Category Archives: Books by the Author

#180: Versers Focus

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #180, on the subject of Versers Focus.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have begun publishing my third novel, For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first two, you can find the table of contents for the first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, and that for the second at Old Verses New.  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 along with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as the third is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #157:  Versers Restart (which provided this kind of insight into the first eleven chapters);
  2. #164:  Versers Proceed (which covered chapters 12 through 22);
  3. #170:  Versers Explore (which covered chapters 23 through 33);
  4. #174:  Versers Achieve (chapters 34 through 44).

This picks up from there, with chapters 45 through 55.

img0180Tropics

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 45, Slade 61

Yes, I am aware that the djinn are a factor in middle eastern/Arabian mythology, and not Norse religion.  Yet if I begin with the premise that djinn exist in a spirit realm that connects to all physical realms, it is perfectly reasonable for such spirits to interact in different ways in different worlds.

Back in the 1980s I was running an Original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons™ game, and in creating various encounters I created a table that would include a “hitherto unknown spell” in a spell book.  That required that I create such spells, and I had quite a few.  One of them was called “Record” (the verb, accent on the second syllable), and allowed the spellcaster to make a three-dimensional visual record of a scene or event as it happened, preserved in a piece of chalk, and then replay it somewhere else.  This was definitely inspired by that, although it is different in a lot of critical details.


Chapter 46, Brown 69

The size of the butterfly was a bit problematic.  I had not really worked out how big sprites were; I was probably thinking about twelve inches tall, although I had to stretch that for Derek, making him fifteen inches tall when full grown.  Still, he is probably only about five inches tall at this point, and a large butterfly probably would seem like a hawk.

I don’t recall Derek yet using the abilities to summon and control creatures for anything significant, other than as a stepping stone toward learning more skills.


Chapter 47, Slade 62

I suppose that one thing I seem to do is give myself problems and then try to find ways to solve them.  In that way, writing the story is like playing the game.  As referee, I create problems; as player, I solve them.  When I wrote that Phasius was weakened, I did not know how I was going to solve that problem.  I had had some notion that he would know a way out of the castle–but I abandoned that almost immediately in favor of the idea that he knew a way out of the city.  This had merit; but it didn’t solve my problem.

I added motion on the battlements for two reasons.  One was because things were going too smoothly; that is, it didn’t feel like a story for Slade and Filp, now having released Phasius, to cake-walk out of the building with him.  The other was that giving myself a new problem meant I had more time to consider the solution to the old one.


Chapter 48, Hastings 106

I hit a snag here.  I realized that I had not kept up my lists of what Lauren was able to do, psionically, magically, or even physically.  During the second book, she picked up a lot of skills, and built up a lot of the ones she knew.  I had let a lot of it go by, because it was being done a bit behind the scenes–Merlin was teaching her many things, but little that was specific.  She was expanding her psionic abilities, but always in a general sense.  She taught Bethany, but I never really said what.  I realized that I was going to have to go back through the entire second novel and find all the things Lauren had learned, so they could go on the character information sheet I was using.  And I was going to have to do it before I could go much further with Lauren’s story.

What I wound up doing, as I went back to start combing through the second novel draft, was making a general statement of what she was able to do and then changing the subject.  The main thing I wanted her to do in this world was fix the disintegrator staff; I wanted it to be part of the combat against Tubrok at the end, if only to show how very powerful he was as an opponent.  I also wanted her to practice, to spend time improving her abilities.  This gave me the background for that.


Chapter 49, Slade 63

The problem was simple to resolve; and it gave me a solution to the other problem.  The use of darkness had been in my mind to help them get away from the town watch when they were trying to scale the walls; but it came up quite effectively here.  The idea of a secret garden with a door to the city didn’t seem entirely out of character (particularly given that it’s a walled city) and resolved a lot of things.


Chapter 50, Brown 70

The idea of eyes in the back of Mom’s head was the catalyst for this chapter.  I realized I could get to that by having him interested in an unseen animal, and that just saying it would give a new idea for a psionic skill which would be plausible to learn from what he already knew.  I also formed the idea of having Derek learn an entirely different set of psionic skills from those Lauren knew.  This would be difficult, because Lauren mostly knew the skills I’d devised when I was playing.  I would have to think about the skills within the framework of increasing bias but with very different applications.  The heightened awareness and specialized clairvoyance functions made good sense immediately.  I’m still working on the next step, which will be some form of telekinetic, but I don’t know what.


Chapter 51, Slade 64

I took a break before Filp asks his question; I wasn’t sure even yet what I was doing.  But I got the ideas first that Phasius knew one of the guards, and second that he wasn’t really certain where he was or how to find him, and third that he had to take several breaks to catch his breath.  With this I started writing.  I named the guard Saiman because I didn’t want to call him Simon, which was the first name that came to mind.  It was a rather abrupt decision to make him an officer, and then again to have him on duty in the late night.

I decided that the lone guard was Saiman, but wanted to hang it there.  Besides, I knew that Slade was going to play some role, either of a servant or a nobleman seeking Saimon, but hadn’t worked out exactly what he would do or say yet.

I have lived several places in New Jersey over the course of my life–in five different counties.  I’ve also been quite a few places in Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania, and have visited other states in the northeast corridor over the years.  I joke when someone names a particularly town, “I’ve been lost there.”  Here I was turning it around on Bob, that he couldn’t possibly know where he was because he had never even been lost in this city before, so there was no chance he would recognize anything.


Chapter 52, Hastings 110

I wanted to pick up the pace on Lauren and Derek, to move toward some action, even though I didn’t know what they were going to do before the end.

I broke this in the middle, too.

Repairing the rod had long been in my mind; I wanted it to happen here.  But I didn’t want it to happen too soon–it seemed incredible for her to do it immediately.  I actually considered tossing it into the sea, or the volcano, having her give it up completely; but by the time I thought of it I had set it up as a major obstacle for her, and she could not do that.

There is a denigrating comment to the effect of “he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else,” which of course means that the referenced individual is merely human.  I was watching video from Skylab in which one of the astronauts picked up a pair of pants, grinned broadly, and proceeded to lift both legs off the ground and insert them in the pants.  It was awkward, as he was kicking and spinning backwards, but he succeeded–and as he did so, I thought not only had he not adequately thought through the process, it was not something that required zero gravity to accomplish.  I proceeded to teach myself how to put my pants on both legs at once (no, you can ask me the secret if you see me at a convention or something) and did so several times a week for many years, just because I could and I could say that I did.  Lauren doesn’t do it the way I do–she cheats, using her psionic levitation to hold herself aloft while lifting her feet and pushing them into the pant legs–but she gets the idea from me.


Chapter 53, Slade 65

I had pondered just how Saiman would get Phasius out of the city.  Another secret door was too much to ask.  I fell on a bold plan, to have them ride out the gate in search of themselves.

I also started inventing fragments of Norse religion; I hope no one takes them too seriously.  I needed to give something to Slade in all this, and couldn’t just say that he learned a lot about it without putting something to it that made sense, that fit with what I knew of Norse beliefs.  At this point it’s just a couple of aphorisms; but they’re probably the best way to include a religion in a story without overly detailing it, particularly if they capture the core of the faith, which I think perhaps these do.

I feel I owe an apology to a Finnish colleague, Eero Tuovinen.  At some point he read Verse Three, Chapter One, and in commenting said he hoped that in the future I would bring some real bits of Norse religion into Slade’s stories.  I obviously have not done that.  In my defense, by the time he had written those comments to me this book (and at least most of the next) had been completed, and the fragments of Slade’s religion that appear within it were to some degree integral to the story; and I confess to having only a sketchy knowledge of actual Norse religion in our world; and after all it is already established that Slade is learning about Odin in other worlds, worlds in which Odin is known to work with the djinn of Arabian mythology.  It’s not going to be the same myth even though it attempts to hold to the same core truths.


Chapter 54, Brown 71

In my search to give Derek psionic skills that would make sense coming from his experience and wouldn’t sound like Lauren all over again, I struck upon the idea of telekinetically playing with the steam.  Lauren doesn’t do gaseous telekinesis, or liquid telekinesis for that matter, so I could give these to Derek and so create a unique package for him.  I might come back later and fill in the gaps with things she knows, but I am enjoying the challenge of building a unique yet logical skills set.

The pain resistance and pain reduction skills also struck me as things I didn’t see Lauren doing; and the teeth gave me a good excuse to do them.

I will probably have him do some sort of pyrogenesis inside the tree next; it will be a cold winter, and his ability to warm them will be important.  But it will probably be the air he warms–she only did that once, as I recall, and it wasn’t the first thing she tried.

I’m trying to recall whether I’ve ever actually seen a video game in which you had to control objects on opposite sides of the screen simultaneously, but my video game experience is much more limited than Derek’s.


Chapter 55, Slade 66

I created this as I went, apart from having already decided about riding out the gate.  I also decided at this point that Shella had been watching them by scrying, so she would find them quickly once they approached her.


This has been the fifth behind the writings look at For Better or Verse.  Assuming that there is interest, I will continue preparing and posting them every eleven chapters, that is, every three weeks.

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#174: Versers Achieve

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #174, on the subject of Versers Achieve.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have begun publishing my third novel, For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first two, you can find the table of contents for the first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, and that for the second at Old Verses New.  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 along with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as the third is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #157:  Versers Restart (which provided this kind of insight into the first eleven chapters);
  2. #164:  Versers Proceed (which covered chapters 12 through 22).
  3. #170:  Versers Explore (which covered chapters 23 through 33).

This picks up from there, with chapters 34 through 44.

img0174Dungeon

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 34, Brown 66

The boy/girl distinction on wings was something I’d created in a game years ago, for something larger, elf-like.  I’m not certain that the reasons will ever get into this book, but they had to do with mating practices of flying humanoids.

I stumbled on the idea of doing everything not quite right enough; it seemed to fit a lot of things in life, and so I thought I’d include it here.


Chapter 35, Slade 56

I’d had the idea of Shella teaching Slade the illusion for a long time; but I kept not including it, because I hadn’t found a reason why Shella would not be in the castle (and certainly they didn’t have the reason yet), and I hadn’t quite defined the illusion.  Those things came together just in time, and I went with it.

I was at this moment toying with whether Slade and Filp would be able to get Phasius over the wall, or whether Shella was going to have to come back inside the city to help them.  But I still had to get him out of the castle.

Bob has not really thought about marrying anyone, but he is here recognizing that his relationship with Shella is not based on externals but somehow on who they are inside.  I think men have trouble grasping that generally, that someone would like me, not as a writer or a musician or a teacher or any of the myriad of other externals that in my mind identify me, but as me.  That is what Slade sees from Shella.

“The most important trick, that is, illusion” reflects my aspect of perspective.  I don’t have my main characters telling the story, but when my narrator tells it the narration falls into the way the characters see it.  I just mentioned that Slade thinks of these as “tricks” but Shella does not, and when we come to the most important one, the narrator calls it a “trick” and then corrects himself, just as Slade would were he talking to Shella about it.

This was the first time I hinted that Shella was attractive.  It shouldn’t really be a surprise.

I actually made a problem for myself with Shella.  In the first book I hinted that she was cute, but I never actually described her–no hair color or style, no eye color, nothing to suggest her appearance.  I did not at the time think it mattered, because I had no expectation of ever seeing her again after Bob versed out of her world.  Now, though, I was bringing her back into the story in a major way, and she had been around enough that readers would have an expectation of her appearance.  I always envisioned her as looking like my niece Heather Brown, whom I always thought was cute (and I can get away with that because everyone in the family says she looks like a younger version of my wife); but Heather has dark eyes and dark hair like most of my girls, and I don’t want to jar a reader who has decided that Shella must be the blue-eyed blonde, particularly since Slade is the blue-eyed blonde so that would have them match.


Chapter 36, Hastings 106

I decided at about this time that I was going to push the biases pretty high and let Lauren fix her disintegrator rod while here.  That would allow her to practice, once she was confident, and ultimately to experiment–which would give me what I needed to verse her out.  I almost always go when I experiment, trying to push the envelope; Lauren does that sometimes, as well.

I was still inventing this island, but was now creating a lot more detail.  I figured on a sort of reedy bamboo in the lake or ponds.  Oh, yes–I am quite aware of the difference between a lake and a pond, but I didn’t imbue Lauren with that part of my experience so she was not.

I’ve never seen volcanic rock (other than small pieces in collections or displays), but I’ve read about it and attempted to reproduce some of the variety here.


Chapter 37, Slade 57

I was trying to put the details of the escape together.  I had been thinking about this illusion of making it appear Phasius was in the cell for some time.  I planned for Slade and Filp to scale the wall, find the dungeon, cast the illusion, and bring Phasius out.  Then they would have to cross the wall to escape the city.  At some point, I wanted Slade to use his darkness spell that he used on the ship–mostly because I wanted to bring back into focus that he could do this, but also because I thought it would make for a good tense moment somewhere.  I was still undecided whether to have it in the castle or in the city.  The castle had a certain logic to it, as there were more likely to be patrols and they would be more likely to notice someone out of place; but it also posed the greater problem, as a patch of magical darkness might catch someone’s attention.  The city, on the other hand, commended itself in that even guards on a regular route might think that they were just looking down a particularly dark street or alley, and move on without thought.

I’m still working out the plan and the complications as I write, but I’ve got them inside the castle.


Chapter 38, Brown 67

I don’t think the fact that I had a minor toothache really had anything to do with my fixation on pain control in this chapter.  It was more that I needed to move Derek forward and in new directions, and sore wings seemed a logical direction to take which led to more ideas.

I’ve got the feeling that he keeps coming back to the psionics notion, but never does much with it.  Of course, he’s still young; but it’s probably time to expand his possibilities.


Chapter 39, Slade 58

Again, I was feeling my way through this.  I didn’t want them to move right into people, but I didn’t think it good for them to make the dungeon completely unopposed.  The idea of coming into a barracks of sleeping guards made a good compromise.  Then, why didn’t they just leave?  The notion that they couldn’t find the exit occurred to me, but seemed silly.  I replaced it with the notion that there were guards awake by the exit.  This led me to consider why, and how Slade would get past them, and that to the conclusion that they were the next shift.  This makes it pretty late; but then, they weren’t going to start climbing the wall too early.

I thought of my (mother’s) Uncle Pete, who snored so loudly that the house echoed and Aunt Ann made him sleep in another room.  This made for a more interesting barracks scene than everyone sleeping silently.  It also occurred to me to try to create the lull of two tired travelers resting in darkness, and having one of them fall asleep.  I debated which one for a moment, but decided that the older one would be the better choice.  Maybe I’ll reverse it another time.


Chapter 40, Hastings 107

I started moving the psionic skills forward.  I realize that with the ability to fly, it’s more difficult to keep her on the island; on the other hand, as of yet she doesn’t know how far it is to any other island, and apart from her vague hope that there are people somewhere she doesn’t have any reason to leave here.

I also gave her the fire she needs.  That came to be in part because it was a logical extension of the psionics, and in part because I knew she was concerned about it.

The conclusion that trees and birds aren’t thinking isn’t airtight, but it’s the best Lauren is going to be able to do.


Chapter 41, Slade 59

I needed a new clue to point Slade in the right direction.  The slope of the floor was the first that came to me.  It was good, but it wasn’t strong enough.  The other two ideas followed it in short order, once I’d made that decision.

I had completely forgotten Slade’s flashlight.  He had used it in the first story, and not since, as he’d about run down the batteries.  I almost wrote that he replaced the batteries in the space ship story, even though there was no reason to think he did.  Then I remembered that the Caliph had recharged the blasters; it made sense for him to recharge the flashlight, too.  Of course, the whole four-element theory suggests that there’s fire in that flashlight; but by the four-element theory, it is almost impossible to have light without fire, and that can’t be true or there would be no light in the realm of the djinn.

The treasury was an abrupt inspiration; the diary was even more abrupt.  I had long been musing on the simple task of rescuing Phasius against the more interesting task of proving he was right; this was a simple step toward that more interesting outcome.


Chapter 42, Brown 68

The idea of the hole in the tree being high was new; it gave me something which could seem like an easy challenge, like a child walking across the room.

The pet idea also was new.  Telepathy to Animals, and possibly Summoning, were telepathic skills that would build a base from which Derek could reasonably jump to the more difficult clairsentient skills; psionic defenses would be a good intervening step, but it was difficult to see how he would learn those in the absence of psionic adversaries.  But I had no idea what sort of pet a sprite might have.  I really did first think of the ladybug, which I decided was a bit small even for a sprite (and a bit silly to think of as a pet).  I walked away from the text and thought, even was going to ask the kids what sort of pet a sprite might have; but I decided to come back and explore it on the page, having Derek go through some of the same ideas which came to me, and moving beyond those to others.  I still didn’t know whether he was going to have a pet or not, but at least there were possibilities there.

The structure “‘Mostly,’ she emphasized, ‘girls’” was intended to create that feeling of emphasis.  I’d used the trick of putting the speech marker in the middle to create other feelings, most notably hesitation, but it worked for this, too.


Chapter 43, Slade 60

There were several options for the bars.  A genuine portcullis had merit, but it would have to rise into some space above, and that seemed trouble.  I wanted to avoid the usual jail-type gates.  Something that swung away from the prison that was lifted by chains like a portcullis or drawbridge seemed to have merit.  It probably wouldn’t be particularly effective at containing multiple prisoners, who could push it up in front of themselves, but it looked good.

I didn’t actually expect to get as far as I did in this section.  I had thought that they would get through the gate, then there would be some other obstacle, and they would see torture machines, and then hunt for Phasius.  But at this point it was short, so I put in the next obstacle, one which made good sense.

The windows were added mostly because I had this momentary inspiration for someone to pause and sniff the air and say something based on it.

I liked the gag about the prayer; as soon as I wrote it, I went out and told my sons.  They laughed.

I had no idea how Slade was going to identify Phasius; I had imagined him trying to identify the prisoners, looking in many cells for neither he nor I knew what.  But suddenly it occurred to me that there was a way to do it.  If Phasius gave the name of the Caliph first, that would almost certainly do it.


Chapter 44, Hastings 108

When I use the tropical island as a start world, I generally have Michael di Vars already present, cooking seagull over an open fire and offering to share it with the new arrivals.  I learned about catching seagull in survival training in Scouts; I also was informed that it is a very greasy bird, not particularly palatable.  That may be why Peking Duck takes a full day to prepare.

The bit about Elijah is one of those passages that people get wrong all the time.  People read that a chariot came with the whirlwind and Elijah was lifted into heaven, and assume that he rode in the chariot.  What the text actually says is that the whirlwind lifted Elijah off the ground, and a war chariot interposed itself between Elijah and Elisha so that the latter could not grab hold of the former.  I take this opportunity to have Lauren correct the view, mostly because it annoys me when people make statements that are clearly inconsistent with the source.


This has been the fourth behind the writings look at For Better or Verse.  Assuming that there is interest, I will continue preparing and posting them every eleven chapters, that is, every three weeks.

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#170: Versers Explore

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #170, on the subject of Versers Explore.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have begun publishing my third novel, For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first two, you can find the table of contents for the first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, and that for the second at Old Verses New.  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 along with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as the third is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #157:  Versers Restart (which provided this kind of insight into the first eleven chapters);
  2. #164:  Versers Proceed (which covered chapters 12 through 22).

This picks up from there, with chapters 23 through 33.

img0170Autumn

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 23, Brown 63

The writing became very trying at this point.  I was not at all certain how much childhood development could be interesting, and was torn between four poles.  One was to keep things as short as I could so that it would get back to the more exciting Slade story quickly; the second was to avoid making the segments too short, lest they seem too much like filler.  The third was to move the development material along quickly now that I had something of a story for him in the divine deliverer model.  Finally, I wanted the development material itself to be interesting; it seemed there could be a lot of fun in that, if I could highlight the places where it got fun.

These developmental details are all drawn from The Zygote Experience in The First Book of Worlds.  I had used my wife’s obstetric and pediatric nursing texts for source material when I wrote that, but it is a much simpler and well-organized work for this particular application.


Chapter 24, Hastings 103

The mix of science and theology here was rather spur of the moment.  I was faced with the problem of finding food that she could eat, and had been tightening the strangle hold on the possibilities.  I knew that somehow she was going to have to get past that.  I knew that there was no intelligent life here, and that she could eat just about everything that looks like food with no ill effect (although I was still working on how to get her out of this world when the time came–torn between poisoning, volcanic eruption, drowning in an effort to reach another island, spelunking accident, and being attacked by some deep sea carnivore).  But now I needed to move her toward that somehow, and the conclusion that there must be food here somewhere was an important first step.


Chapter 25, Slade 51

It had been bothering me that Slade had fewer chapters than anyone else.  He had the fewest chapters, marginally, in the first book; and the second book was considerably longer.  Since his story was moving, I at this point decided to let him catch up a bit by alternating him against the other two.

This was the moment when I realized who Shella really was.  That is, up to now she was the cute young girl who could steal Slade’s heart, the young student who waved good-bye as he went up in flames, the clever sorceress chosen to accompany him on this quest, and the girl he was going to marry, but at this moment I saw her as the practical half to Slade’s boldness.

In this, she owes something to another character I created, Olivia, the youngest of the three princesses in The Dancing Princess (First Book of Worlds).  Although in the book Olivia is just the fun-loving outdoors type, in play with Chris Jones she became his foil, laughing at his pretensions, focusing on the serious when he was missing it.  I knew Shella had to be that kind of foil for Slade, but I hadn’t thought of it in concrete terms.  It was here that I saw that she needed to have this practical streak.  Oddly, it was after she had already made the comment about the three needs, and before I’d written her thoughts about discovering the resources before knowing how to use them.  It was because of this recognition that I determined that to be her line.

This chapter took most of a week to write.  Some of it was interruptions, but some was an effort at trying to work out what the problems and solutions actually might be.

It was about this time that I started trying to think of a way to create a story in the fourth novel that connected the two Kondor vorgo stories together into an arc, so tying the fourth book into the first two.  It also occurred to me that there might be another opportunity to bring the djinni alliance into play for Slade, but I was not at all sure how or when.


Chapter 26, Brown 64

I was still following my developmental materials as Derek started walking, and trying to rough this against the change of seasons.  I had always known that he would ultimately learn to fly–it was part of being a sprite, and it had been mentioned before–but I had not considered at what point in his development that would happen.  I still wasn’t sure, but I guessed that he should be airborne by spring.

There was a gap of a couple weeks between writing chapter 25 and chapter 26.  I was mostly wondering what was going to happen next, but I was also working on other projects–including the editing of the second novel, and a reading of the first novel to my youngest two, along with entries in a history from which this is partially reconstructed recalling what I could remember of the creation of that one.

People make the mistake of thinking that “knowing how” is the secret to body skills–acrobatics, martial arts, even walking and swimming.  It is rather the muscle memory, that the body itself “knows how” to do these things.  If you had the memories of Mary Lou Retton implanted in your brain, you would “know how” to do a lot of acrobatics, but you couldn’t do them, not just because you’re not strong enough but because your body is not trained to do them.  That’s also true about simple things like standing and walking–our bodies learn to compensate for balance, move the right distance at the right time, and dozens of other minutiae that make it possible for us to do without thinking tasks we do without thinking every day.


Chapter 27, Slade 52

I recognized both that nobles traveling without servants or horses would seem strange and that there would be few places in a castle where there were people but not fire at night, and so this chapter hedges a lot.  It was also because I knew that Cornel was going to provide help for them and point them to the next contact, but I did not know how or why he was going to do that, or who the next contact was.


Chapter 28, Hastings 104

I’ve been taught (more years ago than I should remember) how to identify edible plants in the field; but I did not give that knowledge to Lauren (I gave it to Kondor, actually).  Thus her experiment is crude and a bit dangerous.  I realized that it was yet possible that she had eaten something that could kill her next week, but knew that I needed to keep her alive for the present.


Chapter 29, Slade 53

It was time for Slade to trust someone; but he was a bit hesitant to do so.  Again, Shella shows the practical side.  They might not know whether they can trust this man, but they have to trust someone and he’s the best bet they’ve got.  He’s more likely to help them if he knows the whole story.

It was a leap to suggest that Cornel also knew the name Majdi, but not an impossible one.

The ring was the last thought I had about this part of the plan.  Having Filp carry it so that he could by his honesty convince someone that he stole it was something I thought I could pull off; it was reminiscent in my mind of Philippe “The Mouse” Gaston of Ladyhawke, telling the soldiers which way Etienne de Navarre actually went in the firm expectation that they would assume he was lying.

I invented the cousin at this moment.  It seemed a good choice for a contact in the city, as the cousin could be a nobleman and would respond favorably to an appeal from family.  I had not yet decided anything more about the cousin.

I did something here that I dislike when authors do it:  I spelled a name in a way that makes the pronunciation ambiguous.  I believe that I intended the name “Arnot” to be pronounced “are no”, but even in my own mind I can’t remember whether “Cammelmyre” was to be “camel mere” or “camel mire”.  I think it was the latter.


Chapter 30, Brown 65

The glowing bodies were created partly to give me something to write about, but partly to make them more magical.  When I started writing about what Derek could do that he hadn’t realized, I was actually thinking more in terms of seeing in the dark; this was to my mind too much like the infravision of Dungeons & Dragons™, and I wanted to avoid that in part because I didn’t want to seem to be following their pattern and in part because it didn’t seem real.  The idea that they glowed, more like Peter Pan‘s Tinker Bell, was good.  But how they glowed had to seem both magical and natural, and that was where I took it.

I was having trouble with the size of the sprites.  I did not at this point realize that I was going to want Derek to have the ability to double in height twice and be the size of a normal teenager, but still be quite small as a sprite.  Ultimately I decided that I could get away with him being five feet tall as a human, and fifteen inches tall as a sprite, and if I made that very tall for a sprite I could make the typical sprites about a foot tall.  Yet I had been envisioning them considerably smaller than that, and had to make some adjustments.  This was a good example:  the interior of the home was originally described as two feet across, which was much two small for several one foot tall humanoids to winter and be able to walk around.  I doubled it on a late edit.

I decided to push the winter through to spring so I could get on with the story.  I did not yet have the details complete, beyond what’s been said, but I felt a bit like Slade was carrying the book at this point, and I needed to get one of my other two heroes active, particularly as I was going to run the Slade story into a different mode soon.  This also was why I brought back the flight problem.


Chapter 31, Slade 54

The walled city was a last-minute decision.  One reason I did it was that the whole thing was getting too easy in my mind.  I had a pretty good idea of how Slade was going to get Phasius out of the dungeon and out of the castle, and then of the ride to Charton.  I needed something to complicate matters.  A walled city with gates closed at night was not only a major complication, it was in a sense the most natural thing in the world.  I explored options in the text, and let it drop for later.

Arnot was being invented on the fly at this point.  I decided quickly that he was not a dynamic or brave person, and wanted to give him the air of an accountant.  I needed then to make it clear that he participated against his wishes, if not his will.  At first I thought Slade’s simple silliness about Arnot not being involved would suffice, but I couldn’t really get Arnot to agree to it so easily.  It thus became a moment when I had to give Slade something of his nobility and force of will, something which is seen in flashes but needs to grow more even in the midst of his humor.


Chapter 32, Hastings 105

I was, to some degree, playing on both sides of the screen here.  As Lauren, I was exploring the world, trying to solve the problems and build the shelter; as referee, I was trying to create the world in which the answers would be found.  The complication as yet not addressed, that of determining which things might be intelligent, still loomed over everything; I couldn’t avoid that.

I was getting the notion of something bamboo-like, which would be consistent with the other plants, which would be used for building.  I had not yet placed it.

When I was in my early teens, we visited an uncle.  There was a tray of round chocolates on a counter, and I pointed and asked, “What are these?”  My cousin Ron responded so quickly with, “Try one” that I knew there was a reason why I might not want to, but he then assured me that they were safe, so I ate one.  How did I like it?  It was all right.  It was mostly a large lump of chocolate with a small crunchy something inside.  That’s when he told me it was a chocolate covered ant.  I shrugged.  I’d heard of them, of course, and now I’d tried one, and found them entirely edible.  That was the experience I here gave to Lauren.


Chapter 33, Slade 55

I developed this plan between the last Slade chapter and this one, and only as a sketch.  The detail came as I wrote it.

I’m making Shella the smart one, the idea person here.  For one thing, I want her to impress Bob, to be someone the reader likes and thinks he should like.  For another, I want to make the reader think she’s bright–she is, after all, a sorceress, and she should come across as intelligent.


This has been the third behind the writings look at For Better or Verse.  Assuming that there is interest, I will continue preparing and posting them every eleven chapters, that is, every three weeks.

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#169: Do Web Logs Lower the Bar?

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #169, on the subject of Do Web Logs Lower the Bar?.

I noticed something.

img0169Diary

I don’t know whether any of you noticed it, and there is an aspect to it that causes me to hope you did not, to suspect some of you did, and to think that I ought not be calling it to the attention of the rest.  But it is worth recognizing, I suppose, even if it is at my own expense to some degree.

What I noticed was that some of the web log posts I publish are not up the the same standard I would expect of my web pages.

Certainly it is the case that some of the web log subjects are what might be called transient.  I was quite surprised to see in my stats recently that someone visited the page that covered the 2015 election results for New Jersey.  I’m thinking it must have been a mistake.  Yet at the time it was important information, even if in another year it won’t even tell you who is in the Assembly, because we’ll have had another election.

It is also the case that being an eclectic sort of web log it is going to have pages that do not appeal to everyone–indeed, probably there are no pages that appeal to everyone.  I recently lost one of my Patreon supporters, and that saddens me, but he was the only person contributing as a time travel fan, and was not contributing enough to pay for one DVD per year; I’m sure he is disappointed that I haven’t done more time travel pages, but there has not been that much available to me and the budget has been particularly tight.  With pages about law, politics, music, Bible, games, logic problems, and other miscellany, there will certainly be pages that any particular reader would not read.  Yet that has always been true of the web site, and although the web log is not quite as conveniently divided into sections it does have navigation aids to help people find what they want.

What I mean, though, is that I don’t seem to apply the same standard to web log pages as I would to web pages.

I suppose that’s to be expected.  As I think about it, I recognize that I put a lot more time and thought into articles I am writing for e-zines and web sites that are not my own.  I expect more of myself, hold myself to a higher standard, when I am writing such pieces.  For one thing, I can’t go back and edit them later–which on my own site I will only do for obvious errors, never for content.  For another, something of mine published by someone else should represent the best that I can offer, both for my own reputation and for that of the publisher.  If you’re reading my work at RPGNet, or the Christian Gamers Guild, or The Learning Fountain, or any of the many other sites for which I’ve written over the decades, you might not know any more about me than what you find there.

It’s also the case that, frankly, anyone can set up his own web site, fairly cheaply and easily, write his own articles, and publish them for the world to ignore.  There is a limited number of opportunities for someone to write for someone else’s site, and to be asked to do so, or permitted to do so, is something of a recognition above the ordinary.

Of course, there are even fewer opportunities to write for print, and fewer now than there once were.  Not that you can’t publish your own printed books and comics and magazines, but that those that exist are selective in what they will print, and so the bar is higher.

The web log system makes it quicker and easier to write and publish something.  I suspect that there are many bloggers out there who open the software, start typing what they want to say, and hit publish, as if it were an e-mail.  I maintain a higher standard than that–all of my web log posts are composed offline, and with the only exceptions being the “breaking news” sort (like the aforementioned election results page) they all get held at least overnight, usually several days, reread and edited and tweaked until I am happy with them.  (As I write this, there are two web log posts awaiting publication which have been pending for two days, and I will review this one several times over the time that they go to press.)  But even so, the standard of what I will publish as a web log post is considerably lower than that which I will publish as a web page.

In that sense, the web log becomes more like diary, something in which you compose your thoughts and then ignore them–except that this diary is open to the world.  I think–I hope–all bloggers put more thought and care into their web log posts than they do into forum conversations and Tweets and Facebook posts.  However, while I have read some web log posts that were excellent, I have also read a few that caused me to wonder whether the author was thinking.  I try to keep some standard here, but I admit that sometimes I wonder whether I posted something because I thought it was worth posting or because I wanted to keep the blog living and active.

In any case, if you read something here and wonder why I bothered to post it, perhaps now you have a better idea of that.

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#164: Versers Proceed

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #164, on the subject of Versers Proceed.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have begun publishing my third novel, For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first two, you can find the table of contents for the first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, and that for the second at Old Verses New.  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 along with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as the third is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This was the previous mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book:

  1. #157:  Versers Restart (which provided this kind of insight into the first eleven chapters).

This picks up from there, with chapters 12 through 22.

img0164Tropics

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.


Chapter 12, Hastings 99

I realized that I was almost to a hundred Hastings stories; but it didn’t seem to make any sense to note that in any way.

I was a bit confused on directions at some point; initially I hadn’t given much thought to the directions, but now I wanted her to have arrived on the southern slope of an island in the northern tropics.  This was not for any particular reason but that I thought the southern slope probably more habitable, and for Lauren, at least, it should always seem as if God is directing things one way or another.  Even here, where there was nothing to do, I felt the need to have God’s hand putting her in the “right” place.

The half-buried staff idea had been in my mind for a while, and at this moment I decided on it.

The rain was an abrupt choice.  I wanted to fill the space, and it seemed a good way to do so.


Chapter 13, Slade 47

The comments about the air were a sudden decision.  I rather stumbled into it.

I had thought of several possibilities for what the door from the Caliph’s palace would look like from the other side, but the abandoned barn allowed the greatest possibilities.  I also began thinking that I was going to have to bring them back here, and it might be a viable end scenario to have them walk into the front door of the barn and vanish to somewhere else.

Just about everything here was done on the spot.


Chapter 14, Brown 60

Again, Derek’s spritish name is modeled on the sprite from the other game.  It was also built on his parent’s names, Morach being a joining of Morani and Lelach.

I created the spritish accents and language in part because I had been bothered by Derek’s ability to read the minds of his parents.  Under game rules, if you read someone’s mind, you get thoughts in their language, but if you use telepathy you get ideas translated to your language.  I decided that Lelach and Morani were the children of sprites who still revered the old spritish customs and language, as so many immigrant families are structured.  But then, I also recognized that it made no sense for them to be immigrants to a place where English was spoken; it made more sense to suggest that they were natives in a place where humans who spoke English had moved in and conquered them.  This became the uncertain thing behind things Derek didn’t understand.  I began to formulate an idea that he would become the sprite who led them to freedom from oppression.  The initial idea was that he would prove himself as smart as any human, demonstrating the math skills he had learned elsewhere such as trigonometry and calculus, systems which would be unknown in this world but would have evident uses once he taught them.  Not being well versed in these myself, I was not certain how I would do that, but it was the core of the idea.

I decided as I wrote this section to do the telepathy line I had considered; doing it now that he was born made more sense than doing it before this.  I knew there were ramifications, and I was going to have to deal with these, but I figured I would.


Chapter 15, Hastings 100

Again, I noticed the number of the chapter, but didn’t let it move me.

Even as I started writing this, I had decided on the cave with the water and steam, and had decided that the gear would be underground, but had not decided whether it would be buried or in the cave, or (what I almost did) caught partly in the rock.  Once I got a good picture of what the cave was like, I decided it had to be free.

I also rather abruptly realized that this was, to all appearances, a better home for Lauren than the beach.  I had nothing at the beach that should keep her there, and the multi-use fresh water and steam supply here (plus the potential emergency shelter of the cave) commended itself.  I realized it’s where I would have camped.  Thus I had her change her plans and leave her equipment here while going for the stuff she left at the beach.

I also began to get the idea that Lauren was being forced to rest.  In her last world, she had said she did not wish to rest, but to continue to be active.  I thought it might make this stall world something of interest if I used it as a forced time of relaxation.  In a sense, God could be telling her to slow down a bit for a while, to stop doing so much and enjoy life a bit.


Chapter 16, Slade 48

The prayer was a sudden bit of remembrance from the earlier book.  Actually, I had started reading the first book again to my youngest two, as no one but me had read the final draft, and so this prayer from the first of Slade’s chapters was fresh in my mind.  It led inexorably to the religious discussion, and I needed something to give the feeling of time to the travel.


Chapter 17, Brown 61

Once Derek had made the telepathic contact with his mother, I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure why he had made contact.  It was really because he was lonely, as he couldn’t talk to anyone; but it needed to be put into some kind of conversation that was more than just, hi, how are you.  Thus I started trying to think of questions he would ask.  I reinforced the idea that something was happening that he didn’t see, in the feel of the old ways.

His mother’s question, whether he could hear her thoughts, sprang abruptly to me.  It was the obvious question; I was surprised Derek had not anticipated it.  But I had not anticipated it, and there it was staring at me.  It also led me to a good consideration of the ethics of practicing psionics on other people, which I guessed would become an important point for Derek’s stay in this world.

As Derek begins using telepathy, I decided that I could italicize all telepathic communications, and that would help the reader follow what was happening.  I should probably have done that with the first book, but I had not thought of it in time.  I went back and did it in the second book.


Chapter 18, Hastings 101

As Lauren was searching the woods, I too was searching for any reason why the beach was a better place to live.  Logically, I could say she had to land there so that all her gear would be on land, but I kept thinking there was something else.

The splash of the fish was something I noticed just as I wrote it.


Chapter 19, Slade 49

The concern about fire came to me at this point, so I included it.  Again, it led to interesting spiritual ideas, and I let it have its head–particularly as the banter between Slade and Filp is always funny when they get going.

The argument about Phasius started because I wanted Shella to interact with it, and to draw out of them some backstory.  But the backstory I invented at this moment.  It owes much to A Man for All Seasons (I think that’s the name) about Henry VIII.

I realized that Slade would have said “I love you” in a very non-committal way, that is, as one says to a friend who has just done something wonderful or wonderfully funny or helpful; but as I typed it, I also realized that these words betrayed something I had been hinting with the comments on her smile, something he did not recognize himself, and she only hoped.  As I realized that, the only response I could think for Shella to give was “Thank you, my lord,” the proper response of a lesser lady to a greater gentleman on a compliment.  And I realized that this hid her hopes behind the formality, well enough that he would not see them.

Originally this chapter ended with Slade going inside to go to bed.  But it was at this point that I realized I was setting up my threesome for a trip that would be probably five days from the border to the castle, and then they were going to have to make it back from the castle to the border without being taken by Acquivar’s guards.  I thought now that they should be preparing for that trip; that is, they should be doing something on the way that would make the way back easier.  I asked three of my sons what they would do, and Tristan suggested he would try to arrange for horses for the journey.  I realized that meant finding allies; and that I had just written a section in which a potential ally, drunk though he was, had revealed himself.  Shella, I thought, would see the value, and so I changed the course to let them wait for him.

I wanted the peasants to sound like uneducated peasants, so I played a bit with their grammar.


Chapter 20, Brown 62

I realized after I wrote the telepathic discussion with the mother, that she was almost certain to tell the father.  This was going to be a problem, for the reasons Derek considers in the book.  It was also likely that the father would suggest that the child was dangerous, that the elders should be told, and that it would mean a very short life for Derek.  I thought Lelach would do something to protect him, even if that meant fleeing with him to hide somewhere.  But the first step was that Derek was going to find out that his father thought his mother crazy because she had told him Derek had spoken to her mind.

When Derek described the choice, I, too, knew the answer.  But I don’t like the characters to always succeed, so I placed the failure in there, then the mind reading, then the success on the second attempt.

I suddenly invented the nicknames.  This was exactly the opposite direction from what I had originally intended, but it was the only thing that was going to be readable.  Besides, I could not imagine them calling each other by those long multi-syllabic names.

Tonathel is obviously Moses in another world.  The idea of Derek now being connected in his mother’s mind as a potential deliverer with religious connotations came to me, and it fit in with Derek’s hopes expressed in the end of the previous book.  I drew those connections forward.


Chapter 21, Hastings 102

Between writing Hastings 101 and now I had given consideration to the ramifications of the fish, and the birds.  Were they sentient?  Were they dangerous?  I started this with little idea how Lauren would resolve those questions, but they did seem the questions she would be asking at this point.


Chapter 22, Slade 50

Originally this section was going to begin with Slade’s recognition that he had to do something to prepare for an escape route.  But as I had planned that opening, I didn’t know what it was going to be, and after talking to Tristan I went back and changed the previous section to start the process of making allies.

The names came out of thin air when I needed them.  I was somewhat torn between having the drunk be part of some connected conspiracy, which I thought helpful but unlikely, and having him wish to hide all sympathies for the priest given the danger of supporting him, which I thought useless though probable.  I tried to find a middle ground on that.

Before I wrote this section I got Kyler’s input on the same question of preparing for the return.  Where Tristan had suggested speed, facilitated by horses, Kyler suggested stealth.  I had, while asking the boys, considered the possibility that Shella might create the illusion that Phasius was still in his cell; now I had them getting Phasius out of the castle and reaching a place where horses were available to ride from there to the next point, change horses and ride to the end of the valley, where they would have to rest and abandon the horses.  Tristan also suggested that if there were only one road in their direction and they were on it, they would easily block any messenger from getting beyond them to alert troops down the line.  The last leg, up the mountains, would include at least one good hiding, possibly involving invisibility provided by Shella, and a battle in which Slade could defeat a dozen guards.

The only idea I have at this point for Phasius is to run into the abandoned barn and be whisked away.  I don’t even know where he would go.


This has been the second behind the writings look at For Better or Verse.  Assuming that there is interest, I will continue preparing and posting them every eleven chapters, that is, every three weeks.

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#157: Versers Restart

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #157, on the subject of Versers Restart.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have begun publishing my third novel, For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first two, you can find the table of contents for the first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, and that for the second at Old Verses New.  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 along with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as the third is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This covers the first eleven chapters of the book.

img0157Ocean

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.


Chapter 1, Slade 43

I had already decided that Slade would return in the third novel, and that right from the beginning he would be on this quest on behalf of the Caliph of the West Wind.  It seemed the place to start, particularly as my immediate audience wanted Slade back, I was very uncertain what I was doing with Derek, and even less certain what I was going to do with Lauren.  I knew quite a bit about the end of this book already, including that Filp would die on this venture but Slade would marry Shella and take her with him henceforth (perhaps also inspired by Chris Jones, whose character in my game married one of the princesses from The Dancing Princess).  I knew that Derek, Lauren, Bethany, Slade, and Shella would all be fighting together against the vampire Tubrok.  I knew that Lauren would free Merlin (and I knew where he was, but not how she would free him) during a critical confrontation.  I knew that she would use the spell which killed Horta, and that it would again kill her but only weaken Tubrok, that Derek would be horrified at seeing this.  I thought probably Derek would deal the fatal blow, but did not know how.  What I did not know was how to transition Slade from the very peaceful Parakeet world to the beginning of this venture.  I made it up as I wrote.

When writing books in series, one of the initial problems is how to introduce characters that your series readers already know and your new readers have never previously encountered.  Here I reintroduce Bob by talking about his feelings about that previous rescue mission.  I also give Lauren a touch of introduction, which will make her appearance a bit easier in the third chapter.

This is one of the unusual universe transitions:  Bob does not die, but in essence gates into the supernatural realm (what we call the “border supernatural”, places where mortal and supernatural beings can meet with each other without entering the other’s true realm) and then is sent from it to another universe.

Bob does not yet realize where he is, only that it is incongruous with his expectations.


Chapter 2, Brown 56

Again with Derek I have to put together who he is and what last happened to him.

I had committed myself to The Zygote Experience, an idea that was included in Multiverser:  Referee’s Rules and formalized in Multiverser:  The First Book of Worlds.  But I was undecided whether Derek would be born a human or, for some reason that kept playing in the back of my mind, a sprite.  I thought that it would be interesting to make him a small flying person; and although I had no idea how I was going to get him back to being human or what I would do about the wings as he transformed through successive worlds, the idea kept coming back to me.

It is that world description that suggests the player should not be given sufficient information to know where he is.  I wanted to keep the reader uncertain as well.  Yet I needed to move the story forward apart from the birth experience, and the mind of the mother made sense.  Thus I had to commit, and I went with the sprite.

The world description gives a lot of information about what an unborn child experiences, beginning as a zygote.  By this point Derek is a blastocyst.  Although the game does not dictate the notion of spirits, too many things in fiction rely on them for them not to be real in the game world, and thus Derek, whose spirit is now twenty-two or twenty-three years old, is able to think and make observations while still a blastocyst—although the fact that his body is so new means he is always falling asleep.

The moment when he realizes he is hungry is part of that blastocyst growth prior to implantation:  the energy and matter that had been in the single-celled zygote has been spent and divided to create a multi-celled blastocyst, and at this point it is floating inside the fallopian tubes on the way to the uterus.  Until it gets there and becomes implanted in the uterine wall, there is no additional sustenance coming into the body, and it would feel depleted to some degree.


Chapter 3, Hastings 96

The odd thing about this world was that I had no idea what to do with Lauren at all.  In a sense, this was what I would in play have called a stall world–a place I could drop her where nothing would happen for a bit and she would spend time running around doing things that looked worthwhile until I could think of what to do with her.  I needed to move Slade’s story forward, and that meant I needed to write Lauren’s story; but I didn’t know what her story should be, so I just wrote something to see where it would go.  The volcano was there partly to give credibility to the island and partly to give me a potential danger to help get her out of here.  I quickly decided that she should be cut off from any contact with other land, as the reader would wonder why she did not attempt to reach it.

I had developed this world, or a world very like it, for demo games.  I had run a game at a Delaware game shop called Days of Knights, and discussed demos with the proprietor.  He said that whatever it was that made the game special, that had to happen within the first half hour of play.  I had previously had the problem that I would start all my players in a gather world and they would often stick there for a long time—which is great for campaign play, but terrible for showing what Multiverser can do.  I needed a world in which I could put all the player characters, give them a bit of an introduction to the game world, then kill them all, abruptly and with certainty, so they could all go to different worlds.  I decided on what I dubbed Tropical Island, a volcano that could go off whenever I decided it should.  I’ve used it fairly consistently since then as the starting world for new players in convention and demo games.  I didn’t change much here, although in game I tend to keep the psi and mag biases very low to limit their options.

Again the point is to introduce a character known to the readers who came from the previous book but new to those who are joining the story here.

The stick in the sand is a trick taught to scouts, although she doesn’t do it exactly right.  The trick is to align the stick with the direction of the sun so it casts no shadow, and as the sun moves west its shadow will appear pointing east.  That does not matter to Lauren; what she needs to know is whether the sun is moving, whether it’s morning or afternoon, and how long the day is likely to be.


Chapter 4, Slade 44

Having found this way of getting Slade out of the Parakeet world, and having realized that somehow he was bringing the humor back into his own story, I kept moving forward with my beginning.

It was at this point that I finally worked out what the quest was, and why Slade would have to do it.

The line “Welcome to my parlor” is the beginning of a quote that continues, “said the spider to the fly,” and so is about walking into a trap.  Slade uses it because he does not know what to anticipate, but if it’s a trap he’s unlikely to be able to escape it whatever he does.

The caliph corrects Slade’s grammar unobtrusively:  he looks well; he is good.

The caliph is explaining the concept we called the “border supernatural”, those places that are like the spirit world but also like the material world, where spirits and mortals can meet and interact as if in the spirit world but not actually in that incomprehensible place.

Majdi is the name of a close family friend who does not ever use his first name, spelled Magdi but pronounced with a soft g.  I needed an Arabic name, and my friend is Palestinian and of Muslim parents, so I figured it was close enough without sounding stock.  Acquivar and Phasius, and most of the names I used, I invented from whole cloth.

As mentioned, I knew before I finished the first book that Filp and Shella would be here in the third, and several of the major events that would happen in connection with them.


Chapter 5, Brown 57

The pattern of the sprite names is probably owed to E. R. Jones.  He created a sprite character for a fantasy game in which I played, named Lanethlelachtheana.  I heard it and recorded it as Laneth Lelach Theana.  When I started writing these characters, I thought Derek would make the same mistake as I; and I obviously copied elements of the other name into Theian Orlina Lelach and her husband Theian Alanda Morani.

I also began to debate whether, or when, to have Derek attempt telepathic contact with Lelach.  I didn’t want to do it, for a host of reasons, but I was beginning to think my story would die on the vine if I didn’t do something with it.

Continuing the follow the notes of The Zygote Experience, Derek has just experienced implantation—he is now attached to the uterine wall, and so feels his mother’s movement.  This also results in the influx of sustenance, as he is no longer relying on the initial food supply of the ovum for continued growth.  The heartbeat is also an early development following implantation, and he notices it but credits the notice to the fact that he is following an interesting story by mind reading.


Chapter 6, Hastings 97

I still didn’t know what she was going to do, so I was filling the space with things that might lead somewhere.

When I wrote this, I had a clear idea in my mind as to what that particular motion of the shadow signified; however, it may be easier to go from what shadow motion a specific path of the sun would produce than to go the other direction.


Chapter 7, Slade 45

I had not considered the idea of retelling the backstory of how Slade found the bottle; but the presence of Shella gave me the opportunity, so I attempted to do so as swiftly as I could.  I cut it where I did because I’d had enough dialogue about things the reader might already know, and didn’t want to compound it with dialogue about things they had just read.  In fact, at this moment I was not certain how I was going to repeat the information about the quest without seeming to repeat it.

It was easy to recall Filp’s suspicious nature; his character fell into place quite quickly.


Chapter 8, Brown 58

Again, I decided that what works well stretched out in a game has to be compacted in a book; so I moved forward to the end of the pregnancy.  I also recognized that it would be difficult to keep the reader in the dark much longer (if indeed he had not already worked out what Derek had not), even with my suggested interpretations.

The perspective that the tank seems to be shrinking is of course because he is growing rapidly and the tank is the same size.  However, he is unlikely to recognize that—we don’t really notice that we are growing until we realize that things around us seem smaller and we know they can’t be, and there is nothing around him he can easily use for a size reference.


Chapter 9, Hastings 98

Left or right was actually the title of a Game Ideas Unlimited article I had done and recently referenced in another article, so it was in my mind as I wrote the opening words of this chapter.  Oddly, the point of the article is that the referee can make such decisions not matter, and that was poignantly so in my mind here, as I still had no idea what she was going to do.

I was wondering whether the objects of Lauren’s quest should be buried.  I kept swithering between having the rod (for I had decided that was her first target) be in the water, on the beach, or buried.  I also began to think of the idea of a cave.  Actually, I had wondered about a cave as a potential place for adventure already, but had back-burnered this because I had the equipment quest to occupy my attention and I didn’t yet know what I would do in the cave.

The part about climbing being easier than descending is something they teach in Scouts.  I’m not quite sure why it is so, but the body does seem better built for ascending.


Chapter 10, Slade 46

I invented the breakfast on the spot.  I had not considered anything of the sort until I started writing this.  It was partly because I needed to get Slade up and partly because I recognized the need to show the hospitality of the Caliph.

The discussion of life and death was also unplanned; it just seemed to flow from the conversation.


Chapter 11, Brown 59

Nothing here was new except perhaps the “Wa maa” for “Where am I”.  I thought that seemed plausible, given the sounds I heard newborns make when I had them myself.

The wings should be a surprise even for anyone who had worked out that he was being reborn.  She does mention flying at one point, but it’s only a passing reference early when Derek is certain that he’s listening to crazy thoughts or fantasy dreams.


This has been the first behind the writings look at For Better or Verse.  Assuming that there is interest, I will continue preparing and posting them every eleven chapters, that is, every three weeks.

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#150: 2016 Retrospective

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #150, on the subject of 2016 Retrospective.

Periodically I try to look back over some period of time and review what I have published, and the end of the year is a good time to do this.  Thus before the new year begins I am offering you a reminder of articles you might have seen–or might have missed–over the past twelve months.  I am not going to recall them all.  For one thing, that would be far too many, and it in some cases will be easier to point to another location where certain categories of articles are indexed (which will appear more obvious as we progress).  For another, although we did this a year ago in web log post #34:  Happy Old Year, we also did it late in March in #70:  Writing Backwards and Forwards, when we had finished posting Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  So we will begin with the last third of March, and will reference some articles through indices and other sources.

I have divided articles into the categories which I thought most appropriate to them.  Many of these articles are reasonably in two or more categories–articles related to music often relate to writing, or Bible and theology; Bible and politics articles sometimes are nearly interchangeable.  I, of course, think it is all worth reading; I hope you think it at least worth considering reading.

I should also explain those odd six-digit numbers for anyone for whom they are not obvious, because they are at least non-standard.  They are YYMMDD, that is, year, month, and day of the date of publication of each article, each represented by two digits.  Thus the first one which appears, 160325, represents this year 2016, the third month March, and the twenty-fifth day.

img0150calendar

Let’s start with writings about writing.

There is quite a bit that should be in this category.  After all, that previous retrospective post appeared as we finished posting that first novel, and we have since posted the second, all one hundred sixty-two chapters of which are indexed in their own website section, Old Verses New.  If you’ve not read the novels, you have some catching up to do.  I also published one more behind-the-writings post on that first novel, #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One 160325, to cover notes unearthed in an old file on the hard drive.

Concurrent with the release of those second novel chapters there were again behind-the-writings posts, this time each covering nine consecutive chapters and hitting the web log every two weeks.  Although they are all linked from that table-of-contents page, since they are web log posts I am listing them here:  #74:  Another Novel 160421; #78:  Novel Fears 160506; #82:  Novel Developments 160519; #86:  Novel Conflicts 160602; #89:  Novel Confrontations 160623; #91:  Novel Mysteries 160707; #94:  Novel Meetings 160721; #100:  Novel Settling 160804; #104:  Novel Learning 160818; #110:  Character Redirects 160901;
#113:  Character Movements 160916;
#116:  Character Missions 160929;
#119:  Character Projects 161013;
#122:  Character Partings 161027; #128:  Character Gatherings 161110; #134:  Versers in Space 161124; #142:  Characters Unite 161208; and #148:  Characters Succeed 161222.

I have also added a Novel Support Section which at this point contains character sheets for several of the characters in the first novel and one in the second; also, if you have enjoyed reading the novels and have not seen #149:  Toward the Third Novel 161223, it is a must-read.

Also on the subject of writing, I discussed what was required for someone to be identified as an “author” in, appropriately, #72:  Being an Author 160410.  I addressed #118:  Dry Spells 161012 and how to deal with them, and gave some advice on #132:  Writing Horror 161116.  There was also one fun Multiverser story which had been at Dice Tales years ago which I revived here, #146:  Chris and the Teleporting Spaceships 161220

I struggled with where on this list to put #120:  Giving Offense 161014.  It deals with political issues of sexuality and involves a bit of theological perspective, but ultimately is about the concept of tolerance and how we handle disagreements.

It should be mentioned that not everything I write is here at M. J. Young Net; I write a bit about writing in my Goodreads book reviews.

Of course, I also wrote a fair amount of Bible and Theology material.

Part of it was apologetic, that is, discussing the reasons for belief and answers to the arguments against it.  In this category we have #73:  Authenticity of the New Testament Accounts 160413, #76:  Intelligent Simulation 160424 (specifically addressing an incongruity between denying the possibility of “Intelligent Design” while accepting that the universe might be the equivalent of a computer program), and #84:  Man-made Religion 160527 (addressing the charge that the fact all religions are different proves none are true).

Other pages are more Bible or theology questions, such as #88:  Sheep and Goats 160617, #90:  Footnotes on Guidance 160625, #121:  The Christian and the Law 161022, and #133:  Your Sunday Best 161117 (on why people dress up for church).

#114:  St. Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles 160917 is probably a bit of both, as it is a response to a criticism of Christian faith (specifically the Roman Catholic Church, but impacting all of us).

There was also a short miniseries of posts about the first chapter of Romans, the sin and punishment it presents, and how we as believers should respond.  It appeared in four parts:  #138:  The Sin of Romans I 161204, #139:  Immorality in Romans I 161205, #140:  Societal Implications of Romans I 161206, and #141:  The Solution to the Romans I Problem 161207.

Again, not everything I wrote is here.  The Faith and Gaming series and related materials including some from The Way, the Truth, and the Dice are being republished at the Christian Gamers Guild; to date, twenty-six such articles have appeared, but more are on the way including one written recently (a rules set for what I think might be a Christian game) which I debated posting here but decided to give to them as fresh content.  Meanwhile, the Chaplain’s Bible Study continues, having completed I & II Peter and now entering the last chapter of I John.

Again, some posts which are listed below as political are closely connected to principles of faith; after all, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are inextricably connected.  Also, quite a few of the music posts are also Bible or theology posts, since I have been involved in Christian music for decades.

So Music will be the next subject.

Since it is something people ask musicians, I decided to give some thought and put some words to #75:  Musical Influences 160423, the artists who have impacted my composing, arranging, and performances.

I also reached into my memories of being in radio, how it applies to being a musician and to being a writer, in #77:  Radio Activity 160427.

I wrote a miniseries about ministry and music, what it means to be a minister and how different kinds of ministries integrate music.  It began by saying not all Christian musicians are necessarily ministers in #95:  Music Ministry Disconnect 160724, and then continued with #97:  Ministry Calling 160728, #98:  What Is a Minister? 160730, #99:  Music Ministry of an Apostle 160803, #101:  Prophetic Music Ministry 160808, #102:  Music and the Evangelist Ministry 160812, #103:  Music Ministry of the Pastor 160814, #106:  The Teacher Music Ministry 160821, and
#107:  Miscellaneous Music Ministries 160824.  As something of an addendum, I posted #109:  Simple Songs 160827, a discussion of why so many currently popular songs seem to be musically very basic, and why given their purpose that is an essential feature.

In related areas, I offered #111:  A Partial History of the Audio Recording Industry 160903 explaining why recored companies are failing, #129:  Eulogy for the Record Album 161111 discussing why this is becoming a lost art form, and #147:  Traditional versus Contemporary Music 161221 on the perennial argument in churches about what kinds of songs are appropriate.

The lyrics to my song Free 161017 were added to the site, because it was referenced in one of the articles and I thought the readers should be able to find them if they wished.

There were quite a few articles about Law and Politics, although despite the fact that this was an “election year” (of course, there are elections every year, but this one was special), most of them were not really about that.  By March the Presidential race had devolved into such utter nonsense that there was little chance of making sense of it, so I stopped writing about it after talking about Ridiculous Republicans and Dizzying Democrats.

Some were, of course.  These included the self-explanatory titles #123:  The 2016 Election in New Jersey 161104, #124:  The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions 161105, #125:  My Presidential Fears 161106, and #127:  New Jersey 2016 Election Results 161109, and a few others including #126:  Equity and Religion 161107 about an argument in Missouri concerning whether it should be legal to give state money to child care and preschool services affiliated with religious groups, and #131:  The Fat Lady Sings 161114, #136:  Recounting Nonsense 161128, and #143:  A Geographical Look at the Election 161217, considering the aftermath of the election and the cries to change the outcome.

We had a number of pages connected to the new sexual revolution, including #79:  Normal Promiscuity 160507, #83:  Help!  I’m a Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body! 160521, and #115:  Disregarding Facts About Sexual Preference 160926.

Other topics loosely under discrimination include #87:  Spanish Ice Cream 160616 (about whether a well-known shop can refuse to take orders in languages other than English), #130:  Economics and Racism 161112 (about how and why unemployment stimulates racist attitudes), and #135:  What Racism Is 161127 (explaining why it is possible for blacks to have racist attitudes toward whites).  Several with connections to law and economics include #105:  Forced Philanthropy 160820 (taxing those with more to give to those with less), #108:  The Value of Ostentation 160826 (arguing that the purchase of expensive baubles by the rich is good for the poor), #137:  Conservative Penny-pinching 161023 (discussing spending cuts), and #145:  The New Internet Tax Law 161219 (about how Colorado has gotten around the problem of charging sales tax on Internet purchases).

A few other topics were hit, including one on freedom of speech and religion called #144:  Shutting Off the Jukebox 161218, one on scare tactics used to promote policy entitled #80:  Environmental Blackmail 160508, and one in which court decisions in recent immigration cases seem likely to impact the future of legalized marijuana, called #96:  Federal Non-enforcement 160727.

Of course Temporal Anomalies is a popular subject among the readers; the budget has been constraining of late, so we have not done the number of analyses we would like, but we did post a full analysis of Time Lapse 160402.  We also reported on #85:  Time Travel Coming on Television 160528, and tackled two related issues, #81:  The Grandfather Paradox Problem 160515 and #117:  The Prime Universe 160930.

We have a number of other posts that we’re categorizing as Logic/Miscellany, mostly because they otherwise defy categorization (or, perhaps, become categories with single items within them).  #92:  Electronic Tyranny 060708 is a response to someone’s suggestion that we need to break away from social media to get our lives back.  #93:  What Is a Friend? 060720 presents two concepts of the word, and my own preference on that.  #112:  Isn’t It Obvious? 160904 is really just a couple of real life problems with logical solutions.  I also did a product review of an old washing machine that was once new, Notes on a Maytag Centennial Washing Machine 160424.

Although it does not involve much writing, with tongue planted firmly in cheek I offer Gazebos in the Wild, a Pinterest board which posts photographs with taxonomies attempting to capture and identify these dangerous wild creatures in their natural habitats.  You would have to have heard the story of Eric and the Gazebo for that to be funny, I think.

Of course, I post on social media, but the interesting ones are on Patreon, and mostly because I include notes on projects still ahead and life issues impeding them.  As 2017 arrives, I expect to continue writing and posting–I already have two drafts, one on music and the other on breaking bad habits.  I invite your feedback.

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#149: Toward the Third Novel

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #149, on the subject of Toward the Third Novel.

Many of you have been following the serialized e-publication of the Multiverser novels; if you have missed them, all the chapters and all the behind-the-writings web log posts are indexed, first at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel followed at Old Verses New.  There is also now a Multiverser Novel Support Pages section in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

I have mentioned before that the first novel was really Bob Slade’s story, but that I did not know it when I was writing it.  I only knew, as if instinctively, that he had to be the character who won the climactic battle, and just as instinctively that at that point he had finished an entire story and did not belong in the second book.  It wasn’t until some years after it went to press that I was reading extant portions of Aristotle’s Poetics and realized why that was:  the book is framed within the story of an ordinary guy, a young auto mechanic, who fancies himself a great warrior hero, who by the end of the story is that great warrior hero.  There is of course more to it than that.  Bob himself has some loose ends to his story, like his relationship with the djinni he freed from the bottle.  There’s also Joe Kondor, who has some issues that need to be resolved and who is butting heads but also becoming friends with the third character, Lauren Hastings.  She seems to be in the middle of a much bigger story, with quite a few missing pieces.

Although again I don’t know that I knew and probably would not then have said so, in a sense the second book is Derek Brown’s story.  He is if anything even more ordinary than Bob Slade as the story opens, with no aspirations to be anything, just a frightened preteenaged boy.  In the end, he saves a world–well, a huge space colony, to be precise.  He does it together with Lauren and Joe.  Joe continues to deal with his issues, and Lauren’s story is gaining momentum, but with Derek we have something of an entire story.

Those books have now been posted, and hopefully you have read them because otherwise I have probably spoiled at least some of the surprises.  I am writing this because there is a third novel in the series, fully written, and I need to discover how much interest there is in reading it.  I can’t tell you that that’s the only issue, but it is the big one.

img0149sunset

Nor can I tell you too much about the third book, but there are some things I can say.  It is entitled For Better or Verse, and it has been fully written but has no artwork.  It has not been edited save by me; I asked someone to edit it who said yes but has not yet returned any notes to me about it.  But I’m not unhappy with it.  Kelly Tessena Keck, who edited Old Verses New, read the draft and was not unhappy with it.  So let me tell you what I can.

Bob Slade returns.  He is reunited with some people he knew in the first book, in surprising ways, and begins a new adventure and a new chapter in his life.

We also find out what has happened to Derek, which is in some ways perhaps terrifying in itself but introduces him to an entirely new perspective on himself and the multiverse.

Lauren’s story moves forward, pulling together all the loose ends of the first two books into a massive story arc in which everything comes together.  She again faces the vampires, accompanied by several of the people she has known, this time hundreds of years in the future.

Alas, Joe Kondor does not yet resolve his issues.  He faces them again in the fourth novel, which at this point is still in the “completing first draft” phase.

I’d like to say we’ll get there, but as I say it depends in significant part on reader interest.  People who post comments to this thread or send them by e-mail, or who comment about the novels on any of the social networking sites on which it is announced, certainly will encourage continuation of the story on this site.  More than that, people who support the effort financially and so make it possible for me to pay for the hosting and Internet access make it considerably more likely that I will win the argument concerning releasing the third novel to you.  Several people are already doing this through Patreon, and their few dollars a month each are covering a significant part of the costs; those who cannot afford a monthly commitment can still make a one-time contribution through PayPal.me, in any amount that works for you.

I’d like to see the next book released.  I don’t like to ask for money, but money is needed to make things possible.  I need you to do that.

Thank you.

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#148: Characters Succeed

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #148, on the subject of Characters Succeed.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have published my second novel, Old Verses New, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first one, you can find the table of contents for it at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  There was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; the last of those for the first novel is #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One, which indexes all the others and catches a lot of material from an earlier collection of behind-the-writings reflections that had been misplaced for a decade.  Now as the second is posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, and perhaps in a more serious way than those for the previous novel, because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book or how this book connects to events yet to come in the third (For Better or Verse)–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  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.

There is now also a new 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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #74:  Another Novel (which provided this kind of insight into the first nine chapters along with some background material on the book as a whole),
  2. #78:  Novel Fears (which continued with coverage of chapters 10 through 18),
  3. #82:  Novel Developments (which continued with coverage of chapters 19 through 27),
  4. #86:  Novel Conflicts (which continued with coverage of chapters 28 through 36),
  5. #89:  Novel Confrontations (coverage of chapters 37 through 45),
  6. #91:  Novel Mysteries (coverage of chapters 46 through 54),
  7. #94:  Novel Meetings (coverage of chapters 55 through 63),
  8. #100:  Novel Settling (coverage of chapters 64 through 72),
  9. #104:  Novel Learning (coverage of chapters 73 through 81),
  10. #110:  Character Redirects (chapters 82 through 90),
  11. #113:  Character Movements (chapters 91 through 99),
  12. #116:  Character Missions (100 through 108),
  13. #119:  Character Projects (109 through 117),
  14. #122:  Character Partings (118 through 126),
  15. #128:  Character Gatherings (127 through 135),
  16. #134:  Versers In Space (136 through 144),
  17. #142:  Characters Unite (145 through 153).

This picks up from there, and finishes the last nine chapters.

img0148mir

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.


Chapter 154, Brown 52

Derek’s darts have the twin problems (as story issues) that they are too effective and very limited.  I needed to prevent him from using them all in the upcoming battle without making it seem as if he was being stupid about his weapon choices.  Having the pack frame get caught in the hatch (and I have had pack frames catch in car doors) created a tense scene and let me take away the darts to be returned in the future.  I had not yet worked out how they would be returned to him, but I knew by this point what was happening to him after this, and that eventually he would be able to track his lost gear by the scriff sense.


Chapter 155, Kondor 94

I realized I was going to need another fight, so I needed a reason for there to be lizards on the bridge.  At this point, it was simple to prefigure the independent ventilation system, which meant that these lizards would not yet smell the meat in the galley.

Joe is stuck with his thoughts for a few minutes while Derek attempts to unlock a door.  In those few minutes he realizes just how very much the present situation seems planned, that he and Derek and Lauren all seem to have arrived in anticipation of a need only they could meet.  He tries to find another explanation, but apart from the wildest of coincidences he can’t really find one.


Chapter 156, Hastings 94

The use of the force shield limits them in two ways.  One is that it takes Lauren out of the combat; the other is that Joe can only shoot through the hole in the shield.  It gives me a different combat situation.

It also enabled me to kill a lot of lizards without doing too much description:  Lauren is my viewpoint character here, and she has her eyes closed to concentrate on making sure the shield holds.  Thus I can say that they’re shooting, and lizards are dying, and I don’t have to be more specific than that.

I’m not entirely certain what would cause a psionic shield to collapse in play, but the rules allow them to be designed in a variety of ways, and one of them would be that an impact in excess of a certain level would collapse it and rebound to the user.

This also let me intensify the combat situation while keeping Lauren out of it another couple minutes.  I knew once she was active, she would be taking the spotlight, and I wanted it to be about more than “Lauren kills a lot of creatures with a bit of help from Joe and Derek.”


Chapter 157, Brown 53

Although this chapter is in one sense about Derek facing a monster (something like the one Bob Slade faced at the end of the first book), it is also about Derek’s feelings about Lauren.  At the beginning, we see his reaction to her fall—much as a child would run to his stricken mother, or perhaps a close friend would run to a fallen friend.  There is nothing he can do for her; he has no medical training beyond what Joe taught him (the most important thing for Joe:  how to make antibiotics in a primitive world).  He recognizes that his only choice at this point is to fight the creatures.  Then as the chapter ends and Lauren’s guns echo in the room, Derek’s confidence in her surfaces:  he doesn’t think “now we have a chance;” he thinks, “we’ll make it now.”

The shorter chapters through this section gave something of a feeling of events happening swiftly.


Chapter 158, Kondor 95

As I bring Lauren back into the fight, I present her through the eyes of her companions.  She probably has a blinding headache at this point, but they don’t see that; they see her in motion, doing what she does in a fight.

She shoots it, then she leaps toward it, shoots again into its back in the middle of her flip, slams her weight onto its back, shoots again into its back, and leaps into the air before it can react.

Joe’s confidence in Lauren is not at the same level as Derek’s—he thinks “They had a chance now.”  She’s a colleague, and actually he’s never seen her fight (although Derek has not seen much of that either, only her teaching him to fight).

The trick with designing monsters always winds up that the big ones are easier to hit, but they have to be built to take more damage.  Joe’s bullets will often tear through the small ones; on the large ones, sometimes even Lauren’s .50 caliber shots lodge in its skin or do minimal damage in its thick fat and muscle.  Thus it takes a lot to kill the big one, even though it’s a lot easier to hit it.

Counting bullets is something that has to be done in game, and also in the story.  I know how many loads fit in those revolvers, so I have to track them so she doesn’t fire the gun more times than possible.  (I might have learned that from an old Encyclopedia Brown story where in recounting what happened the sole survivor of a gunfight gave himself one too many shots, and so was arrested because instead of a hero that killed the entire gang he must have been a member of the gang.)

Joe’s understanding of creature behavior lets him react before the creature actually strikes, because he anticipates it.  Thus he already has his pistol drawn when the monster moves.


Chapter 159, Hastings 95

The question concerning whether Derek was really “older” is an intriguing one in any situation in which you have an ageless child.  How much of our maturity is strictly experience and how much is actual change in our bodies?

I’m not certain when I decided that Derek would use the self-destruct on the ship, but I needed to think through an explanation for why it was not a problem for all the pieces of the ship to continue pretty much on course for the station without any serious fear of danger, but it would be a problem for the ship itself to do so.  The combination of smaller pieces with the shut down of the ship defenses made it make sense.

It is Joe who offers what we might call the “Christian” solution:  we are going to give our lives to save others.  It was simple for Lauren to confirm that, once she stopped to consider it.


Chapter 160, Brown 54

I needed a reason why the team couldn’t return to the habitat.  I could have said simply that the magic failed—it was supposed to be a low-magic world—but I wanted something the reader would find “logical”.  The fact that the magic required her to walk into the mist and out again gave me an opportunity:  take away her ability to walk.

It also made sense, in a way, that both Lauren and Joe would be looking up.  Although the creatures had been spread around the room, their experience had suggested that they liked to swoop down from above.  Thus the idea of one emerging from a floor vent and catching them unprepared had merit.

Again, Joe has the military reaction, quickly finding the problem and engaging the solution, while Derek is caught off guard.

Lauren is wearing her leggings, but they’re chain leggings, and the jaw will push the chain into her flesh.  So it’s not as bad as it might have been—it possibly could have severed her leg without that protection—but it’s still bad.

As I recall, I had created the comfort bubble in part with this moment in view, and I had gone back and mentioned its use several times so that the reader would remember that Lauren has this spell that creates a comfortable environment inside a dome.  I observe that for it to work, it would have to be a hollow sphere (or at least a closed hemisphere).  Thus it could work in the worst of environments, and outer space is one of those.  Of course, I knew it was going to work here; Lauren is completely surprised that it does.

Derek’s musings about considering what you want in a world are perhaps the lesson of this book.  It is easy to be unhappy with the way the world is; one need only look at the things that didn’t work the way you wanted.  People who say “count your blessings” probably mean something more like “look at the good things, the things that are the way you really wanted them.”  If you gave real thought to what you want in life, you are in a better position to assess how much of what you have is what you wanted.

Lauren’s story really spans the first three books.  It focuses on her fight against the vampires.  Even here, she is preparing for that, learning how to be part of a team and perhaps how to lead it, honing her combat skills in real battles.  She is also training Derek, as she trained Bethany, both of whom will be fighting with her in those final battles.  She in a sense recognizes it:  she left Tubrok alive and Merlin trapped.  She does not know the details of those things, but she wants them resolved.

Lauren’s smile is because Joe called the comfort bubble a “magic” bubble—she’s wearing him down.  Of course, he doesn’t really think of it as “magic”; he assumes it is a mind trick.


Chapter 161, Kondor 96

The comfort bubble is not a force wall, per se.  Derek or Joe could float out through the wall.  They are at the moment all moving the same direction at the same speed, but if they move around too much they could begin to drift apart, and it would be difficult to draw themselves back together.  So Lauren holds their sleeves.

All three characters have the problem that they have been separated from some of their equipment, possibly by distances that defy planetary dimensions.  Lauren is attempting to give her rod and Derek’s darts sufficient momentum in the right direction to close the gap so these can be found in the next world, and she’s keeping them alive as they hurtle toward the space station so that she and Joe are getting closer to the gear they left there (and where Derek left his bicycle), but all of them will have some hunting to do when they reach their next worlds.

Joe has had to consider Lauren’s suggestion that they don’t really know they will go to another universe every time; they only know that they have never met anyone who didn’t.  Despite his seeming immortality, he realizes that he very well might still be mortal, and this could be the end.

Joe in essence tricks Lauren into letting him render her unconscious, to save her the pain of death by vacuum.  It also was needed for me to push her back, credibly, to the point that she arrives in the next world unconscious and awakens.  I had let her move forward on that “step” scale, and had to ratchet her back before the fifth book, so I used this to do it.

Derek did have that conversation with Lauren once, about how dying was painful but then he was fine, and so he goes through the pain knowing that he will come out fine on the other end.  It impresses Joe, but it’s simply Derek’s experience.

Joe should have realized an inconsistency in his ideas.  If Lauren is maintaining the comfort bubble by thought, when he renders her unconscious it ought to collapse.  However, not only does he do so without hesitating, not considering the effect it would be likely to have, he also fails to recognize after the fact that the bubble continues.  But it doesn’t continue that long.

I had stretched out Lauren’s efforts to draw her rod and Derek’s darts toward them for an extended time specifically so that it would be credible for the comfort bubble to burst at this point.  It always lasts her at least an hour, and so they have been hurtling toward the station at least that long, maybe longer, and the lost objects are also moving toward them for a while before they die.

The description of death by vacuum is brief but hopefully accurate.


Chapter 162, Brown 55

As I did with Joe at the end of the first book, I here give what happens next to Derek.  I left it uncertain, though, whether he had been rescued in space and was in some kind of healing tank or whether this was some new experience in another universe.  However, I knew what had happened, where he was, what was going to happen next; I just didn’t want him (or the reader) to know.

I dropped one point that was entirely inconsistent with the healing tanks theory, and a few others that pointed away from it.  I was going to continue to play with the healing tanks theory in the next book.  That is, of course, where his actual situation is revealed—but not too quickly.


This concludes the behind the writings look at Old Verses New.  A decision about the release of the third novel, For Better or Worse, is still pending, and should be discussed in the next mark Joseph “young” web log post tomorrow.

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#142: Characters Unite

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #142, on the subject of Characters Unite.

With permission of Valdron Inc I am publishing my second novel, Old Verses New, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first one, you can find the table of contents for it at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  There was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; the last of those for the first novel is #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One, which indexes all the others and catches a lot of material from an earlier collection of behind-the-writings reflections that had been misplaced for a decade.  Now as the second is being posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, and perhaps in a more serious way than those for the previous novel, because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book or how this book connects to events yet to come in the third (For Better or Verse)–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them, or even put off reading these insights until the book has finished.  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.

There is now also a new 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, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #74:  Another Novel (which provided this kind of insight into the first nine chapters along with some background material on the book as a whole),
  2. #78:  Novel Fears (which continued with coverage of chapters 10 through 18),
  3. #82:  Novel Developments (which continued with coverage of chapters 19 through 27),
  4. #86:  Novel Conflicts (which continued with coverage of chapters 28 through 36),
  5. #89:  Novel Confrontations (coverage of chapters 37 through 45),
  6. #91:  Novel Mysteries (which continued with coverage of chapters 46 through 54),
  7. #94:  Novel Meetings (which continued with coverage of chapters 55 through 63),
  8. #100:  Novel Settling (which continued with coverage of chapters 64 through 72),
  9. #104:  Novel Learning (which continued with coverage of chapters 73 through 81),
  10. #110:  Character Redirects (which continued with coverage of chapters 82 through 90),
  11. #113:  Character Movements (chapters 91 through 99),
  12. #116:  Character Missions (100 through 108),
  13. #119:  Character Projects (109 through 117),
  14. #122:  Character Partings (118 through 126),
  15. #128:  Character Gatherings (127 through 135),
  16. #134:  Versers In Space (136 through 144).

This picks up from there, and I expect to continue with additional posts after every ninth chapter in the series.

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History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.


Chapter 145, Brown 49

Lauren uses a telepathic thought projection skill to project a “pattern” of how to do this into the minds of her companions.  We have not seen the skill used before, but it makes sense that she would have developed it in order to teach the “inner powers” to Bethany.  It is even plausible that she learned it from Merlin, who taught some of the inner powers to her as well.

Technically, watching what someone does with their mind to do something is not the same as reading what someone is currently thinking—e.g., your brain controls your movements when you walk (to some degree—muscle memory is also involved), but when we think of reading someone’s thoughts we do not expect to pick up the way they move their feet to maintain their balance as they walk.  However, reading what someone does is technically reading a different part of their mind, so Derek is adapting what he just learned to a new application.


Chapter 146, Kondor 91

One of the lessons to which Lauren keeps returning is that the ability to do something is not necessarily the license to do it.  Joe begins to see that as he experiments with reading minds around him.

I realized about this point that this book was already considerably longer than the first—this is the twentieth chapter past the last number of Verse Three, Chapter One.  Although I knew that a lot of writers tended to have the books get longer as the series progressed, I also knew that I was going to have to bring this to an end soon.  Thus Lauren did not get to stay here very long, and I was beginning the final mission.

Lauren has a solid argument for why each of the three of them should be part of the mission.  There are other good reasons for it, that is, other skills they bring to the table that will prove useful, but she’s right in the basics.

In creating the problem of the incoming ship, I had to figure out how to make it something that the space station people couldn’t handle.  I would be a while working out why it was the way it was, but at the moment I merely had to describe the problem.


Chapter 147, Hastings 91

The good-bye to Raeph was an important scene to resolve Lauren’s involvement here.  She was not in this world long, but it was an important step in her view of herself and her world.  He would not matter again, but the fact that they had these few days would matter in her story in the future.


Chapter 148, Brown 50

Lauren has decided that she can walk the twilight to reach the ship.  She does that by magic, and to do it she has to have a very clear unique image of her destination—we already know what happens if she gets it wrong, from the Camelot story.  So she uses her clairvoyance to search, trying to close on the ship in huge jumps, and then trying to get an image of something inside the ship.  We get to see what she’s doing, because Derek has already developed that “watch how this psionic skill works” skill.

The problem with atmosphere in zero gravity is one that people miss—convection currents which cause air temperatures to become relatively uniform happen because cold air is heavier than warm air, and as it falls it pushes the warm air up, creating motion and causing the air to mix.


Chapter 149, Kondor 92

The encouragement of having someone believe in you often has this aspect of wanting to be as good as they believe.  It here motivates Joe to do this well, and to believe he can do it, because Lauren believes he can do it.

I needed some kind of alien predator that would look frightening and not be a retread of something else.  I went with a dragon/lizard/snake motif.

Using the capture rod to crush something to death was invented at this point.  As far as I know, no one had ever used it that way, although it was Ed’s invention.

A laser scalpel as a tool for cutting something from a high-powered electrical circuit has the distinct advantage that you don’t actually touch anything with anything conductive.  That’s why he chose it.


Chapter 150, Hastings 92

Lauren has been thinking of this as a rescue; when Joe prepares for a fight, she realizes it’s more on the order of a raid, and she’d better be ready to fight.

Lauren thinks through a lot of reasons for using the capture rod as her primary weapon, but omits the most obvious one:  it’s in her hands, and she has no other way to carry it.


Chapter 151, Brown 51

The difference Derek notices between his own response to the fallen bit of metal and Joe’s response is the difference between Joe’s trained combat mind and Derek’s minor experiences:  Joe quickly determined that the metal was not itself important, but that it might have been tripped by something dangerous overhead.  Derek is stuck on the object that fell.

The notion that pipes and cables constituted a sort of high-tech jungle canopy occurred to me here:  it provided potential habitat for the predators.

The idea of using an opponent trapped in the force field bubble as a club to hit other opponents was also new here.

Lauren is probably right about swapping the power packs:  if they trade, they change ownership.


Chapter 152, Kondor 93

The idea hit me that if you were generating gravity artificially and you had elevators, it would be logical to have the gravity generation decrease when you rose and increase when you descended, so that there would be no change in the feeling of movement.

This side trip to the galley was primarily because I needed to make the mission more difficult without cluttering it with a series of fights along the straight route.  Diverging to the galley in order to distract the lizards had an advantage in telling the story.  I wound up running them into a fight anyway, but it was considerably less like trying to fight your way through packs of creatures on the way to the bridge.  It also seemed a reasonable plan to lure the creatures away from their path.


Chapter 153, Hastings 93

I had the problem with Lauren that the three rods were all useful, but she couldn’t effectively carry more than one, and even that limited what else she could do.  Thus here she drops the capture rod, and is without it for the rest of the book.

I decided that creatures that glide would not do well in narrow vertical tubes with ladders.  They might have been in there when the gravity was out, but if so they’d probably have fallen to the bottom within the first ten minutes of struggling.


I hope these “behind the writings” posts continue to be of interest, and perhaps some value, to those of you who have been reading the novel.  If there is any positive feedback, they will continue.

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