Greetings Fellow Nitpickers and Proud Members of the Nitpickers Guild!

As you've no doubt figured out by now, this newsletter is significantly shorter than normal! A bit of recap is necessary before I explain why just in case there are some of you who haven't heard the unfortunate news.

In mid-May--after working for three months on a Nitpicker's Guide for Star Wars--I received a call from my agent Steve Ettlinger. Steve told me Dell Publishing was canceling the project and all future projects. There had been some lawsuits in the industry with regards to the unauthorized publishing genre and Dell felt the risk was too great to continue publishing the Nitpicker's Guides (even though no one has ever called into question the legalities of the Guides . . . but that's another story).

Since that time, Steve has attempted in find other publishers for the guides. He has been unsuccessful. A Nitpicker's Guide is sufficiently thick and complex that it requires a full-time commitment on my part and that in turn drives the necessity for a healthy advanced royalty and there just aren't that many publishers who can--or are willing--to risk that kind of money on a project that has the potential to provoke litigation.

So, that left me with only one real choice and I've made it: I've returned to programming. Currently, I'm working as a consulting doing business application development. Honestly, I've having a blast! I really enjoy working with the people and they seem to be happy with the work!

In addition, I've had several business opportunities appear on the horizon--good business opportunities. Some show excellent potential for making money. One in particular shows no potential to make money but it speaks to my heart and it is something that I simply must do.

Unfortunately, I only have 24 hours every day to get everything done. (I applied for a 36 hour day last year but you know how long it takes an application to get through that labyrinthine bureaucracy at the Department of Day Extensions!) Anyway, with my consulting efforts chewing up 50 hours a week and my church work taking another 10-12 and working on business deals and trying to spend some time with my family . . . there just ain't much time left! (And just in case it doesn't sound like my plate is full enough, I haven't even mentioned that first novel that I've been trying to get published or that second novel that really needs a good multi-month polish before I even have a chance of getting an editor to look at it!)

In other words, there was just no way I was going to get a full version of the October newsletter done because a normal newsletter takes me about 40 hours to compile! And the outlook for the December issue doesn't look brighter.

For the time being then, I am afraid that I need to suspend the newsletter publishing arm of Nitpicker Central. For those of you who have subscribed to the newsletter via the postal service, I will be refunding your money for the last two issues this year.

In addition, I will be making every effort to automate my involvement with the Nitpicker Central Internet Extension Office website (www.nitcentral.com). This week I installed a fabulous discussion board called Discus and I will have discussion areas for Classic Trek, NextGen, DS9, Voyager, X-Files and any Movies you all might want to nitpick. The discussion boards will be moderated to insure that people stay "on topic" and "off profanity". (If necessary, I have the ability to make all the boards private and require user names and passwords but that would be a pain!) And I will be moving my Ask The Chief column to the discussion board as well. I am also planning to install a chat room so that from time to time I can drop by for "live" discussions!

And as far as that Star Wars project goes, since I had finished reviewing the original three movies, I was intending to publish that part of the book myself but if I do that, I will owe Dell half the money that they paid for the first installment of the advance royalty so it really makes no sense as a business undertaking. That said, I will probably just upload it to the webpage in a month or so.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the future holds with regard to all of this but I'll keep puttering along if you will! And on that note, I leave you with an anecdote that certainly demonstrates we are everywhere . . . though misunderstood. My local news paper has a column by some named David Iman who answers questions about television and the movies. In a recent column, he printed the following letter:

"This question might be a little confusing. In the movie ‘Scream,’ at the party scene, a bunch of teen-agers are watching ‘Halloween.’ In ‘Halloween H20,’ in the scene where the two girls are in their dorm getting ready to go to a party, they’re watching ‘Scream 2.’

If they saw ‘Scream 2,’ then they must have seen the original ‘Scream,’ meaning they saw the clip from ‘Halloween.’ But then they would have seen that their teacher was in the movie. And if the characters from ‘Scream’ or ‘Scream2’ saw ‘Halloween,’ they must have seen ‘Halloween, meaning they saw the clip of ‘Scream 2.’ What's going on? How do they exist in terms of co-existing or not?" (A.K., W. Bloomfield, NY)

Though it seems like a perfectly legitimate observation to me (except I'm not sure about those "must have," parts), David Inman's only response was "I have no idea."

I guess some humans just aren't cut out to be nitpickers!