A few people have asked for a postmortem of the whole Whitechapel project. Now that I’m on “vacation” and able to get some thoughts together, I’m willing to do that. However, this project has been inside my head so much that I’m not entirely sure what kinds of things you guys would find interesting. So, I’ll post my working document, and let y’all ask questions about anything that doesn’t make sense.
This is a very bittersweet post to write, so forgive me if I ramble a bit.
A couple of months ago, things got busy for me — generally a good busy, but still busy. I figured it was just a bit of a rough patch, so I decided to work through it. I moved some things around with Whitechapel and made it work. No problem — it happens.
Then I got out of that patch of busy into a completely different patch of busy. It was tough, but I decided to put some things on hold until I got through it. Again, I expected it was just a tough spot.
After that, I had a run of computer problems. Okay, that was actually a bad patch. But, chin up, we’ll get through it. I was able to actually get the Q&A episode out, and I figure it would all work out.
Over the past few days, I’ve been asked to take on some additional work responsibilities. It’s an exciting opportunity, and I’m really looking forward to it. However, it does mean that my schedule needs to be a little more flexible, because the days of working weird hours are probably going to continue. Essentially, I’m at a place where I have rebalance my ratio between work and life. So, I had to sit down and think about what things in my life I can reshuffle to make it all work.
Sadly, Whitechapel has to go.
It’s been an amazing run, but the truth of the matter is that my life has changed quite a lot in the past year. I can’t plan around having a run of five days every two weeks in which to write, edit, record, and edit Whitechapel anymore. I can’t even be sure that I can handle just the writing and editing. I’m sure that I’ll be able to get my work/life balance back on track at some point, but I don’t know how long that will take.
So, what’s going to happen to Whitechapel? Honestly, I don’t know. I might sit down and rewrite these episodes, finish it up, and polish it into a novel manuscript at some point. I doubt nothing will ever happen with it, though. It might be weeks, month, or years, but I expect Whitechapel will live again at some point.
Understand that this wasn’t an easy decision to make. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and reexamining for a while, and thinking about very seriously for the past several days. This is just one of a number of overall changes in my life. It’s bittersweet, because I wanted to finish this, and I enjoyed working on it, but the reason why it’s happening is for a lot of really awesome reasons for me personally. There’s just too much good stuff going on for me to be able to give due attention to all of them.
But I do want to take a moment to thank you, my audience. If it wasn’t for you, I probably would have gotten frustrated and dropped this long ago. It’s because of you that this crazy idea that sat in the back of my head became something real. It didn’t go the distance that I hoped for, but it went a hell of a lot further than I could have anticipated because of your support and encouragement. You gave me some constructive criticism, but I never heard a negative word about Whitechapel, which is very rare for an Internet project. You guys have been, and continue to be, amazing.
Thank you.
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After many, many, many delays, I finally have a Whitechapel fix for you — an hour-long Q&A between me and Rob Justice of the BearSwarm podcast. We answered a few questions that Rob had mailed to him by fans, a few question that had on his own, and a lot of rambling about the project, interactive fiction, and the future of fiction on the Internet.
On a related note, I finally have a new laptop, and I’m getting a chance to catch up on the projects that have been building up over the past month. If all goes well, I should be able to start writing the next episode of Whitechapel this week, and maybe (fingers crossed) have an episode up next week. (I do talk about the delays during the episode, but that was before I had my laptop drama, so just take that and multiply it a couple of times.)
Thank you all for being very patient with this, and I hope this Q&A episode will get you back into the Whitechapel groove.
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Six killed Liz while under the influence of Jack. During a desperate search of her home, he discovered that she was really Rachel Parks, an agent for the mysterious organization Lacuna. His escape from Liz’s home was interrupted by the arrival of one of Lacuna’s agents. Six took Liz’s appearance and tried to bluff the recently arrived Agent Timm into believing that he was the female agent. Six convinced Timm to put him in contact with the head of Lacuna, Zachery McPhearson. Unfortunately, McPhearson wanted Six to come out to the car parked outside and speak to him directly. Six was left with a handful of bad options, and all while trying desperately to keep Jack from taking over again.
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While under the influence of Jack, Six murdered Liz, the mysterious woman who helped him back in the hotel. In searching the house that Liz brought him to, Six discovered that Liz was working for Lacuna, the secretive government organization that had some connection with the Whitechapel Project. Six discovered Liz’s cell phone in her pocket, which still had a line open to someone named Zachary McPhearson. Someone had heard everything that happened during the murder. Just as Six discovered this, he heard a door open, giving him only moments to make a decision. Continue reading
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Six killed again. This time, his victim was Liz, the mysterious woman who met him in the hotel he woke up in after a hospital stay. The murder was much more intense than previous ones, as he was under the influence of Jack the Ripper while it happened. Six even started thinking of the unnatural urges inside of him collectively as “Jack.” After the murder, Six was covered in blood and had to think of a way to deal with the situation he was now in.
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Six discovered that he was tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. Liz found him in a local hotel, and took him to a car wash to inform him that his clothing had been bugged by Richard Marsh, a.k.a. Mister Rich, an agent of Lacuna. Once the clothing was disposed of, she drove him to a house that she claimed was theirs. Six didn’t recognize anything on the inside, and a nagging suspicion led him to realize that there were no photos of the two of them together. He suddenly got a headache, the kind that came before a manifestation of his powers. Liz pointed a gun at him, and told him it’s too soon for him to have a headache. She begged Six to not force her to use the gun on him.
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Six woke up in a hotel room. After a few clues, he uncovered the fact that he is somehow tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. A mysterious woman named Liz found him, and told him to keep quiet as they made their way from the hotel. Six spied a black van that he thought was similar to the one that held the men who knocked him unconscious, but it turned out to be a red herring. Liz drove Six to a car wash in the middle of a bitter Ohio winter, and told Six that his clothing had been bugged. She also revealed that they had been lovers once, and as they pulled out of the car wash, Liz dropped the biggest bombshell of all: that the bugs in his clothing may have come from Richard Marsh, also known as Mister Rich, an agent of the organization that claims to own Six – Lacuna.
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Mister Rich, Six’s mysterious benefactor, was shot and fell unconscious in a gunfight, before Six himself was stunned with a taser shotgun shell. Three days later, Six awoke in a hotel room under the name “M. John Druitt,” which turned out to be the name of one of the suspects for the notorious Jack the Ripper back in 1888. As Six struggled to cope with the revelation that he’s somehow connected to the serial killer, a strange woman mutely informs him that he’s once again being looked for, and beckons for him to follow her. He goes with her to her rental car, when he hears the engine on a black van start in the hotel parking lot.
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After Six escaped from the Whitechapel Project, his mysterious comrade-in-arms, Mister Rich, was shot and fell unconscious. In trying to escape from two unknown men in a black van, Six ended up outside an emergency room before facing down two police officers and being stunned with a taser shotgun shell. After lying unconscious for three days, he awoke in a hotel room under an assumed name – M. John Druitt. A quick Internet search combined with the events of recent days pointed him to a startling conclusion: he is the most notorious serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper. He starts to leave the hotel in a panic when he notices someone watching him.
What do I do now?
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