> Thank you, Sharon, for the explanation(s).
> I was impressed with the numbers. I guess I feel
> alone in pursuing all the characters at this site.
> I wish it was somehow more interactive between writers
> and readers.

Yeah, me too. That's what this message board was designed for, although it hasn't really worked out that way. I really don't know why readers don't respond more to the writers. Some suggest it is because they don't want to cross that line from readers to writers. But we do have fans out there--we got the site up late one week about 7 months ago and we got several angry letters. At first we were upset, but then we realized that it was fan mail! Some people really do care, even if they stay hidden behind their browsers.

Andrew told me that one woman sent him a horrible murder story from a Florida Newspaper as a possible suggestion for Joseph Mazurka. And Dr. Balis got an angry letter from a woman who chided him for being too stupid to realize that Sylvia was trying to get pregnant.

But you guys are writers--how many of you have written fan messages to other authors on other sites for work you liked? I don't think readers have really internalized this ability to talk back to the writers yet. We've all been weaned on books and magazines--this interactive stuff is new.

I must say that, although I consider myself as geeky as the next guy, I haven't written an e-mail to the author of some newspaper or magazine piece, even when they list their e-mail address at the end of their byline.

> The idea of "collaborative hyperdrama"
> intrigued me from the start. At first I thought
> readers could stir things up for the characters
> too, and help influence the course of their lives.
> I guess that happens behind the scenes on writers'
> own web pages.

The commitment of time, energy, and talent that it requires to create and sustain a patient is substantial. So only a few people will be willing to interact at that level with the site. It would be nice to be able to allow more casual contributors to be able to contribute as well, but we haven't figured out a way to make that work within The Company Therapist's structure. We have developed other ideas for collaborative writing ventures, however, that would allow for paragraph-sized contributions. We're just waiting on sponsorship or funding.

> Are there any authors here who have taken a
> reader's suggestion and built it into a session?
> Do writers get much response from their fans?

It's not enough! We all need self-affirmation and it's slow in coming from the readers. However, I think of the awards that The Company Therapist has won as really belonging to the authors. There are a lot of people out there who think we're doing something special here.

Oh, I forgot to mention that The Company Therapist is a semi-finalist in the GII Awards (Global Information Infrastructure). It's a big deal. We're one of 67 in two different categories (Arts & Entertainment, Education). The competition is daunting: ABCNews.com, Comedy Central, MIT, Harvard Medical School, ATT and similar biggies. If we get into the finals, we're counting it as a win!

And we just heard that The Company Therapist will have almost a page in New Media Magazine, hitting the newsstands on February 10th. We haven't read it, so...