Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

I started following the Summer Camp stories by Nick Scipio in either 2002 or 2003, intrigued by a prologue before the first chapter that set up the main mystery in the stories - Who is the Wife (of the MC)?, and Who Died? (somebody important to the MC).
It's now 18 or 19 years later and the summer camp stories, as far as I know, have not concluded. Still not revealed are Who is the Wife and Who Died. Last time I looked, real time (18 or 19 years) is moving faster than story time (not sure - it has covered maybe 10 years, more or less, of the MC's life, from high school to sometime in college).
originally, the author promised the complete story would be told in 3 "books". Now he's working on the fifth book and the first four of those are on SOL. I thought I remembered a promise that he'd eventually post Book 5 on SOL - but I've seen no signs that he will (or won't) do so.
The question: How patient are you for an author to finish the story arc set out from the beginning? Is 18 or 19 years just about right, or should it take 25 years or more?

Some of your answers may be found here:

Nereids

A story in Nick Scipio's Summer Camp Universe

Jack MacLean is happy with married life, but it's the Swinging Sixties and he wants more. His wife does too, and they have their eye on her new friend, Beth Hughes. But Jack and Beth's husband will soon be fighting a war in the skies over Vietnam. When they return, everything will change. (A Summer Camp prequel.)

[More Info]

Tags: Ma/Fa, Fa/Fa, Mult, Consensual, Heterosexual, Oral Sex, Masturbation, Pregnancy, Slow, Nudism

Sex Contents: Much Sex

Posted: 10/17/2006, 12:44:05 PM Concluded: 12/25/2006, 12:13:42 AM 679 KB 47256 475 8.54

https://storiesonline.net/s/50174/nereids

https://storiesonline.net/a/Nick_Scipio

I lost Interest in the series a long time ago.

He has more of the story up on Patreon or something similar, so you can pay to read it. I would be less vague if I had actually any interest in taking those steps. If you went to his own site you could presumably find it.
I think this has been discussed in the Forum before but can't find exactly where.

How patient are you for an author to finish

If you think the story has enough value to wait then wait. Otherwise, don't.

I find that my interests change over the years. I read the first 3 books of Summer Camp and enjoyed them but I don't think I will read the rest. That is, if my interests don't change again from my current SF focus.
I think time is a major issue for very long running stories because almost everybody experiences changes in their reading tastes. So some readers will drop the story but others might find the same story suddenly more interesting then they did a few years back.
For me Summer Camp has another problem and that is the provided images of the characters in the story. The images totally clash with the far better images I formed in my mind when reading the story and I wish I had never seen them. Even worse, the images don't support the story because they are in no way related to any of the situations in the story.
SpacerX did it right with his excellent drawings that closely depict what he described in the story.
I feel it's good advice to authors that if you are going to provide images of characters to always first choose an image and then describe that image in your story to avoid describing a beautiful woman and then provide a picture that doesn't even come close to pretty.