I have a tendency to assume that other people are privy to my internal dialog - that everyone must know what I've already thrashed out inside my mind. It leads to complications naturally, and it's not helped by the fact that I often feel I'm stating the obvious so I don't spell things out. Maybe I need to say out loud why I started this blog, and exactly why I'm unsure what to do now.

When I began writing, Kirk had been missing for two and a half years. I had no feeling that the investigation was going anywhere, no way of knowing if the situation would ever be resolved. I also realized that there was a sort of power in the hands of the CID (people who, by the way, had treated me with enormous respect and care) who could re-write Kirk's entire life and character with their conclusion.

It's hard to articulate this properly. I was trained as a historian, and part of that training is learning that everyone who writes history or participates in it (through interview, diary - whatever) brings a bias, and that bias changes how history is remembered. Sometimes that effect is very small, but sometimes one person or group has enormous power, and can write history in their own vision.

I realized that the CID had that chance. They could, with their conclusion, decide not only what had happened to Kirk (and how could I say they were wrong?) but who he was, what he was thinking, why he did what he did.

So I began to write some of Kirk's story. I can't write it really, and I think that's obvious because of all the times I've had to say "I don't know exactly what happened..." or "Kirk couldn't tell me..." But I could write about the Kirk I knew.

I made the choice right from the start to keep my name, and the names of other people out of it. It was, basically, a love letter to Kirk, and all the rest of us are supporting cast.

Finding the moment to end isn't easy. I'm selfish - I didn't want to end with Kirk's disappearance because I didn't want that to define him. But I know that's not really the end of the story, and I do realize that there are other things that could be told.

So now I'm not sure what happens next. I've finished what I set out to do. I certainly haven't written all of it, but the narrative has come to an end point. Obviously the story goes on, obviously there is a great deal more that happened, but it happened once Kirk dropped out of the story, and it's hard to know what to do when the hero leaves the stage. I was always comfortable with Kirk as the star of the show - I'm not at all happy about stepping into that role myself.

I have to decide if there's a valid reason to go on. I need to figure out why I would tell what happened next, and I need to believe that this is the right medium to do it in.