READER'S MANUAL

If you skip this, it's gonna be like jumpin' in the pacific widout ch'o floaties on.

You can try, but it's a long way down.

This story is supposed to be "suspense" not "convince everyone I'm sitting here shooting speed." The last thing I want to do is scare (all what? Four?) of my readers away. (Beautiful, kind, fabulous, wonderful, gorgeous readers.) As you can see, ahm. Since I'm not shouting a pairing five times a day like a muezzin in this Mecca for 'shippers,' I'm not expecting a large and loyal crowd. But I would like a small and thoughtful one. And I have the beginnings, if I can earn and hold their interest. The trouble is I get so excited about the story I get carried off in plot and detail and never realize no one else knows what the hell is going on. So here's my revised press junket shindig, your Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook:

This is Leroux based, right? Got it? Now we are going to take a sharp left, with me? I despise the term 'reincarnation' but I think you get the idea better. 'Reincarnation' is something done over and over on this site and the very word makes my teeth grind. I prefer the expression 'history repeating,' and even that's only half the cigar. So I should say right away that Erik is the exception to this 'reincarnation' business. Erik never died in the first place, so that would be a little tricky you see. Christine died still waiting for the day when l'Époque read 'Erik is dead.' (Is that Kay? Oh, I hope that's not Kay. She has been creeping into my story long before I ever got my hands on her book!) So that's not Leroux-like, but it's part of my story. 'The house that Garnier built' is just a play on 'the house that Jack built', which goes along with the idea of things going around and around.

So this seems like a good spot for my anti-disclaimer.

It goes like this: Leroux is deceased and up until his terminal breath maintained that Erik was a living breathing human being who walked our earth and that everything in his book actually happened. (Give or take. Leroux was a yellow journalist, and from annotated editions of his book it is noted that yellow journalists were known for—in days before anything faster than a telegraph—fabricating stories. The specific recount, I believe is something along the lines of: a foreign correspondent journalist slept through his train stop and so made up a story about a fallacious war. The story got to the embassy in the US, so they fire conflicting reports back and forth with the mother country and there's so much upheaval and confusion that a civil war actually erupts. Now there's something to keep you awake at night, ethics kids, ethics.)

So if anyone is going to sue me they had better be ready to sue a decades-dead yellow journalist too. (Since Leroux insisted that Erik existed (rhyming! Happy days are here again!), that would feasibly negate any possible ownership of Erik. You can't own a human being. You would have to sue on behalf of Erik, accusing Leroux of slander or something, and good luck convincing anyone that Erik did exist in order to do so. If Leroux didn't manage it, what are your chances?) So that's why I'm not putting a disclaimer up here.

Leroux supposedly got his papers from the Persian, right? And some other stuff from talking to Meg (who married somebody like a Marquis (I don't remember exactly). So these are all second person sources and by the time it gets to us…you get the idea right? Imagine it was real, but Leroux didn't have all the pieces. Leroux connected the dots, but the real sensational gothic horror of the story slipped through his fingers. Leroux got most of it, but on some points he was 'Mistaken.' Get it?

This idea of being mistaken will carry through the whole story.

We know Erik vs. society and we know Erik vs. Raoul, but we don't know Erik vs. supernatural. We couldn't know because even Erik didn't realize what he was going against until the whole thing collapsed!

I'll translate the small amounts of less than obvious French in this story, for the most part if it looks like it could be the same meaning or roots in English, it is.

There are some people that are going to seem familiar but have different names. Don't be too afraid to assume you know who they are. I'm here to keep you guessing, but only to a point.

There are a sparse few original characters so…

Maxwell is my snafu-ed subconscious's literal translation of where in chapter one the trio goes get coffee. I thought, hm, I want another character here, hm, the three of them should go get coffee, hm, the name Maxwell seems to fit. Then thirty minutes later I looked over what I'd written and about died. Max is not from Leroux at all. Maxwell coffee. Not from anywhere but my crazy head.

I've given up and starting calling the nameless guy (who may or may not have been Raoul) 'Ralph.' Gee, who do you think he could be? (That was my witty sarcasm.) I'm editing 'Ralph' into the chapters.

Ralph. Ralph Lauren. God I have issues! Ralph Lauren! How freaking stereotypical of me! This is the coffee thing all over again! Sorry guys, I have a ridiculously literal brain. At times.

Scenes repeat with emphasis on different characters! (I don't use first person, more of a selective omniscient.) They could go:

Scene I

Scene I

Scene II

Scene I …or nearly any other kind of variation. So sometimes they are happening at the same time, sometimes one after the other, and sometimes I throw in a sort of 'flashback.'

Setting is ambiguous present day (just to keep things from getting outdated.)

The catacombs in the old quarries are actually in the 14e arrondissement, l'opéra Garnier is in the 9e. I know this, but you should forget it. Wipe it from your memory. I don't need any one to tell me I'm an américaine stupide who's never been to Paris.

Have I lost anyone?

Oh dear. Everyone. sigh.