Kevin Lawver, the AOL developer behind the amazing short collaborative fiction site Ficlets, has taken a position with another company after 13 years at AOL. I learned about it first in a tweet earlier this morning. That was followed not long after by a subsequent blog post on Ficlets.

Kevin built an absolutely amazing site in Ficlets, one that I wish I had more time to play around with. It’s funny, actually, how every time I go to the site with the intent to write a ficlet, I instead end up wasting the better part of an hour simply reading the fantastic content the site’s dedicated community has created. It’s a bit unfair to say I “waste” time there — no amount of minutes or hours are enough to soak in the wonderful contributions there.

I’m really eager to see what the future holds for Kevin. From what time I have been able to spend playing around with Ficlets, I can tell he’s a hugely talented Rails developer. He’s gotten an opportunity to lead a team with a small company to build Rails apps, and I wish him the best. I only hope that Ficlets is allowed to continue in his absence.

So, congratulations, Kevin! I will be watching your Twitter stream in earnest to see where you land.