That's a good point, treating each story as a vignette of a much larger 'verse than trying to cram the entire 'verse into a story would keep the punchiness and the impact factor high.

I just finished reading a truly awful TV tie-in novel and one of the things I said to a friend about it was that it was obvious the writer had done a lot of research on his topic but by putting in every single piece of information he'd found it became dull. "Dude, it's not an exam, you don't need to show your working!" may have been the words that left my mouth... *g*

Then I think about stories like Crimson Regret, which was born from a single scene that I could not get out of my head (which hasn't appeared yet) but by writing the character development to get to that scene, I've ended up with a far richer 'verse than I thought I would. (Same with Final Straw as well.)

*flails*

I should just write and stop worrying about it really, shouldn't I?

Thank you!