s e a n a c h a i s

Afterword
Writing 'Slideways Leap' was both the best and worst experience of my life. This &*&$#% story woke me up at 5 in the morning and proceeded to consume my thoughts entirely until I got it written down; 225k of story was written in a two-week marathon, where I literally could not eat, sleep or work -- I couldn't do anything but plot and write. Fortunately, I had a lot of friends who were willing to listen to me babble about sideways Leaping, watch Sliders although they had absolutely no interest, supply reasonably realistic technobabble, find me tapes, and generally feed me the ego-boo that kept me going until I finished the %^&*$ story. Lunalibre, in particular, put up with me stalking around her living room plotting out loud for several evenings, which I'm sure was much harder to take than baby Andrew crying at the same time.
No, I have no idea why the angst level escalated so seriously in chapter eight; it just sort of happened that way. Actually, the entire story just sort of happened, outside my conscious control -- be grateful I did *not* toss 'The Pretender' into the mix, as I was seriously tempted to do. I have no idea what Jarod would have been doing wandering around Project Quantum Leap, but I'm sure it would have been damned interesting.
The statue in the park was originally Howard Stern, until I realized it had been done ('The Young and the Relentless'). I was bummed, but I figured Newt was almost as unlikely on any civilized world....
I found myself constantly amused as I wrote with the parallels that kept presenting themselves -- Al's constant frustration with the handlink and the oh-so-frequent breakdowns of the timer; Sam doing extremely Sam things which turn out to also be extremely Quinn things so no one really notices at first; Quinn and Al driving each other crazy by being so mutually impatient with the universe; the bond between Sam and Al and the one between the four sliders. It made writing somewhat less painful than usual -- I kept leaning forward as I typed, waiting to see what they were going to discover in common next. Hope you enjoyed(?) it as much as I did.

Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks go to the keepers and authors of the Quantum Leap FAQs and Ed Hall, keeper of the most-excellent Sliders FAQ, for reminding me of crucial details; to my beta readers David J. Warner, Susan Crites, Natmerc and Me, for the tips and ego-boo; and to Lunalibre, for being my sounding board, remembering the obligatory lech, and figuring out whodunit before the writer did.