Frankly, I'd rather not move past the Chair. Despite the recent drought, I have been at writing for a long time - it was my all-consuming raison d'etre from the age of four up until a few years ago - and I think I've finally come to realization that there *is* no moving past the old stories. They are too vital to the shaping of the new ones. I keep my first novel (which I wrote when I was eleven and twelve) and all of its notes in a box under the bed at home. I'm constantly reading it, going through the various notebooks, remembering the actual writing of the chapters. I miss them; they're like old friends, people, as you say. No moving past old friends, no matter how estranged they've become. I by no means think that I've got only one story in me... I've just enjoyed writing The Chair so much that it feels good to go back and linger over it from time to time. :)

As for the woodcuts. The surviving woodcuts of the ancient variety (15th Century) are nearly entirely religious in theme - though he came along a bit later, have you seen Durer's "Apocalypse"? The Gutenberg Press was invented somewhere in the realm of the 1450s, I do believe, but for some reason I tend to think of sacred woodcuts as pre-Gutenberg... This is purely my own conception, and you should therefore disregard much of the line regarding the good ol' days before Gutenberg if you're looking for historical accuracy.

Rambling! In any event. I don't have much to plan. As I have said, this has been in the works for a very long time; I'm not starting from scratch. What I *am* trying to do is find my way around the Holy See website without getting pounced upon by the Pope's letter to Chinese Catholics. =P