By Alex Grosset, Arts and Entertainment

12/8/282- Nor Easter’s foremost playwright, Delando, desperately needs a win. After controversies surrounding the use of incendiaries in a play that burned down the Empress Theatre, a subterfuge that involved people of wealth using proxies aboard the ill-fated Heisenberg instead of riding the aircraft themselves, and the complete failure that was the film version of his last play, one would think he’d be bending over backwards to salvage what’s left of his fan base.

And you’d be completely wrong.

“For his next play,” a spokesperson for Delando announced early last week, “Delando will be leaving behind the saga of the ‘Icthylliad’ saga to bring us a new vision, a vision in a world that starkly mirrors our own.”

Mere days after the press release hit papers, fans of Delando’s works took to parks, libraries, and pubs around Nor Easter to rage about the latest announcement.

“How dare Delando leave us hanging in such a way?” said a fan known in Delando circles as Bartolomew Bartlesby Bartlette (after an obscure character who died in the background during the third play only to come back in the tenth to reveal he was the puppet master BEHIND EVERYTHING). “You don’t leave your main character literally hanging from a cliff, about to receive the Elightenment of the 32 Halfweights from the Grand Six of Thelion, for six months only to reveal your next project is something that has nothing to do with said development. I demand satisfaction!”

Clement Aldridge Kene, author of the Gutted Earth series and noted friend/rival of Delando, weighed in on the controversy.

“Delando is not your kept man. He can write whatever he wants, and he’ll eventually circle back around to the ‘Ichtylliad’, for better or for worse. In the meantime, the Gutted Earth series will continue soon, so keep an eye out!”

Fans of Delando and Kene alike responded by holding a public burning of the two writers’ works. Nor Eastern fire marshals were called out to halt the blaze, but not before a few threw their own copies onto the fire.