(Eli) It’s 5.43 am, 15 minutes before #3D1D begins. This will also be my last prelude post, before things begin in proper – I’m betting that MCM is awake and doing the various early-morning-routines every sane human being must do, upon waking up (i.e.: brush teeth, eat breakfast, prepare self for insane 72 hour writing experiment, you know, the usual …).

There’s nothing happening behind-the-scenes, however – Jan and I are online, conversing sporadically on gTalk, but MCM is nowhere to be seen.

Three things that you must know before 3D1D begins proper:

1. When I asked him what his biggest fear was, going into the experiment, Michael confessed that he was most afraid of site failure. If something – anything – goes wrong with the 3D1D website, Michael would have to stop writing to fix it – pretty much guaranteeing the fun in his funeral.
2. He’s already posted the questions for the first chapter on Twitter last night: they are – in order – name: 1) Strange things people wear. 2) Blood or no blood? 3) A security risk.
3. We told you before that he has notes prepared (a.k.a. The Outline), what we’re going to do here, on The Dispatch, is to post these notes on an hourly basis, right after he’s posted the latest chapters. You can then see how things are different between the outline and the end-chapter itself.

(Jan) It’s 6:23 am, and though he has officially started I have some prelude data left to share. I think it might be cool to have some kind of log of the various data MCM is showing on site.

1. Currently ads 1 to 10 are taken, as well as 14, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 51. This means not even all ads for day 1 are filled, so if you haven’t already there’s still lots of options free. I’m planning to do a people behind the ads update per day, so that’s an extra incentive to have a go at it.
2. MCM is also giving out referral points, and is keeping an automated list of top referrers. This is the current order: 1. tenaciousN, 2. Me, 3. merrileefaber, 4. quillsandzebras, 5. miladysa, 6. IsaKft, 7. nlcobb, 8. sdramsey, 9. eam. If you want to catch me, I currently have 161 points.

As a random fact, just before launching time, I actually screamed “HE’S AWAKE” out loud when MCM tweeted. I guess I’m ready to go :p