Labor Day weekend — summer’s last fling and the perfect time for BBQs, the company of friends, walks in the park, and website redesigns.

The Great Gobblin Remodeling of 2010 is pretty much done. I’m still having a few issues with the new template, but overall I’m pretty happy with the look and functionality — pardon the dust. Now it’s time to get back into the habit of writing and sharing.

A very hearty thanks to Jeff Stokely for creating the new gobblin banner. Jeff is an amazingly talented artist who was picked to illustrate the lead story in the very first issue of Fraggle Rock. I can’t wait to see where his work shows up next.

One other site change of note – I’m using a Creative Commons license for my writing here. Why? Right now it doesn’t matter much, but soon I’ll be putting up some short fiction and I would love for the stories to be shared by anyone who feels inclined to do so. (That said, even though I’m fine with my original stories and essays being shared, that does not include Return to Labyrinth, which is always © the Jim Henson Company).

In other news, I just started a new contract gig which is always exciting when you’re a ronin writer. I’m really excited by the project and will hopefully be able to talk about it soon.

I know I’m a bit behind on the promised site relaunch, but it’s almost ready. A good labor day project, yes? The new banner art is almost ready, and I’m so excited to share it. No more free wordpress templets with Jareth slapped on top, nosiree. It’s time to class this joint up, from the banner down.  New fiction, comics and commentary are coming soon. Stay tuned!

Now that the fourth volume of Return to Labyrinth is out in the world, bringing the series to an end, you might be wondering what’s next for the series and for gobblin.net.

I’ll start with Return to Labyrinth, as that’s the easiest question to answer. With volume 4, the series is concluded. There definitely won’t be a volume 5. Whether or not there will be a continuation of any stories established here is entirely up to the Jim Henson Company. So is that it, then? Nothing more to say on the books? Not exactly.

If it were up to me, I’d love to see the books bound up in a 1 volume edition. After all, it’s a lot easier to keep it in stock at stores and libraries if there’s only one book to keep track of instead of 4 sequential volumes. In the event that that happens, I would love an opportunity to add back in a few “deleted scenes,” such as the musical number with the Tessellation Lizards, the “Second Door” from the penultimate chapter of volume 4, and the afore mentioned croquet scene that better established Moulin and Drumlin early on. I’ve got a stack of errors that slipped through, such as switched dialog balloons, sloppy sentences, inconsistencies, and a few oddball things like Sarah’s hair mysteriously going white in vol. 4 (if you were confused by that, I can assure you, I was too!) Maybe see about a new piece of cover art or other color illustrations too.

Will that happen? I don’t know. But I’ll keep you posted.

Now onto the website. For the past 3 years, I’ve run gobblin.net mostly as a Return to Labyrinth community site. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who’s visited, engaged, and contributed to some great discussions. Absolutely, I intend to keep blogging here, but Labyrinth will become less and less of a focus.

I’m also going to remove the discussion pages when I revamp the site. I’ll keep commenting until that day, and I’ll try to answer any specific questions that people might have. Why remove those pages? Quite simply, the Labyrinth universe belongs to the Jim Henson Company, and its fans. I consider myself one of the latter, and I did my services for the former, but the intersection of those roles is at an end. For the last three volumes, I’ve been sort of a one-man marketing machine on this series, on my own time and dime, because I believe in it and because I genuinely love to talk about Labyrinth with fellow fans of the film (even if sometimes we disagree in our interpretations). With this series wrapping up, I think it’s time to hang up my hat as a Labyrinth community manager and focus on talking about new stories.

I sincerely hope that Return to Labyrinth will spark discussion for years to come around the web. If you’re looking for a place to post your reviews, I encourage you to use amazon.com and goodreads. And if you have any questions about the books, you’re always welcome to email me at jakeforbes [at]  gmail [dot] com. I’ll still post about Labyrinth when it’s relevant, and I hope you’ll continue to share your thoughts in the comments. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the only thing I personally consider “canon” in the Labyrinth world is the movie itself, with the novelization, art books and the manga series I wrote being part of an “expanded universe” to take as you will. That said, I’ll be thrilled if I come upon fan-fics or art featuring Moppet, Moulin, Skub or other characters that I had a part in creating. Whatever you take away from Return to Labyrinth, I hope you can enjoy it on its own terms without letting it detract from your own dreams.

So, for a few more days at least, business as usual. Just don’t be surprised if you come back to gobblin.net sometime next week and find Jareth missing from the banner. He and the rest of the Labyrinth gang will be in the archives… should you need them.