Sounds like you've been working on your novel almost as long as I've been working on mine. I started plotting mine while I was still in high school, but didn't really get going with it until the summer of '93. With virtually nothing else to do I spent the whole summer writing and by the end of it I realised the story was too long to condense into one book, so I developed the basic plot lines for two others to follow, but got side-tracked. By the summer of '95 I returned to the US and discovered a new favorite author, whose style inspired me immensely. I started rethinking the story I'd been working on and decided it needed a new approach. Because the plot I was working with was so intense and covered such a vast time frame, I wanted to write a sort of prologue to it, which is now the new first novel in the series. Over the last 10 years characters for the story have been developed and then discarded due to lack of necessity or true purpose, and one that started out as a sort of filler, background character has become the main character. It's been rather frustrating, especially at times when I couldn't figure out what should happen next or what causes something else to happen, but in a lot of ways I'm glad it has taken me this long because otherwise, had I begun and ended it all back in summer of 93, it wouldn't be anything like the story it is now. By the time its done it will cover more than just 3 or 4 novels, but I think it will be worth it. I've tried my best to make sure there's a reason for everyone in it and everything that happens. I don't want readers to ever think that I just pulled something out of the air for filler to throw in because I couldn't think up anything else. ~E.D.