This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #538, on the subject of New Adventures.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first twelve 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,
- A Dozen Verses, 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 thirteenth, Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story, 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 first post for this novel, covering chapters 1 through 11. 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 1, Beam 196
Chapter 2, Takano 157
Chapter 3, Brown 365
Chapter 4, Beam 197
Chapter 5, Takano 158
Chapter 6, Brown 366
Chapter 7, Beam 198
Chapter 8, Takano 159
Chapter 9, Brown 367
Chapter 10, Beam 199
Chapter 11, Takano 160
I started writing this when we were around chapter 120 of A Dozen Verses, mostly because I had some ideas for the next Takano chapter and realized that I could start this one. However, we had not yet come up with a world for this, so I didn’t get further than waking up Bob. Eric proposed a few ideas, and one caught my eye, but I wasn’t sure how to present it initially so I called on him to do it.
We agreed on a world Eric calls Styrofoamia, although I didn’t fully understand the concept. He continued the story with Bob waking up in Beam 197, but I didn’t think that this chapter was long enough so I moved his material from there to here, and wrote a beginning for 197.
As mentioned, we were around chapter 120 of A Dozen Verses when I envisioned this opening, so I came here to write it.
I was looking for a name for a supervillain, and my mind went to someone like Magneto. My first idea was Metalworker, or Metalman, but then I thought of the name of the band. Kyler suggested I alter the spelling. I’m also considering giving him a sidekick called Aceydeecy.
In my first draft I planned the robbery for “tomorrow”. Then as I was writing chapter 5 I realized I had a complication that there wasn’t enough time for Tommy to contact William Tell Junior and stop the robbery, so I came back and made the robbery Saturday, when she wouldn’t be at work anyway.
As short as this is, I drafted it in bits, mostly to bring everyone back up to speed concerning where the Browns were relative to each other and their gear, and to begin setting a scene as somewhere outside Chicago. Unfortunately, I’m still a bit vague concerning what they brought with them from Berkeley.
I came back to it maybe a month later (still working on setup for the eleventh book) and expanded it with Derek’s effort to contact Vashti telepathically, and then had her use the radio, a technological substitute for telepathy.
What Eric wrote here I moved to the end of 196, and then I wrote the entry into the new room up to the point where Beam introduces himself and asks his questions. Then I wasn’t sure where to go with it, so I tagged Eric to take over. That created some confusion because I returned two days later and did not see more added to the chapter, so I finished it–and then saw that he had written Beam 198 as a continuation of this. Fortuitously I had ended this chapter with him heading into another room, so I made a few adjustments and got his scene to fit.
I had been thinking about Tommy’s situation, and realized that she would call Tell to find out about the villain. I had her call from the office during lunch, but realized as I was writing that this wouldn’t work because she had to know before that. I went back and moved the robbery to Saturday.
At the same time, I was still putting together updates on characters from Con Version, including a sheet of information about Berkeley people and places, and got the idea of Tommy gathering information from sources like Luciano’s Italian restaurant. It also occurred to me that they never solved the murder of Gorillaxe.
It struck me that we were going to need to know exactly what Derek and Vashti had taken with them from Berkeley to Yellowstone, as they would now be returning to New Orleans with only that. To their advantage, they should have at least a little money from their previous visit to New Orleans, set in the nineteen-teens so still good in the nineteen-twenties. However, they were ill-equipped for the road when they left, and Eric suggested that they took very little with them, which made sense in the context of the time, so they were going to have to make do. This chapter was mostly to give us an inventory of what they had.
The city is Chicago, which makes a good start for a prohibition jazz age story even if it’s going to happen in New Orleans ultimately.
Eric wrote this as follow-up to my hanging middle of Beam 197, and as I mentioned I did not see it until after I wrote the second half of that chapter, so I made a few adjustments to put this in the next room.
My treatment of the styrofoam caused Eric to add the notion that the cities were within a “weather control area” so they had a chance to survive.
I wrote this trying to shift back into the new normal routine. Billy was going to be around, Tommy was going to be living alone in the manse, and people were going to be told that Brian and Derek had been killed by a supervillain.
I went with tomatoes because they can be an early fruit and they don’t keep well. I went with June because I wanted it to be early enough in the year that they wouldn’t have to deal with much foul weather on their journey, and put it on my birthday as easy to remember. I thought of the encounter with the policeman while I was writing, which I thought might add some color to the story.
I had originally thought that they might earn a few coins doing some busking on the corners of Chicago, but when I tackled the inventory chapter I realized it was not possible that they would have their instruments with them. Eric says he has ideas for getting them to their destination, which I’m eager to see.
I was still trying to wrap my head around Eric’s world. I wrote the first three lines of this and walked away. Eventually I thought of where to go with it. I thought seriously of having Beam shoot a hole in the ceiling, but I didn’t want to decide what would happen then and some of my options were such that I wanted to save that for later. I also didn’t make any guesses what the colors on the handles meant, other than that black was barred.
I was going to carry this forward into the conversation at the restaurant, but decided that would make it too long. I had to check a few points, such as confirming that Tommy and Keller both knew each other as both superheroes and secret identities, and that Tommy and Belle had not met.
This has been the first behind-the-writings look at Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.