Well remember that he just came off of 2 stories after Applseed book 5 (Dominion and GITS Man Machine interface) and not to mention the Neurohard project. So it's not like he's not doing any more stories. It's just taking a bit longer to do because of all the smaller projects and illustration jobs that he's had to deal with. He also has to do a lot of consulting with The GITS series, the New GITS movie, the Apple seed movie, and the Orion RPG. I'm just surprised that no one has noticed exactly how busy the guy is. When I talked to Toren Smith a few years back he said that Shirow had enough work to fill About 5 Intron Depot books and that he has absolutly no time to edit them.