Welcome to Volume 2 in the Monkees Family Trilogy. It's not essential for you to read Volume 1, but I highly recommend it so that you understand everyone's personality and backstory. This is particularly relevant for the original characters I've created, and for the major plot point of conflict I've created in this volume that will involve Davy and Micky. That said, feel free to dive in here, since I have filled in the gaps for those who didn't read Volume 1.
An important disclaimer is that I fudged the historical timeline of the Monkees' career trajectory. It starts off at least a year later in terms of when their first album dropped. This is so that I could have them attend the Monterey Pop Festival in Volume 1. This experience was key to them getting discovered as a band, since in my version of the Monkees, there was no television show and I wanted to find an entertaining way to help them get discovered.
My Monkees are a combination of the fictional guys who lived together at the Pad and played together in a band, and the real guys who lived the lives of Mike, Micky, Peter and Davy. Eventually, the timeline catches up with itself and gets closer to the way things really happened. As an invaluable source of information, I consulted Andrew Sandoval's excellent book The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation. It's an amazingly detailed account of what the Monkees were doing virtually every single day of their heyday and it made for an excellent roadmap for this story, helping to lend authenticity to it that I could never have conjured on my own. As for their post-Monkees careers, I took major liberties with the timeline again to fit the narrative, as it makes for a more interesting story and it's just not that important to follow IMDB.com to the letter as to what exact date Micky made what movie or television show or when he and Davy went back out on the road together. So please just suspend your disbelief and go with it. It's more entertaining in my alternate universe.
That said, a lot of this story is just pure imagination. I've created many original characters whom I hope you've grown to like over the course of Volume 1 or will enjoy meeting in this story. I've taken only small parts of the Monkees' actual personal biographies as inspiration, and, like in Volume 1, I've inserted them into real life historical events that they did not actually participate in or witness. I wanted to immerse them in the culture and history of the period in which they lived, and this was just a fun diversion. I've researched everything thoroughly, and hopefully you'll be entertained and maybe even learn something and be touched emotionally. I've also given character defects and foibles to certain people who definitely have never admitted to having them at least publicly, so I'll drop another disclaimer again that this is a work of fiction and I mean no libel or to cast aspersions. Everyone in this story is perfectly imperfect, as are we all.
Thank you for reading my story. Please comment and vote. I appreciate hearing what you think and interacting with you!
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Our Hearts' Desire (The Monkees Family Vol. 2)
FanfictionThe Monkees finally hit the big time. They score a recording contract and a national tour, and become a sensation. Even as they sell millions of records and play to packed concert halls, however, they struggle for artistic and creative freedom, co...
