I've posted another part of Bike which I hope will please the addicts and possibly encourage some new readers to try it insofar as the episode is in a way self contained and has a complete story in it.

The last two weeks have been difficult and I came to a hair's breath of leaving this site for good. In some ways that would have been useful as my time is very full and the extra hours it would have released would have been useful for giving to my studies. I'd given in to the digs and snipes made by several commenters over several months and decided I didn't need the aggro. I give my work here because I'm aware some of my readers would be pushed to pay for it, and like most other authors here, the only reward I seek is a kudo or a comment or PM, the latter especially if I've made a mistake in a fact or spelling - though I have one or two friends who check that for me and do minor corrections.

On average it takes me between one and two hours to knock out an episode of Bike, longer for my other stories, which means I've given this site over 6,000 hours of my time and at one time was responsible for producing 10% of the material posted here. I know that's nothing compared to Erin or even Sephy but it's quite a bit. Most of my detractors would be far less than this. On the positive side I probably have ten times the kudos of most other authors, but when you're hurting and angry, they don't count very much.

I've watched the discussion about my absence and several times was tempted to join in, but I couldn't until I'd decided what I was going to do. I was pleasantly surprised that those who wrote encouraging me to stay weren't always fellow authors I'd have expected to support me, so I am genuinely touched by their support. It appeared people were actually missing me. Then I had one or two PMs which indicated that some readers relied on Bike to give them some sort of stability in their sometimes uncertain lives and I began to understand that perhaps my primary role here as an author is to try and understand that my stories occasionally have a function beyond entertaining and possibly informing my readers, for some they seem to help them deal with everyday life, perhaps just by being there, a friend or full of characters they have as virtual friends and whose lives they seem to care about. That as an author is quite scary, it introduces an almost vicarious responsibility we don't usually even think about.

It means that one day when I do stop writing Bike, and let's face it, it will happen one day I'm aware there will be some despondent readers but in keeping it going for over 8 years already, I think I've done quite well. It must be on its way towards 3.5million words if not longer (a quick calculation of 3069 x 1250 words is over 3.8million) and probably a world record for the length of a single story in a tg genre, by some distance.

For the moment, I will keep on writing and posting here as long as I have time to do so. My life is very busy and I am trying to study for a degree as well, so time isn't as free as it might be so episodes of Bike won't be as frequent as they once were as some of my assignments can be quite time consuming. In return I hope not to attract too many negative comments or make too many misunderstood remarks via my characters about countries outside the UK, however, my characters, I hope are lifelike in many ways and we Brits do make wise cracks about other places as well as our own. My characters make political and controversial statements about people and situations because I try to make it contemporary and authentic. As an ecologist, Cathy, is concerned about climate change - it is happening - today's papers show the sea ice at the Arctic is less than usual by some degree, the sea temperatures are above freezing and air temperatures are up to 20C above normal for the time of year. Deniers just point at the Antarctic and declare that seems unaffected, so where's the problem. The problem is the two poles are very different with the ice forming through different mechanisms and even producing different types of ice. Also for the first time in living memory, lakes of water are forming on top of the ice at the Antarctic. Believe me, climate change is real and potentially the biggest catastrophe mankind will have encountered.

So I'm still here to remind you of these sorts of things and I hope to offer some new ones you didn't know before as well as entertaining those who just enjoy the read. I am grateful for those who wrote both publicly and privately to me asking me to stay or pointing out some of my responsibilities to readers who perhaps aren't able to speak for themselves. I'm also grateful to Erin and Sephy and the others who keep this place running against all odds and financial wisdom. Please help to support her by contributing what you can afford when you can, the overheads continue ad infinitum.

Tonight's episode is inspired by JK Rowling who wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts based upon a book that is mentioned in the Harry Potter saga. The Dormouse that Roared is a story mentioned several times in earlier episodes of Bike, tonight you get the real deal, I hope you enjoy.