As of tonight, this has gone through at least three introductions -- I think that's a record. Anyway. What you need to know follows.
Due to the nature of this novel (it was mainly written over the course of two novel-writing months), there are a few extremely boring chapters. While I do give you a licence to skim them, I really do think that all of the chapters are an important part of the whole novel, and that you'll be missing out if you skip the boring parts. (Egregious word-padding is excused. There's some that's downright heinous.)
If you've ever experienced a Russian novel (especially Dostoevsky or Tolstoy), the style of the novel at large will be a familiar one to you. It's long. Characters introduced seemingly at random later have important parts. The chapters are gigantic.
As the reader, I think you deserve to be warned of what lies ahead. Besides the Work-Safe boring pretentiousness mentioned above, I warn you of the following:
Slash.
An absence of Fax. (Although they're married, they're just about two hundred years old, which means no raunchy sex or fluff. However, there is some egregious fluff involving other couples ahead. And no raunchy sex, unless, for some reason, I really needed padding that day.)
Glorious, glorious Narm and/or wangst at certain points.
Rape.
Violence (intermingled with the aforementioned Narm and wangst). Lots of violence, and lots of profanity.
If you haven't heard me nattering on about this in the past nine months, you may have been living under a rock. But, essentially, this is a story about a girl living in a world where Maximum Ride rules, and how she and her buddies accidentally start a revolution. (Part two is, of course, the revolution. Said part two is still in the "make up a plot" phase.)
As far as canon goes, here's the rough timeline:
The books (of which I'm counting only the first three as canon) take place in 2004 and 2005. Mass executions and trials of School and Itex employees occur in 2008. The book picks up in roughly 2206, with some events occurring before that year.
I would now like to thank the people who've made this possible.
Some of them, I've forgotten their names -- but I know that I called on the Fireplace's denizens for help once, and so I have to credit you guys, as well as whichever posters on the NaNo forums were nice enough to answer my bizarre questions.
By name, I'd also like to thank, not the Academy, but Maiyri, carino, mergirl007, and the other Maximum Ride writers in our tiny sub-community who've been kind enough to keep me going, even when I lost sight of where the hell I was going in the first place.
And, as always, many thanks to my real-life friends, especially Saphira112 and Doometh (as they're known on here), who have been absolutely indispensable to me, even when I wasn't working on this.
As far as disclaimers and permissions go, I am playing in James Patterson's sandbox here, though I have taken many, many liberties with it. Archive if you want to. If you like the 'verse enough to want to fic for it, go ahead. Please, credit me, though.
Updates roughly once a week, though I have many, many pages already written.
You may also find it helpful to have a list of important characters. I recommend a notecard...
