Kate Davenport asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Maybe unfair to ask since your books don't fall into this category, but what makes an author abandon a series that has an unfinished through-line? I now have 4 different series I have followed where the author seems to have abandoned them and moved on to other things without wrapping up the larger story. (Example: 18 months between each of the first 14 books. 5 years since the last one, a semi-cliffhanger.)

Lois McMaster Bujold There can be a number of different answers. A series may cease to sell well enough or be dropped by its publisher, in which case the writer may switch to something that seems more salable. Editors jump houses or companies go under, pulling out the support rug. The writer may have health or family issues. The writer may lose interest, in which case squeezing out more would be a sort of mental torture. The writer may have run out of fresh things to say about this particular set of characters or world, and be unwilling or unable to recycle and repeat. Where the story seems to want to go may be a place the writer doesn't wish to follow. The writer may have grown into other interests, so the story doesn't have any powering emotional resonance for them anymore. The zeitgeist may have moved on, leaving the story beached, out of date, too clearly the product of an earlier time. Or any combination of the foregoing.

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