Dear Potential Reader,

Hello; if you are clicking on Twenty Months for the first time you are now getting this special preface before the story begins in all of its insane glory.

Twenty Months is as much a love song to my favorite genre in Pride & Prejudice fanfiction, ‘The Forced Marriage’, as it is to Austen; my idea was to attempt to make a modern adaptation that played upon the premise of the former, while retaining the spirit of the latter, and staying true to its time period. So, when I say modern, I mean this story contains the following words: shit, ass, bitch, damn, and all of their fucking cognates. If the idea of Elizabeth and her Fitzwilliam swearing gives you pause or if pre-marital sex makes your toes curl, then we should probably part ways here. There are no hard feelings on my end, and I wish you luck in all of your fanfiction pursuits. Just know that I do greatly respect Jane Austen, so much in fact, that I chose to do this instead of committing a Regency atrocity (for I know next to nothing about Georgian England, and can’t be arsed to do research).

Should you choose to give this relationship a shot, you should know that this story does not follow the P&P timeline to the letter (with this storyline, there’s really no way that it could). Instead, it’s chocked full of references to the text (mm-hmm, chocked). Those key situations in the book have been altered and will happen out of order, or perhaps not at all. Say goodbye to Jane and Mr. Bingley’s separation. Adios, Wickham and Lydia/ Wickham and Georgiana. Auf Wiedersehen Mr. Collins’s botched proposal to Elizabeth (he’ll find other ways to make himself ridiculous). See, I’ve read P&P enough times and have spent countless rainy afternoons with the likes of Colin, Matthew, Laurence, and even that dude in the LDS version; I don’t need an exact translation and I hope you don’t either.

Fanfiction, for me, is a magical universe in which my favorite characters exist on acid. It’s pure fun – not serious business in the least.

Thank you for making it through this rambling preface. I hope you truly enjoy what I’ve done here. A smidgen of thought went into it despite its appearance of having been pulled out of a hat. :)

Love, peace, and hair grease,

Your Author