(And the really funny thing is the day after I'd changed my avatar, personal text, and sig, I'd remarked to Midnite and dom that music can be so much more than the lyrics to My Humps (even though I like Fergie/Black Eyed Peas). But it really took Alanis to point out just how lacking those lyrics are. I suppose we should all be eternally grateful.  )

Having "always stay logged in" doesn't add time to a member's time spent online stat because the stat only measures the time actually spent active on the forum. And once one switches tabs in a browser, it's just like you've left the first site for the next. The first site doesn't consider you as being there again until you open its tab again. 

People need to face up to the simple fact that their time spent online stats haven't been padded just because they leave their browsers open to the forum or they have "always stay logged in" activated. Yes, you really have been active on the forum for that period of time. Accept it and embrace it. 

Heather, have you ever read Tales of Hoffman?  It's a novel-like collection of short stories taking one from Julia's childhood to post DS where she's married to Barnabas and fawning over their college age son Ben.  Good reading! 

If you're writing a DS novel in hopes of actually having it published and making a profit from it, then by all means, you'd better keep the characters the way they were originally written, and don't let the plot stray too far from the Collinwood we all know and love.
But if you're writing for the love of it, because you have a story idea you just HAVE to explore, and characters you're dying to bring to life, then write what you damn well please

Personally, if I was to write such a novel, the opening scene would be the one where the Collins family is burying Barnabas at the crossroads of some major intersection in Maine, accompanied by the Rite of Exorcism being intoned by a Cardinal, at the very least.