The First Ninety Days - Working Notes

The FIRST NINETY DAYS
Notes and Acknowledgements

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
| Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 |

The first chapter of this story was published on Friday October 27, 2006. Ninety days later, the final chapter of this story was published on Friday October 24, 2008. In between, I: had a relationship that practically involved engagement, had several jobs, had too many close calls with the girlfriend's parents, had two chapters eaten by computer, stopped the story because my girlfriend asked me to, stopped the story again because we'd broken up, returned to college, learned to have confidence, completely re-released this story on Literotica, and wrote over 200,000 words. Oh, and, was a back-up singer for Kenny Loggins. It's been quite a journey, in other words.

This story is dedicated to the woman who inspired it, the woman who was Caitlyn to me. Though unfortunately our happy ending will never be, I learned a great deal from our relationship and a great deal from our break-up as well. I don't know how things would have turned out if we actually had gotten married (some of the fights in this story are practically verbatim from real life), but I will always cherish the time we shared. Be well, my moon-and-stars, and go find your happy ending. I love you.

A few attributions: Margaret Clarke reads the New American Standard Bible, while Caitlyn uses the New International Version. Caitlyn looks up the definition of "wanton" in the American Heritage Dictionary. And I have an attribution to make as well: the idea Jon suggests in Ch.14, that gods play the role of parents to adults (and, furthermore, that parents play the role of gods to children) was not something I came up with on my own, but rather was mentioned to me by a reader who goes by Dan Upper. I thought it was an interesting idea, so I threw it in the story. Thank you.

Also, people should not go out and look for a package like the one Brandon offers Jon on Day 35. That career—medical assistant—does exist, but the semi-intership program does not; I made that up for story purposes. (I wish such a thing did exist; I could use the job!)

The Eagle-Eye Readers list: Chris McKenna, for a typo in Chapter 3; Bruce, for an error in Day number; SteveH11, for an HTML error on Day 14; an unknown named Dave, who alerted me to a massive formatting error in the StoriesOnline posting; and Andrew, who showed me: 1) an HTML issue in Chapter 1; 2) a missing link in Chapter 3, 3) some HTML typos in Chapter 5, and 4) the same incorrect Day number. But the Grand Prize Winners are Rick in Eureka MO and a reader who simply goes by Q, who together caught about twenty wrong-word sentences over the course of the entire novel. A thousand thanks and a million praises to all of you.