This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #526, on the subject of Versers Adjust.
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 third post for this novel, covering chapters 25 through 36; the first post, covering the first twelve chapters, was #524: Twisting Worlds, and the second, for chapters 13 through 24, was #525: Character Battles. 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 25, Kondor 264
Chapter 26, Slade 259
Chapter 27, Cooper 81
Chapter 28, Slade 260
Chapter 29, Kondor 265
Chapter 30, Cooper 82
Chapter 31, Slade 261
Chapter 32, Kondor 266
Chapter 33, Cooper 83
Chapter 34, Slade 262
Chapter 35, Kondor 267
Chapter 36, Cooper 84
Eric wanted to end this coup story and start something else; MJ wanted to ensure that it was obvious he had won. This was what Eric produced to accomplish that.
Eric had talked about the undercities of Throne World a few times, but this was his only opportunity actually to show them to the reader, so he put his illegal warehouse deep in the depths. Because the world is a construct and the gravity is artificial, it gets stronger the deeper you go.
Following this story I raised several of Slade s attributes to reflect his increased strength and stamina and consequent damage value, which I should have done sooner.
Eric continued getting Cooper settled into this world. He included offering Cooper a backup weapon, but did not say he took one, which induced me to ask whether he might have taken a knife and cleaned it up.
I split this from Slade 259, not just because it was long, but also because I thought it was a new thought. I also suggested when Eric was looking for a next world for Kondor that we double back to Slade first and then go to Kondor.
We long debated whether to return to Why Spy, a world Derek had visited in Spy Verses, and which character should go there. It was originally suggested for Cooper, but I observed that Cooper had nothing that would make him an exceptional spy at this point so it would have to be later. At this point I greenlighted putting Kondor there.
Eric had envisioned this as the Amazon, but I suggested changing it first because that s where Derek had arrived and the world description says that characters can arrive anywhere in the world so I didn t want it to be the same, and because he started with a king cobra, which a quick check confirmed that it was native to southeast Asia. Thus he moved it to Cambodia.
Eric likes opening worlds with a dream sequence, which is a Stage Two symptom. I pointed out that Kondor was already listed as at Stage Three, so that was deleted, although I suggested it was good and could be used for someone else at some point. There were several other technical problems I fixed, including that he had Kondor use a skill (psionic pyrogenesis) that was above the bias curve for this world as written, so I was still making minor edits right up to the day I formatted it for release.
I don t usually comment on the chapter images, but when I realized that Kondor was back in a world previously visited by Derek I looked up the imagery I had used to represent that world in Derek s pictures and grabbed the same helicopter. Since a non-descript helicopter appears in both stories it seemed appropriate.
Eric introduced a Neptunian along with a backstory for why many Neptunians were Christians.
Shortly after I proposed that the Throne World story continue with a confrontation between Slade and the Syndicate I drafted this chapter to wrap up his adventures in that world. Eric decided that this was the time for it, so he pasted it here.
Eric continued moving Kondor and Zeke through this world, and introduced them to some strange carvings, partly to let Kondor decide this was southeast Asia and partly to suggest a young earth origin for his world. He tells me that Angkor Wat has a carving of a stegosaurus in a small circle, so the image has some precedent.
Eric wrote this to advance Cooper s story some and give the impression of the passage of time.
Eric calls this world Valley of Fear. I had said I wanted somewhere primitive or perhaps magical for Slade, and of his several recommendations Eric preferred this one, so he started writing it.
I normally use the Reptile House team for a pick-up, and Eric wanted to use them (saves the trouble of trying to create another team), so I sent him the details. However, I also noted that the one called Skink, the medic, was Kondor s divergent self. At first Eric wanted to change that, but he also wanted to have this be the same world Derek had visited, and Derek had recognized Skink as Kondor, so that would be complicated. He wound up playing a bit with the differences between them.
He also had some trouble keeping the roles and identities of the team members straight, so I had to do some correction here.
Eric had much of this world fleshed out in his mind, and at this point outlined some of what he hoped to do here.
This has been the third 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.