Chapter 37 progress

Hi All,

Just a quick note to let you know that chapter 37 is well underway. Hurricane Ike is making us take a brief, unexpected hiatus. Hopefully, we'll be back working on the story within the next week, but please be patient for a while longer since being safe in the storm is much more important.

Christi

UPDATE 9.22.08 - Lynn's power is back up and she emailed me over the weekend saying things are going well for her. She said that she'll be busy for at least a week cleaning up at work from the flooding and getting things back in order. We're both hopeful that the chapter work will resume next week. Thanks for all your thoughts and best wishes during the storm!

Ch. 36 Are Those Stippers?...

...has been posted. Thank you for bearing with us though this huge lag time.

You can read the chapter here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2906941/36/

I'll be coming back to the blog in the next few days to post a couple links to some of the stuff that was mentioned in the chapter. If there are any specific things you have questions about or would like to see links to, let me know!

Greetings

Hi Everyone,

I know that it' been ages since either of us have posted anything, but I swore that I would never post a status update on the blog again after all the downright nasty things that people began leaving us in the comments. However, I began to feel bad about that. So here's the deal. I am posting this message and have changed the access to who is allowed to post a comment - anonymous users can no longer post. If the comments still get mean, I'll stop giving updates on new chapters in progress. To those of you who wrote encouraging words and sent us private messages or reviews - THANK YOU! I tried to respond to most of you, but if I missed you, I'm really sorry!

We both apologize for the huge lag time in the update, but you all have to understand that our jobs (aka. making money to live) is a bit more important that writing something that we get nothing from (besides enjoyment) so when we have to work weekends instead of writing or editing, so be it. However, we've recently gotten into a much better pattern of writing and hope that after this chapter, the rest will follow along shortly (closer to the lag between updates that you expected in the past). I know chapter 37 is one of the chapters we're most looking forward too so that should give you some hope that after 36, the next is coming quickly.

GG ending ~ status of TGOL

In response to some comments we've gotten...

As of now, I'm sure everyone is well aware of the fact that GG is ending and for those who know the spoilers, what's coming up as well. We were asked if the fact that the show is ending will impact the writing of the story.

To set everyone who's not quite ready to let go, we are continuing with the story as long as people are willing to read it and we're having fun with it. We've been expecting the show to end for quite some time among other things that may happen, and we've been living in our nice little fantasy world of Rogan happiness for a while. So you all are welcome to join our fantasy world after the show ends (or before, like we've been doing).

To improve your spirits...we'd like to know what you all would like to see on the list Logan was working on of things he wants Rory to do. Based on all the positive feedback we've gotten from it, we're curious about your ideas. Some ideas we have include:

• driving faster than 100 mph
• sending dirty messages while at work
• watching the first season of 24 in one day

So, you see the ideas we've had. Now, we aren't promising all things will happen, but we're interested in extending the list. We think it would be fun to use references from the list throughout the fic, and we need more ideas to make it work. The things don't have to be about sex, it can be something simple you just don't think Rory would do. But, we welcome ideas for sex as well.

Ch. 34 - Tiffany's lamp

Ch. 34 - Freedom Tower link

In case you haven't seen the Freedom Tower design, you can see it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Tower

Ch. 33 - baby shopping

So, some of the stuff is pretty random that they shopped for, but we found the cutest stuffed animals so we wanted to show them to you...

Ch. 33 - other wedding party gifts (bag, tie clip, pashmina)

Ch. 33 - cigar humidors

Ch. 33 - Shira's wedding jewelry

Ch. 33 - Lorelai's wedding jewelry

Ch. 33 - Bridesmaid's jewelry

Lane

Honor

Steph

Paris

earrings for all of the girls

Ch. 32 - links

Here are links to the yacht and Morgan Museum and Library that were mentioned in the chapter. Yes, Finn's yacht is based off a real yacht but we elaborated a bit on the specifications since some of the stuff wasn't totally clear.

The yacht - http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1657843/0

The Morgan Museum and Library - http://www.morganlibrary.org/

If you notice either of these links not working, let us know and we'll try to figure out another way to get you the info (especially the yacht since I'm guessing they'll remove the page when someone buys it...)

Response to discussion posts

Dear Readers,

First, like I said in the chapter, when Christi started as my beta, we began talking about the story and where we wanted it to end, the first thing we agreed on is that stopping with the wedding was way too cliché. So while I won't say where it's ending, I promise it's not with the wedding.

Second, someone was worried that we would change what we have planned based on your suggestions. In a way, we will, but in another, we won't. Your suggestions for major plot events (such as if someone says 'please kill off Logan,' of course we wouldn't) will only be considered if that's the way we were going to begin with. We have decided on an outline for the fic, with major events laid out, so those won't be changing without a lot of thought. Like if someone says something should happen a certain way and we already have that happening a different way, we may consider changing if the suggestion is better. That being said, there are a lot of smaller things we haven't decided, for example some future chapters all we have written for a scene is 'show Rory/Logan at work,' but beyond that haven't thought much about what that scene will entail.

My point is to thank you for all the ideas you posted because they were what we were looking for, but also if you ever have more ideas in the future send us a PM/email/post and let us know. It can be anything: something you want to see happen, a topic you want to see discussed (even if it seems random), something that seems unanswered, or an explanation you were confused by, let us know because those are things we can add in. I also know some people asked to see more of certain characters (besides the main 6) and that's something else we keep that in mind when looking at unplanned scenes. To give you an example, Christi was watching Attach of the Clones during the writing of Ch. 30 and suggested a Yoda reference as a way to get away from the wedding planning discussion. So something seemingly random could in fact be just what we're looking for.

~ Lynn

Ch. 30 - Shira's dress

Shira's black dress option

Shira's red dress option

Ch. 30 - Lorelai's dress

Lorelai's dress

Lorelai's joke dress

Ch. 30 - Emily's dress

Emily's dress

Ch. 30 - wedding invitations

final invitation choice

Emily's suggestion

Shira's suggestion

Lorelai's choice

Discussion part deux

You all gave us some great ideas when we asked for feedback. As a follow up to that, we have two questions for now. We'll probably have more later - can't ask too many at once anyways.

1. Someone mentioned wanting to see the town meeting where Logan was interrogated to see if he was suitable for Rory (it was mentioned in Ch. 5). Do any of you have ideas for questions the town could ask Logan during the interrogation. It seems like a good idea to add, but we can't come up with that many good questions.
2. Another person mentioned that they missed Rory and Logan having random conversations and banter like we had earlier in the story. Does anyone have a topic you think would be interesting for them to discuss in length? I mean we had Rory and Finn discusss central american politics randomly so really anything you'd be interesting in seeing would be appreciated.

Thanks for all your help. You'd be surprised how much feedback helps. Sometimes you make a suggestion and we read it and it sparks a thought from one of us that makes it in the story even.

Discussion

I thought I'd ask a few questions and get some of your opinions on the story. If you'd prefer that I set up a discussion forum at fanfiction, I can try that, but I thought this may give you a way to relay thoughts....

1. What is the one thing you are most looking forward to in the story (ie. the wedding, more coworker reaction, etc.) How can we make that be everything you are looking forward to?

2. Is there anything that you think we can improve upon in the story to make it more enjoyable. If there is, please explain what we can do to make it better - if you aren't sure about how to fix it, that's okay - it's just giving a suggestion to fix a problem usually makes it easier to figure out how to do so.

3. What is your favorite thing about the story? Least favorite thing? Or what do you want to see happen? Not see happen? (kinda an opportunity to vent about anything here)

4. We are discussing a sequel for when this eventually finishes. I know there was a short conversation about what that would entail in one of the response discussions but I'm not sure everyone reads the responses...So, what are your thoughts on that. What should it include? What would you like to see happen? How far in the future should it start? End?
Saying that, I'd like to clarify that we do have this story completely outlined as to the main events. So if you were to say a sequel should start at an event that actually is in this story, that won't work, but we're trying to think of ideas. And saying something may even help us round out the last half of this story.

Ok, I think that's all I can think to ask. Really, the questions are a guide of some things we were wondering about. Thoughts/opinions/whatever can be mentioned :)

Christi

Ch. 29 - The Boys' Wealth

A few people had questions about the wealth of the guys, but I figured many more people were wondering so I decided to post the answer here. When we started talking to decide how much they would all be worth, there wasn’t much to go on from the show as a point of reference (you know the Huntzbergers own a lot of papers, but you don’t know how much they’re worth) and you have no idea what Colin or Finn’s family do.

For the Huntzberger’s, we decided they own 37 newspapers: 17 in the Eastern US, 12 in the western US, 5 in Canada, and 3 in England. Of these papers only 3 are more major paper (New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Raleigh News and Observer), 13 are smaller daily papers (i.e. Stamford Gazette) and 11 are weekly papers (i.e. New York Observer). Finn’s family owns hotels and a small Australian cruise line from his father’s side. We then decided that Finn’s mom was going to be from a wealthy family, and that her family has a successful vineyard. Colin’s family is an older family that had money passed on through generations, and his dad is a partner in a larger law firm.

That being set, the general trend (I gauged this off of numbers from “Americas Wealthiest People” at Forbes) is that there is a lot more money in the tourism industry than the newspaper industry. The only other thing we had to go off of was their behavior and what that means about how much money each one has. Although Colin seems to be the most concerned about money, that doesn’t mean he has the most. In our personal experience, the people who care the least about money, many times have the most (i.e. Finn). Looking at their behavior this way would put them in the same order as it did when we looked at where their money came from: Finn, Logan, Colin. Before we even talked about this, we both had this train of thought, and had put the boys’ wealth in this same order in our minds. So based on all of this, we went with it. We’re not saying that other possibilities don’t exist, just wanted to explain, to those who were curious, how we arrived at this conclusion.

Requests

As of now, I think I'm caught up with images on the blog up through Ch. 29. If there are particular images that are not here from the earlier chapters that you would like to see, let me know cause if I don't have it up now, I likely forgot it was needed...

From now on, images will go up for chapters the same time as the posts. So in the future, if a chapter goes up and you would like to see images, let me know. Sometime we forget when there are things to show!

Christi

Ch. 29 - Steph's dress and jewelry

Steph's dress

Steph's dress detail

Steph's necklace

Steph's earrings

Ch. 29 - Rory's dress and jewelry

Rory's dress

Rory's dress detail

Rory's necklace

Rory's earrings

Ch. 29 - Bri's dress and jewelry

Bri's dress

Bri's dress detail

Necklace Finn gives Bri

Matching Earrings

Ch. 27 - Kumquat Test

In case you weren't sure where 'Kumquat Test' came from...It comes from a reference to the fact that Lorelai made in season 5. She said the only time she ever craved fruit was when she was pregnant with Rory. Moving that reference to this chapter, Lorelai assumed that if Rory were pregnant, she would also crave fruit. Thus, the 'kumquat test' to see if Rory was pregnant. Hope that clears up confusion if there was any.

Ch. 26 - Lingerie (each girl's personal choice)

Steph

Bri

Lane

Paris

Honor