Although Thomas is undertaking his PhD, it appears that this is not impacting negatively on writing the current Dooven book. Certainly, scientific writing differs from creative writing, but both require succinctness in different ways, and writing scientific papers, which ought to be devoid of narrative voice, is made easier when there's been some practice in writing creatively. Despite their different styles, practicing one benefits the other, as academic writing contrasts with and highlights the voice-laden creative, and vice versa. This change also means that writing the Dooven books no longer occurs via extended periods of writing, as occurred with the first three titles, but instead via bitesize chunks. Thomas feels that this has permitted an exciting new distillation of Doovenism, rather than any truncation.
The necessity of dividing writing time between research and books has resulted in an unexpected symbiotic writing experience. Initial concerns that writing one would be done at the expense of the other have not arisen. Indeed, writing a book and writing a thesis, while apparently antitheses, are very much extensions of the same because one helps clarifies the other, which can only result in better examples of both. Moreover, writing about forensic odontology and photonics permits some respite from Oscar's exotic globetrotting, which Thomas has described as "a bit like taking a holiday from a holiday."
While Thomas admits that an underlying shadow of guilt permeates during his episodes of writing; that is, while focussing on one he is aware of neglecting the other, it is completely overshadowed by the crippling version he struggles with daily in relation to losing overdue library books, an inability to wear fashionable trousers, and inadvertent manslaughter, all of which will make their public debut in the third Wrong Book, Spying Blindly, that will be written once the Dooven Morigan Trilogy and PhD thesis are completed.
In the meantime, look forward to some remarkable Polyauthoric Dooven material, including the 5th Dooven Album, a Morigan-related Extractionist Art exhibition, and the sort of promotional material that rivals the effectiveness of earlier examples in nihilistic Europe during the middle of the last century.