Greetings. I found discussion of
Grail via my site counter.
Perhaps I can answer a few questions about the novel.
I've been writing X-Men fiction a while, and have, in fact, two different backgrounds for Scott in my various novels and other stories on my site,
The Medicine Wheel. One of these conforms (more or less) to the original novelization of X1, with a lot of fleshing out. The background novel for that is
An Accidental Interception of Fate, and other novels that employ that background involve
Climb the Wind (a retelling of Homer's
Iliad and NOT for the faint of heart), and the
Heyoka series, plus most of the short fiction.
Climb the Wind and
Accidental both won several awards (back when there were X-Men awards.) In this version, Scott's pretty normal and his parents are living still (as per the novelization, which never suggested he was an orphan).
Grail belongs to a different background which comes much closer to his comicverse history. The prequel novel for that is
Special: the genesis of Cyclops. Again, as with
Climb the Wind, that novel deals with real issues and I don't pretty it up any. Basically, I take a look at what it would
really have meant for Scott to have been on his own on the street as a child, sans the constraints of comic code.
Special won a couple awards too, and got a very nice review from Eric Burns on Websnark, found
HERE.
Remember to pay attention to any warnings on my novels. I don't rate my fanfiction because I don't rate my published fiction (find it all a bit silly), but these novels are written for an adult audience.
All the novels are available
HERE, Serials are available
HERE, including
How the Leopard Changed Her Spots which is a PowerSwap retelling of X1, and if you're not into novels, the short fiction is all
HERE.
If anyone has questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them. I did write replies to several questions that came up from readers in 3 different LJ posts titled
The Secrets Behind Grail:
post #1,
post #2, and
post #3. Last the authorial endnotes are available
HERE. Please beware as all these posts contain major SPOILERS for the novel.
If you've wondered about my reasoning behind making Scott's background what I did, it's addressed in post #2 above, and any questions about my rationale for the Trio is also found in post #2.
Very briefly, part of my explanation for taking on
Grail in my endnotes includes the following:
In Grail
, I was able to do the Phoenix Saga as I'd want to tell it. Phoenix is Jean, plain and simple, not a demi-goddess clone of Jean, an alternate personality, or anything else. And the 'Dark Phoenix' is the part inside all of us that must negotiate the boundaries between right and wrong. As Kurt told Warren near the story's beginning, one interpretation of the Garden of Eden story tells that Adam and Eve 'fell' not because they wanted to be bad, but because they wanted to be good. I find that far more interesting. (Wildly cackling evil geniuses have just never done it for me.) Jean's struggle in Grail
is the same one faced by any person in a position of power who takes that responsibility seriously. Where are the lines in the sand? And how much harder to judge when the power is so great.
Cheers!
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) other then that nothing is new (as you can see for yourself...) but a lot of users disappeared 
