This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #531, on the subject of Versers Roam.
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 eighth post for this novel, covering chapters 85 through 96. 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;
- #529: Characters in Action, chapters 61 through 72; and
- #530: Versers Move, chapters 73 through 84.
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 85, Slade 279
Chapter 86, Kondor 284
Chapter 87, Cooper 101
Chapter 88, Slade 280
Chapter 89, Kondor 285
Chapter 90, Cooper 102
Chapter 91, Slade 281
Chapter 92, Kondor 286
Chapter 93, Cooper 103
Chapter 94, Slade 282
Chapter 95, Kondor 287
Chapter 96, Cooper 104
Having written the original sightings of the mammoths, I wanted to cover the eventual realization of their full import, so having skipped Cooper 100 I wrote this.
Eric picked up the thread of Kondor’s spy mission, bringing Amanda back in play and suggesting the involvement of a third party.
Picking up from what Eric wrote, I sent Cooper to find the breach and repair it. I decided that I didn’t want to deal with the complications of other crewmen, so I found excuses for why he didn’t encounter any. I also had to figure out what he was going to do about the problem, so I invented the emergency stations. I had a nebulous notion of how the patching worked, so I prepared to write a note and left it at that. Of course, my life is crazy enough that I was called away for several hours before I got around to writing the note, and Eric wrote the next two chapters in that time, but I managed to convey my thoughts before the next Cooper chapter was written.
Eric wrote this. I suggested too late that Slade would follow the mammoths to find water, but he decided to have them head south. He made the mistake of having Shella conjure food and share it with the mice–outside the bias, but he hadn’t realized that, so I edited that out.
Eric wrote this chase and capture.
I had set up the repair, so now I completed it. I had specifically not stated in the previous chapter exactly what equipment Cooper had brought, although I had some bits of it in mind, so that I could invent things and pretend he had picked them up at the emergency station. It crossed my mind to have him miss something, but that seemed an unnecessary complication to this story.
I needed to find a reason for Slade to stop walking blindly south, but the answer was obvious: he needed to find water, and water was downhill. I figured he would find his way down, might have to cross a glacier, but eventually would come to a watercourse of some sort, and would find fresh potable water plus fish. That would then present him with the problems of how to catch fish and how to clean and cook fish. He would have cleaned and cooked fish back with Lauren, but I’m not sure he has any cookware or any way to start a fire, so there would still be survival problems ahead.
I drafted this mostly because I wasn t sure where to go from the capture. I checked on the history of cell phones in London and made a rough guess concerning what Kondor and Zeke would have.
I started this, but then left it hanging at the point of moving cargo as I ran out of ideas for the Mercury visit. Eric said he was also having ‘um, um, ah, what next?’ issues at this point, but he came up with something based on my notions of the winds on Mercury to finish out the chapter. I had a lot of little problems, and added the ground lights and view of the stars, but it’s essentially what he wrote.
Eric left this for me, and skipped ahead to write Kondor. I had thought about it for a few days. My experience with recognizing slight slopes came from canoeing on lakes and rivers, which Slade did not have, but I worked out how he could get to the same conclusions.
Eric wrote this. I had a few questions. I did not know what either groomers or footy meant. The latter is apparently a British slang term for what Americans call soccer, football in their vernacular. The former apparently is related to pedophile practices.
Eric had wanted to verse Cooper out, but I objected that he had to discover some of the power of the glove before he could go, so he wrote this chapter (after I wrote Slade 284).
This has been the eighth 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.