"I had a hard time getting decent feedback from my student," Jiraiya stated with a bit of annoyance, but he was still amused--so he was winning for the moment. "Eventually I gave up after he'd only claim it was 'boring as hell' all the time. Kid doesn't know a good book when it bites him in the ass."

"As for the wait for the next one..." Jiraiya leaned back a bit more, uncrossing his arm with a twinkle in his eye. "I could use someone that would give me decent feedback on a chapter by chapter basis. Or it could be a selection of short stories, in which case it'd be on a story by story basis. Either way, I'll need someone who knows the series to help me out."

Short stories because he wasn't sure how far the lesbian subplot would go (Naruto better make his next meeting with Sasuke and Aidou interesting!), and because he might have other stories he couldn't tie in together to write about. There was also the issue of the fact that he was, for all technical purposes, dead back in his world. If he was going to have a postmortem release, it'd be more likely if he could write it faster. Writing a series of short stories would put out the most material for a "complete" book.

Jiraiya had cast his line. Now it was time to see if Kakashi would take the bait.

[Sorry about how long it took me to get to this! And YAY, I get to use this icon ICly.]