User blog:Pepoluan/Intro to my new story, "Lazarus Cell: The Series"

Well well well... what do you know, I'm about to publish a new Mass Relay fanfiction, yay!

HOWEVER, at the moment this blog entry is published, the story's not published yet. But I decided to write an intro to whet your appetite ;)

( I have not given any link to the actual story, because it's not published yet. As soon as it's published, I'll edit this blog entry and give the proper link to the actual story )

Here goes...

Lazarus Cell —— –– The Series

Preface
Hello! This is the start of my new story, "Lazarus Cell: The Series". Before I start with the story proper, I figure it'll be best to give people a kind of introduction to this story first.

But, before that, greetz to those who've reviewed, followed, and faved my stories! I love you guys! You are the reason why I decided to go full-bore with this one. I can't even begin to describe my gratitude at your motivating messages! My apologies for not being able to thank you individually, for there are so many of you *cries happy tears*.

I also would like to thank my squad of betareaders; they're the ones who have to endure being spoilt, yet fixing my chapters enough to make them presentable. They are (in alphabetical order): Chris000, Coilfoot, Dreamer in Silico, Kaimaler, and quantumparadigm. I love you guys, you're awesome!

Ookay. One reason why I make this Introduction is a very valuable suggestion by an FFnet betareader, Wyl, who told me to pare down on the per-chapter A/N (Author's Note). On hindsight, I think he's right. So, rather than putting long and descriptive A/N's on each chapter, I'm going to place important information here.

The Story's Extended Summary
This story is about the adventures of Shepard & friends as they prepare for the coming of the Reapers, with a twist: They are now Cerberus Operatives, part of an expanded Lazarus Cell (you'll understand when you've read Season 1 Episode 01).

The Lazarus Cell's mission has evolved – again. Originally meant to revive Shepard, it had evolved to stopping the Collectors, and now evolved again to facing the Reapers. You'll see the crew figuratively breaking their backs to knock some sense into the collective head of the galaxy.

And along the way, they will face great adversaries: The incumbent Council and the mighty Alliance, all hell-bent on suppressing 'speculations' about the Reapers and destroying Cerberus. You'll also see many allies. Both the expected ones, and even some totally unexpected ones.

As you should already be able to guess, there will be *lots* of action this time around; a significant departure from my previously published stories. Here's to wishing I can write those actions well! :D

There will be a whole lotta OCs here, new places, imagined places, new techs... and of course: Lots of 'shipping'! :D ... To find out who 'ships' with who, keep reading this Intro; you'll find out somewhere here ;)

Story Format
This story will be written differently from my other stories: this story will not be a loooooong continuous story from beginning to end; instead, this story will be episodic: each chapter will be a story unto itself. Unless there's an epic episode that needs to be split into two chapters. Kind of like a TV Series, that's why the title has "The Series" in it.

Of course, like a good TV Series ("X-Files" and "Lost" come to mind), this story *will* have an overarching 'story arc', which in this case is Shepard et al's preparations to face the Reapers. This means that you can't just jump to a certain episode and expect to understand the story; you must still read the story from its beginning ;)

And again borrowing from the TV tropes, I've decided to write my stories... in Cold Open style! Yeah, I know that's kind of pointless for a text fiction, but... it'll make my story unique! :D ... And considering how lengthy each chapter will be, I *do* hope such a teaser will pique the reader's curiosity enough to reduce their dread of reading 10'000 words at a go :)

Update Schedule
Now, because of the length of each chapter, in addition to some workloads in Real Life™, I can't promise frequent updates like my other stories.

Furthermore, again due to the size of the chapters, I must now employ betareaders. This adds more delay between chapter updates as the chapter goes back and forth between me and my betareaders.

All in all, I guess the story will be updatable once every 2 weeks. But no promises. I can, however, promise a delay of no more than 3 weeks between chapters.

Author's Notes and Discussions
Also due to the length of the chapters, I may no longer be able to explain things satisfactorily in the post-chapter Author's Notes. So, for such explanations - and general discussions - I'll be relying on my blog at the Mass Effect Wikia, which is *this* blog :)

The beauty of a wiki-based blog is that you *don't* have to register to leave a comment (although, by registering, you can opt to be alerted when there's a new comment/reply). If you don't register and/or don't login, I will appreciate it if you'll kind-of sign your comments here, so that I will be able to respond properly.

I'll explain important points using the footnote [#] system I've starting to use in the last chapters of "Explanations and Excuses" and "Last Rites".

Still, feel free to leave a review for each chapter, though. Those reviews give me great motivation! I promise I'll try my best to answer each and every one of them :)

Relation to My Other Stories
This story is part of my 'faniverse', Survival - At All Cost, which comprises several stories, the list of which you can see in my profile page at Fanfiction.net. All stories in this faniverse are related, and some 'fanon' facts (of my faniverse) are established between them.

In particular, this story can be considered a sequel to Explanations and Excuses, starting Chapter 17.

If you want to get a complete backdrop/background of this story, I recommend you to read my stories this way (links go directly to the mentioned chapter):
 * Explanations and Excuses, Ch. 1 to 8 (midway)
 * Gardner's Sonata (all chapters)
 * Explanations and Excuses, Ch. 8 (midway) to 12
 * Last Rites (all chapters)
 * Explanations and Excuses, Ch. 13 to 17
 * Lazarus Cell: The Series

(Note: That doesn't mean E&E ends at Ch. 17, only that this story continues that chapter. More chapters of E&E are in the works)

Character Background & Choices
To help you understand how the story unfolds, here I put in some background on Theodore Julius Shepard (that's the full name of my Shepard -- thanks to those who voted! Yay!)


 * Background: Spacer, Sole Survivor


 * ME1 decisions: Rachni queen is spared, Wrex survived, Kaiden died, The Council is not saved, Udina is the human councillor, Multi-race new council is led by humans


 * ME2 loyalties: Sidonis stays alive, Tali is not exiled (Kal'Reegar and Veetor'Nara rose to her defense), Aresh stays alive, Joram Talid stays alive, Morinth died, Daniel survived, Maelon's work is not destroyed, The Thresher Maw died, Vido Santiago escaped, Miranda talked with Oriana, Geth heretics are reprogrammed instead of destroyed


 * ME2 assignments: David stays with Cerberus


 * ME2 Suicide Mission: All crew survived, The Collector Base is saved, All squad survived


 * Post-ME2: Shepard joins Cerberus

And in the Romance Dept, the following things had happened:
 * No ME1 Love Interest (will be explained in a future episode)
 * Shepard goes steady with Miranda
 * Garrus goes steady with Tali
 * Joker goes steady with Kelly
 * Kasumi *wants* to go steady with Jacob
 * Zaeed and Jack are, uh, 'entangled'

A Helpful Tip
Finally, let me give you a tip on how to read all stories on FFnet comfortably: Limit the story's width to 600 pixels. For the instructions on *how* to do that, please check out this page: pepoluan's tip on limiting FanFiction.net's story width.

Tools
I felt obliged to thank the following non-persons:
 * BrainyQuote and ThinkExist, for the sources of quotes I use
 * Mass Effect Wiki, for canon guidance
 * Nokia E72-1 and QuickOffice, the first is my smartphone, and the second is the app built-into my smartphone. With these two, I've written more than 80'000 words, not including replies to reviews and PMs
 * Last, but not least, FanFiction.net, for hosting my story and letting me get in touch with my readers and my betareaders.

... and In Conclusion ...
Whoa! This be one whuppin' huge Author's Note already!

So, strap yerself in folks... On with the story! :D

(after it's betaread, of course)