flying peach,
Here's my difficulty with your position "owed" implies a legal obligation. I just don't see that. We were given a book that is part of a series. We paid for the book and read the book with full knowledge of the fact that is a part of a series. There is no guarantee the series will ever be complete. There is no obligation by the author to complete the series. That might make the writer who chooses to hang up his pen and become a... blacksmith a bit of a jerk but there is nothing we can do about that other than kvetch that it was not fair that we didn't get the "whole story".
My problem is that when people claim they are "owed" something by a writer they really don't know what they are talking about. When you buy a book, you get the book that you bought, and nothing more. There is no legally binding promise to finish the full story.
I wasn't planning on posting here again in this thread (I edited this to add in this thread), but if someone writes a thoughtful response it deserves a response. In fact, I feel like I OWE it to you.
Har, har, har.
It's been a long week and this will be a bit stream of consciousness so if you''ll tolerate me I'll set forth my position.
Owed isn't strictly limited to a legal obligation. It infers an obligation, whether of a legal nature or not. For instance, a person can owe a responsibility or duty (if you have a legal background and a happy contrarian streak right not you are thinking "but what about legally imposed duties and contractual duties" and my response is "I'm excluding the legal theory"). It's even possible to "owe it to yourself" as well as "owe it to your children." Or think about the common phrases of "owe an apology," or "owe an explanation" or even the phrase "owe common courtesy."
I believe that as a matter of courtesy a writer of a trilogy or series owes the reader a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to finish the trilogy or series. The following events would be a noninclusive list of things that I would consider being valid reasons for the writer to give up on a series: the publisher decided not to continue the series, the writer got sick, the writer had things come up in his personal life and wasn't in the right of state of mind to write anymore, or the writer couldn't feed himself with the money he was earning and couldn't write anymore.
If Jim never finishes the series because he had stuff come up, that's cool. He seems like a nice guy and I think he probably would have made a reasonable effort to finish the series. I'll be disappointed, but it won't be the first writer I had fade out on a series.
No actually that's just how I communicate, are you currently attacking me???
I wasn't trying to attack you. I rewrote several things and deleted several things in an effort to make sure that it was a disagreement rather than a personal attack. I'll continue to make an effort to respectfully disagree.
I was stating pretty pure facts there Bub.
What facts are you referring to?
I was relating my personal opinion regarding not just this but all bandwagon auctioning and pointing out, that the original 'attack on Jim for not caring was backed by real fan's knowing that's not what's going.
I don't know what this means.
If you are saying that the op said that Jim doesn't care about his fans and that you believe Jim cares about his fans, then I have no argument with that. Jim seems like a nice guy. I don't believe it correlates with the portion of your post I originally quoted though.
