This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #530, on the subject of Versers Move.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first eleven Multiverser novels,
- Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel,
- Old Verses New,
- For Better or Verse,
- Spy Verses,
- Garden of Versers,
- Versers Versus Versers,
- Re Verse All,
- In Verse Proportion,
- Con Verse Lea,
- In Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, and
- Con Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley,
in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book). Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages. Now as I am posting the twelfth, A Dozen Verses, again written in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights. This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed. You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them. Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.
This is the seventh post for this novel, covering chapters 73 through 84. Previous posts are:
- #524: Twisting Worlds, covering the first twelve chapters;
- #525: Character Battles, covering chapters 13 through 24;
- #526: Versers Adjust, chapters 25 through 36;
- #527: Characters Reorient, chapters 37 through 48;
- #528: Versers Investigate, chapters 49 through 60; and
- #529: Characters in Action, chapters 61 through 72.
There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.
History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.
Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 73, Slade 275
Chapter 74, Kondor 280
Chapter 75, Cooper 97
Chapter 76, Slade 276
Chapter 77, Kondor 281
Chapter 78, Cooper 98
Chapter 79, Slade 277
Chapter 80, Kondor 282
Chapter 81, Cooper 99
Chapter 82, Slade 278
Chapter 83, Kondor 283
Chapter 84, Cooper 100
Eric did this entire chapter, with only a couple questions about whether he had character details right.
Shortly after this, Eric suggested that we include several short worlds and see whether we can actually put twelve universes in this one book. He made a quick count and got eight.
He also suggested a magic spell for Shella that would explain how she knew something magical was about to happen. I said I’d figure out what it was later.
When I was doing setup I needed an image just for this chapter. In my mind I thought of an image of Stalin and a hammer-and-sickle, and although I found plenty of available hammer-and-sickle images I also read that they are illegal to display in several countries, so I decided to leave that out.
Eric had written this private library bit when Kondor first arrived in this world, and I didn’t like it both overall and in some of the details, but I set it in the notes for later consideration. He resurrected it here, with corrections, trying to put in color and backstory.
I had made some notes about orbital mechanics in connection with why Angle had to make special arrangements to go to Luna, and so Eric took those into consideration in drafting this chapter.
Eric suggested that I find a world for Slade that wouldn’t keep him too long. I wasn’t really in a very creative mindset at that moment, so I searched my list of worlds I can use at convention demos and suggested New Ice Age from The Second Book of Worlds, but said I was going to have to go read it again before I could write anything on it, and went on to write Kondor’s next.
As I read through the text of the world, I began forming some ideas, so I wrote this chapter plus a few notes on what might happen next.
We had talked about what to do for Kondor’s next assignment. I had wanted C to tell Kondor and Zeke what was on the drive, and Eric suggested it could tie into the next mission. I then suggested that one of the researchers from the university could be kidnapped, although I thought that cliche; the alternative was to have him threatened. Remembering that Kondor had an honorary Doctorate of Physical Sciences and had worked on the artificial gravity project, I decided to put him in undercover, and wing it from there.
I had created the situation of a longish trip from Venus to Luna, and so I was obligated to figure out how to use the time. I thought through the idea of encountering a meteor storm, but realized that the appearance of meteors as random wandering rocks in space is an illusion.
While I was writing that note, Eric started writing the first paragraph of the chapter, but he became aware that I wasn’t finished, and we talked about what I was expecting to do. He suggested I finish the chapter, which I did.
I had written Slade 276, and left a few notes about my direction. I had then drafted the intervening Kondor and Cooper chapters, but went to bed. It was late the next day that I returned, and found that Eric had jumped over Slade to do Kondor, so I wrote this, and then leapt ahead to do Slade 278. When I got to the point of him identifying the creatures as mammoths, I thought that was a good cliffhanger, so I paused there and picked it up with his next.
Eric drafted this. He had suggested that the researcher in question was a retired jockey, based on some stuff he’d read about them in connection with someone else’s books. I had suggested he was a fellow at this university, which he included. He surprised me with the idea that the researcher had just been attacked, but it worked.
After writing Slade 278 I decided one of us needed to handle this chapter, so I covered the visit to Luna briefly and pushed the ship forward. It needed a new destination, and I was thinking Mars but decided it was too cliche, so I chose Mercury, and wondered what Eric might do with that.
I leapt from Slade 277 to write this; Eric had already written Kondor 282, but there was the intervening Cooper 99 still unwritten. I didn’t completely resolve all the questions about the mammoth, but raised a lot of questions about the world.
I wanted to bring Kondor’s spy gear into play here, but the best way to do that seemed to me to be to have him give it to Zeke. I also wanted to tag Professor Albert Philip with something that had scriff, and the diktar are always the obvious choice for this–but he needed an explanation that would satisfy a nuclear physicist. So I wrote this.
I put a couple notes down and skipped this chapter, because I thought Eric had a vision for a Mercury with two races living on it, and I hoped he would get this started. He picked it up, but created travel events and set it up to be resolved in the next Cooper chapter. He protests, “Vision? I have perfect 20.20 hindsight. Is that what he meant? No, I didn t have a vision–Eric.”
This has been the seventh behind-the-writings look at A Dozen Verses. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.