Jeff Mariotte

The Doyle one-shot issue, called Doyle: It Don’t Come Easy is done and delivered. It’ll be released in May by IDW Publishing. I think the artist will be David Messina, who has illustrated both of my Angel miniseries, but I’m not 100% positive about that.

This means that, to date, I’ve written 11 Angel novels (some of them with Nancy Holder) and 11 Angel comic books. Seems like a good place to stop. I love the show and the characters Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt created, and I could probably come up with more stories (and given the right opportunity, might be tempted to regret these words), but I don’t want to just do Angel stories because I can, or because it’s easy. I’ve always tried to do right by the characters, and have probably been more successful some times than others. I’m afraid that if I keep at it, that ratio might shift, and I don’t want to do this. In many ways—which you’ll understand in May when you can read it—finishing up with this Doyle-oriented issue is a good completion of a circle that began with my first Angel novel, Close to the Ground.

In other follow-up news, I got a phone call from someone at America West, "apologizing" for our inconvenience on the would-be holiday trip we weren’t allowed to take. No real explanation for the stupid policies, no offer of restitution for the so-called "meal vouchers" that could be used at a restaurant that didn’t exist, no effort made to speed up the refund of our ticket prices—simply a worthless apology. Better than nothing, I guess, but just by a whisker.