Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly/Serenity is long gone, but you can’t stop the signal: Fans can look for more adventures of Capt. Mal Reynolds and the crew of the doughty ship in a series of short stories coming soon from Titan Books.

Writer/producer Jane Espenson—who wrote one episode of the Fox sci-fi series but is a longtime friend and colleague of Whedon’s going back to her days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer—told us that she will be writing one of the stories, centering on the characters of Kaylee and Wash (obviously set in a time period before the events of the movie Serenity).

“I’m writing a short story set in the Firefly universe that someone’s putting together,” Espenson said in an interview on Sunday in Pasadena, Calif., where she was promoting her upcoming Syfy series Caprica. “Titan Books is putting together a collection written by various of the Firefly writers. But [it’s a] very short story, … 2,000 words.

Today, Wizards of the Coast LLC announced a new six-book deal with New York Times best-selling author R.A. Salvatore. Published by Wizards of the Coast, the first book is scheduled to release in 2011 with a new book anticipated to follow once per year after that.

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“I’ve always maintained that I would keep writing Drizzt as long as it was fun and as long as people wanted to read it. Now I understand that this journey with Drizzt is more than just ‘fun’ for me,” says Salvatore. “Writing Drizzt is an exercise of constantly reminding myself to find new trails and adventures in my own life; the character remains fresh to me because there’s always a new turn, sometimes painful, often joyous, always alive.”