the story where it should have really been started, at the point where Rien and Gisela run into each other and start their adventure. This gives me the flexibility to change what has happened with Rien so far and make him a more interesting character. I like this idea for that reason, but I don’t want to fix something if it isn’t broken, for lack of a better explanation.

I could create a whole new story using the story thus far in Emerald Winter as sort of an inspiration but not a canon backstory. I will keep the title and main characters, but the story will be pretty different.

I’ve also thought about jumping back and telling another story from the universe of Emerald Winter that would be a little more fresh. It would have Gisela, William, and Nara in it, but not Rien himself.

I could also forget about it and just bring you twice as much Lavender Legend, which is looking pretty good, too.

You can help me out by giving me an honest review of Emerald Winter’s story so far. Let me know what you like about it, what you don’t like about it, and what you’d like to see in the future. That will help me decide what to do and where to go. I don’t ever make decisions based purely on what other people think, but it does help me realize problems and options that I may not see on my own.

And finally, I want to thank everybody for their support over the years and apologize for being so unreliable with this comic.