Tag Archives: Fiction

#359: Characters Engage

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #359, on the subject of Characters Engage.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first six novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, Garden of Versers, and Versers Versus Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the seventh, Re Verse All,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the fourth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 19 through 24.  It was suggested that more shorter posts were a better choice than fewer longer ones, so there will be posts every six chapters, that is, every other week, for this book.  Previous entries were:

  1. #354:  Versers Reorienting, covering chapters 1 through 6;
  2. #355:  Versers Resettling, for chapters 7 through 12.
  3. #357:  Characters Connect, for chapters 13 through 18.

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

Chapter 19, Hastings 192

I needed something to happen, and this was the story in which things could happen.  I knew that a fight with the orcs would be a short and dull bit of combat, but that I could use them to set up something more interesting.


Chapter 20, Takano 19

Eating out was an abrupt inspiration, and an awkward one because I was moving toward having Beam take his crew to a restaurant as well, but it seemed the best step for the story so I did it.

I had had the overpayment in mind for a while, thinking that Mr. Billings would give Tommy fifty dollars specifically to see whether she would correct him.  I also thought from the beginning that she would, and that she would not realize it was a test until after she passed it.

I had thought of the fact that cars in the early sixties did not have seat belts, and intended to include it, but then skipped the drive entirely.  I realized it when I returned to finish the chapter and was rereading, jarred by the jump from Tommy in the kitchen thinking about what clothes were going to cost to Tommy abruptly reading the menu in the restaurant.  I decided I should do something to move the scene, and remembered my seat belt concerns.

I remember when there were a lot of diners that had what I guess was then a modern look, as if someone parked an oversized railroad car by the side of the road.  I even ate in one when I was in elementary school which I insisted to my parents we had to visit because it was owned by the father of one of my classmates.  (I think his name was Keith Sweeney, but we’re remembering elementary school in a town I left when I was twelve.)

I always ordered the roast turkey and stuffing when I was young, and my mother always told me it wouldn’t be as good as hers, which it wasn’t, but I loved stuffing and we only ever had it with turkey.  I had considered having Mr. Billings recommend chicken, either fried or roasted, but then that would probably sound like he was recommending something cheap and chicken was probably something Mrs. Billings made considerably more frequently than turkey.  I did not give anyone my love for turkey, but decided that it was a good option for the recommendation, and then the same reasoning Tommy used was what kept me from changing it to chicken:  having asked advice she took it.

Russian dressing back then was pretty much catsup and mayonnaise, sometimes fancied.  Since then that has become Thousand Island, probably with the addition of a bit of pickle relish or something, and a very few companies make a tangier dressing labeled Russian.  I went from Italian, which I never really liked, to Russian, to French, which was my dressing of choice until the new Russian and Honey Mustard appeared.  I suspect Tommy would have preferred Honey Mustard, but it didn’t exist then.

I didn’t name the soups because I was already too deep into food again, and I made a point of avoiding discussing what everyone else ate for that reason.  The same applied to the vegetables.  Modern diners offer a dozen choices on vegetables, aided by modern microwaves and cooking techniques.  In those days, they cooked pots of vegetables on the stove top and served patrons from whatever they made that day.

I swithered on the coffee, but couldn’t think of a better after dinner drink.  A milkshake would have been too filling for someone already full.

Having Tammy mention the eagle seemed a good way to recall that she was there, and of course she liked the eagle.

I was probably less interested in what Mister Billings did than Tommy was.  I had intended to include some suggestion in this chapter that they showed her how to find the stores, but it was getting belabored already so I dropped it perhaps somewhat abruptly.


Chapter 21, Beam 62

I had expected this to go very quickly into a restaurant, and it bothered me because even though I had been thinking of taking Beam’s party to a restaurant for quite a while, I rather unexpectedly put Tommy in one first.  However, I kept thinking about how Beam would find his way anywhere and get back home, even with the scriff sense.  Then I remembered that he had played role playing games, and decided that he would apply what he knew of mapping from the games, plus marching band experience, to create maps.

Once I had decided that, I knew he would need paper and pencils, and as I mused on that I realized that those would not be common items in the world in which he found himself.  Just as there were no books for the shelves, so too there was no paper in the desk.  There would presumably be paper somewhere, but it would not have been sought by anyone in so long that the computer would have trouble finding it in the database, and then locating a place that had it in stock, and then transporting it hundreds of miles from wherever it was to get it to him.  Even so, with the high speed transit system that still functioned and no one used, it would not take more than two days to bring anything from anywhere in the world.

I needed Beam to have compelling reasons to leave the apartment block, particularly as his companions are living a very comfortable life and have nothing to motivate them to do anything.  Worrying about what’s beyond the door and why it is giving them everything they want was a viable starting point.


Chapter 22, Hastings 193

I wanted part of what the orcs said to be included in the text, but for several reasons not all of it.  For one thing, the introductory speeches would be boring; further, I didn’t really want to put what Tiras explained to the orcs into the text at this point.  My solution was to have Lauren think of her clairaudience after the discussion had started, so she would effectively walk in in the middle of the conversation.

Dungeons & Dragons orcs are lawful evil.  That doesn’t mean they won’t lie, but it does mean they follow rules.  I needed them to send the party into trouble without actually lying to them, and thus the path they recommend does lead to the land of the drow, but it’s not a good way to get there.

Late in the editing/publication process I realized, more than once, that in the orc dialogue I had written “long” where the correct word was “along”.  Each time I saw it I considered whether to change it, and decided that since it was an orc speaking I would leave the error as part of its speech pattern.


Chapter 23, Takano 20

The drive-in is a popular trope from the fifties, represented today mostly by the Stewart’s Root Beer restaurants, which are rare enough that it’s easy to suppose Tommy has never seen one (I recently heard most of them are scattered in New Jersey).  The clothing is familiar to me mostly from films and television shows of the period.

I remember strip malls and similar shopping centers from the days before indoor malls were common.  In fact, the Garden State Plaza, one of the earliest and at one time largest malls on the east coast, was originally all open air sidewalks with stores in buildings separated by them; it was later enclosed in a major construction project as enclosed malls became more popular.  I picked three stores that were major retail chains when I was younger which had vanished from the world by the time my kids were born.  A&P was crushed by the unions, founded a wholly-owned non-union subsidiary and closed all its union stores.  I think Lafayette died with the shrinking hobby electronics market, in which Radio Shack was probably the last survivor.  2 Guys was a cheap-end department store competing with K-Mart, the bargain outlet of Kresge, itself a cheap-end department store, and was probably killed by the appearance of chains like Wal-Mart.

I had bounced around several ideas for a cover story all of which began with the idea that she had just moved here from somewhere.  It started with England, but I thought that meant she would have to fake an accent and possibly maintain it if she made friends with anyone in the store.  My mind then went to Australia and New Zealand, on the thought that Americans in 1960 would be completely unfamiliar with those accents, but then the obvious one hit me:  she came from Japan, which she actually had just done, and she was originally from America but claimed she lived in Japan for a few years recently.

It was vital that I find a way to connect Tommy to her ostensible peers in this world, and she wasn’t going to be able to go to school.  (I figured she would say she finished secondary school in Japan.)  My initial thought was that she would become friends with a young girl working in the clothing department of the store.  However, since I needed to give her the opportunity to see what girls her age wore casually, I had set up the teen hangout at the drive-in hamburger stand, and then I was thinking seriously that she could return there with a few dollars and meet several people.  That would accelerate her integration into the peer group, but I was very uncertain about the group dynamic in such a situation.  I took these thoughts, with some of the problems I saw to each side, to Cassandra Starrett, a peer of my sons.  She suggested that the easiest way was for the clerk to be young and for Tommy to talk to her about the popular music playing.  That was good, but that there wouldn’t be popular music playing—it’s been a long time, but I think 2 Guys was silent that far back, and the first music to play in stores was what was called Muzak, a brand name originating in the mid 1950s and spreading slowly, also known generically as elevator music because it played in department store and high rise office elevators.  But I decided that in 1960 a teenaged girl with a job would probably own a transistor radio (I think I owned one before 1965, and I wasn’t a teen for a few more years after that).  I changed “woman” to “girl”, and set up to do that in the next chapter.


Chapter 24, Beam 63

I had worried that this was going to be too much of a parallel to Tommy’s story, and even managed to delay it one chapter cycle to avoid going from one restaurant to another.  I managed, I think, to focus more on the technology and the cultural ramifications, and avoid getting too involved in the food.

That Beam doesn’t eat seafood is based on the player on whom Beam is modeled.  We have taken him to one of the finest seafood restaurants on the New Jersey shore (The Lobster House in Cape May, has its own fleet of fishing vessels, is a wholesaler to other area restaurants, and so always has fresh seafood) and he orders fried chicken.

The recognition that this was an American restaurant menu came through the question in my mind of what Bron would consider ordinary food.  Of course, medieval English peasants ate pies, which were in essence loaves of crusty bread with vegetables and sometimes meat cooked into them, and we only see those at Renaissance Faires and the like.  I’ve never had steak and kidney pie, but online photos suggest it is more like our chicken pot pie and shepherds pie than like the pies of medieval peasants, more like Victorian manor pies with lots of meat and gravy and perhaps vegetables inside a pastry crust.  Besides, I’ve never seen it in an American restaurant.  Thinking about it, I decided that a panini was probably most like that, although I’ve admittedly never had one (probably should, sounds good).  I first thought of a wrap (another thing I’ve never had, but less appealing), and decided that the thin burrito-like bread would not be like what Bron wanted.  I skipped what everyone ordered, largely because it would take me too close to the Takano storyline and I didn’t need it.

The realization that there must be people somewhere is helping build tension and anticipation.

On an early re-read I decided that the restaurant would have other dining rooms, and the only way to get to them was via arches off the main room, which at this point had to be left and right, the front and back having been established as entrance and kitchen.


This has been the fourth behind the writings look at Re Verse All.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with another novel and more behind the writings posts for it.

#357: Characters Connect

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #357, on the subject of Characters Connect.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first six novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, Garden of Versers, and Versers Versus Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the seventh, Re Verse All,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the third mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 13 through 18.  It was suggested that more shorter posts were a better choice than fewer longer ones, so there will be posts every six chapters, that is, every other week, for this book.  Previous entries were:

  1. #354:  Versers Reorienting, covering chapters 1 through 6;
  2. #355:  Versers Resettling, for chapters 7 through 12.

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

Chapter 13, Hastings 190

I had been musing on this meeting for a while, and knew the gist of it but not the detail.  The notion that the leaders had missed dinner discussing her hit me right as I was finishing, so I let her solve that.

Malacon the Shining Legacy was an antipaladin played by Ed Porrini.  Most of the players in Ed’s game, and probably all whose names I remember, first played other characters in my game and were invited join Ed’s.

As noted in connection with chapter 18, Ed Jones asked that I remove all reference to features and persons in his game world.  As a result, Valdaronia became Darvania here.

Long after I wrote that the only hemovores in Lauren’s experience besides vampires were ticks and mosquitoes I thought of leeches.  I swithered for a long time about whether to go back and include them, but ultimately decided against that.


Chapter 14, Takano 17

Creating a realistic babysitting day was perhaps a bit of a challenge, but I had babysat and been babysat, and I had done tea parties with my sister and the girls in the neighborhood (although I thought them boring).  I need Tommy to fit here without her really trying to do so, and this works, I think.

I expected this chapter to go further than it did, but got to a point where I needed to change.

My mother never made peanut butter and honey; I never had it until a friend introduced me to it my junior year of college.  I admit they are very messy sandwiches, but they are tasty, particularly toasted.

Playing in the yard with neighbors was standard for us as kids, but we didn’t have a nearby park and we did have swings, sandbox, and eventually monkey bars in the back yard.  As I wrapped up the chapter I had not decided whether to complicate my life by introducing neighborhood kids, particularly as I was already somewhat using the same template–my own neighborhood–that I used when Lauren was describing her upbringing to the doctor.


Chapter 15, Beam 60

The night I was going to start this chapter I cut a beef roast into thick steaks and broiled them, and then after I had eaten I burst an abscess and went into the hospital.  It was five days before I actually began the chapter, and while hospitalized I kept trying to write the three stories mentally but wasn’t getting farther than a few paragraphs on any of them other than Beam.


Chapter 16, Hastings 191

I debated how to integrate Lauren into the group, and realized repeatedly that her wagon was a complication that meant she was going to have to be in the rear.  It also occurred to me as I was writing this chapter that I don’t remember how the pack animals were managed, but I’m sure there were some.

It was at this point that I recognized I was going to have to construct the party so Lauren could try to learn their names.  I had already remembered some, and gotten some from Jim Denaxas, but I sent a message to Ed Jones, who ran that game, and he promised to think about it and reply, which put me kind of on hold.  He never came back with any recollections.  Eventually I put together quite a bit of the original, created a new name for one of the characters, and built the teams and squads with what I had but without having names for all of them.

A good part of this was plot exposition, through giving the history of the previous venture.

Nightstalker was the name of a character played by Dom Porrini, Ed Porrini’s younger brother, a winged folk whom Jim Denaxas remembered being a magic-user.

My wife played a cleric/magic-user who under Ed’s mystery options rules had completely lost her memory.  Unfortunately I could not remember her character name other than that I thought it began with A and was not a common word or name.  After debating long I decided to use a medicinal word and alter the spelling, making her Annseff.  I do not recall whether she was a human or a half-elf, but I’m hoping it won’t matter.

Ed had named Remoir the Dull Legacy.  We had come to an awkward plot moment where there were two new players but no obvious way to introduce their characters to the party, so Brad Ladlee had his character Lurt go out into the street and pick three people seemingly at random, two of them the new player characters and the third an unknown.  We had been toying with a joke martial arts style called Bo Ring, which I had detailed for use in play, and Ed decided that this character would be an adept of that style.  The style being my creation, I kept the character and changed the name to Rodan the Tedious Endowment.  I picked Rodan because I always suspected that Remoir was a warp of the artist Renoir, so I warped the name of the artist Rodin.

I also always suspected that the title “the dull legacy” was a dig at Ed Porrini’s “shining legacy” title, but have no proof of that.

I changed Ghost Hills to Blood Hills.

I did not like changing the name of Laneth Lelach Theana, largely because it was the model on which I had built Derek’s sprite name, Theian Torenu Morach, and that of other sprites in his sprite world.  However, even though in Ed’s intention it was all one word, it was his invention, and I felt it necessary to alter it.  Since at this point only the first name was mentioned, I changed only that from Laneth to Anneth.

Numerous times while writing this book I remembered recognizing in the early chapters of Verse Three, Chapter One that dungeon crawls weren’t particularly easy to keep interesting.  I had a book in which dungeon crawls of a sort were going to be the primary action (with Tomiko adding some light to the darkness for the first half, but then getting into the dark with the others), and I had to keep looking for ways to keep them interesting.  Two days before I published this chapter I realized that I had made this chapter interesting by character interaction, which I would do many times through the book.


Chapter 17, Takano 18

I needed to settle Tommy somewhere, and while I still had a lot of issues concerning how to integrate her into the world, making her the weekday babysitter for Tammy seemed the right first step.

I didn’t give names to the neighborhood kids even though I did expect to continue in this location partly because Tommy didn’t expect to do so at this point so learning the names would not have been important to her, and partly as I mentioned because I was basing this somewhat on the neighborhood of my childhood, which I used for Lauren’s description of her own childhood neighborhood.  I had not used the names of the real kids, and in fact reversed some of their genders, but I did not want this to be too like that.


Chapter 18, Beam 61

I’ve put myself in an awkward position, since for both Beam and Takano I’m mostly writing about domestic tranquility.  Hence I’ve got Beam cooking and drinking while I try to move him forward.

It was as I was writing this chapter that I received word from Ed Jones that he did not want me using anything in the novel from his game world Valdron or created by him.  There was an initial misunderstanding concerning what I was writing, but I agreed to rebrand anything that was clearly his, including character and place names.

I had left this chapter hanging for a few days, feeling that it was too short but not knowing what else to do with it.  Finally I decided what I was going to do in the next Beam chapter (not a new idea, something I had intended but hadn’t figured out when) and let this one end where it was.


This has been the third behind the writings look at Re Verse All.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with another novel and more behind the writings posts for it.

#354: Versers Reorienting

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #354, on the subject of Versers Reorienting.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first six novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, Garden of Versers, and Versers Versus Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the seventh, Re Verse All,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the first mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 1 through 6.  It was suggested that more shorter posts were a better choice than fewer longer ones, so there will be posts every six chapters, that is, every other week, for this book.

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

Chapter 1, Hastings 186

When I began publishing Versers Versus Versers and had introduced the Tomiko “Tommy” Takano character I attempted to get feedback from my readers through social media.  I got very little, and most of it amounted to, “Keep writing the novels”.  The clearest single statement I received said that one particular reader who is also an author most enjoyed the Lauren Hastings stories, also enjoyed the Bob Slade stories, and did not at all enjoy the James Beam stories.  That gave me good reason to include Lauren.  I also had another reader who loved all the James Beam stories, which combined with the fact that he was the second newest character gave me reason to include him.  The Tomiko stories got some favorable mention, or at least I so understood it, and since to this point she had only seen a dozen chapters it made sense to continue her in this book.  Meanwhile, that gave me reasonably different settings, so I have some decisively distinct stories.

I also realized that all three stories were going to be long and involved, which wasn’t bad in itself as they could intertwine in a long book, but I was already posting the chapters of the sixth book and it was short.  I was thus anticipating not having a finished product by the time I finished publishing the other.  As it turned out, I wrote the last chapter of this book after I finished posting the last chapter of the other, but by the time I had posted all the character sheets (at three per week) to the support site, I had finished a quick read-through edit and a workable cover and was formatting chapters for e-publication.

I had had some time to work out in my own mind how Lauren was going to experience the impact of the truck and the arrival in the new world.


Chapter 2, Takano 13

The decision to have her live in Delaware was a bit of a risk for me because I’ve driven through the state and visited many people and places within it, but I’ve never lived there.  Still, I think I’m familiar enough for what I need.

When she said that she was from Delaware, I realized that I hadn’t actually decided whether that existed in this world.  I subsequently decided that yes, this was the United States as I know it.

I needed to connect Tommy to something in this world, and the fact that she gets at least partial credit for saving the four-year-old was a good basis for the mother to offer her lunch and a chance to clean up.

I think that the Billings family was part of a 1950s TV show, and Janet may even have been one of the names from it, but I’m not sure of that.  It just seemed like a 1950s suburban family name.


Chapter 3, Beam 56

The Industrial Complex is the kind of detailed world that takes quite a bit to get oriented, and the player on whom Beam is modeled did many things here most of which I don’t remember.  However, I’m starting by getting him aware of some of the important details.


Chapter 4, Hastings 187

The character she meets was what was called a Winged Folk in a variant D&D game Ed Jones ran; I played him, and used his name as well as I can recall it from the game.  I am still attempting mentally to reconstruct the members of the party, with a bit of help from Jim Denaxas (who played the druid Zamfir in that game).  I also know where they are going, but have very little notion of what they are likely to experience along the way.

Asking whether Tiras is an angel is a bit of a joke, because Lauren was once asked the same question, and having been to the edge of heaven she is aware that heavenly beings come in a lot more shapes and sizes than just winged men.  However, confronted by a winged man it’s still her first thought.


Chapter 5, Takano 14

I needed a likely light lunch for a little girl in the summer, and decided that grilled cheese and tomato soup was probable.  As soon as I thought of it I realized that Tommy had had quite a bit of cheese recently, which put her in a bit of a quandary, but then, she would choose to eat rather than not.

I am not a bubble bath person; I remember it from childhood, though, and I know that women are often fond of them.


Chapter 6, Beam 57

I don’t have actual floorplans for apartments in the originally designed world, on the assumption that these would be so numerous and varied that referees would need to devise them as needed.


This has been the first behind the writings look at Re Verse All.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with another novel and more behind the writings posts for it.

#351: In re: Evil Star

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #351, on the subject of In re:  Evil Star.

Regis Pannier and his kind staff over at the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, who frequently translate my gaming articles for distribution to their audience, recently provided me with a link to a section of what is called the Internet Archive, complete with The Wayback Machine (I knew Mister Peabody had invented something useful) in which a very large number of my Game Ideas Unlimited articles have been preserved in whole, and a few more in part, along with some Blogless Lepolt entries (my old Gaming Outpost web log) and a couple of book reviews.  With encouragement from readers I am going to attempt to republish most of this material.  Most of the Game Ideas Unlimited material will go to the current RPG-ology series at the Christian Gamers Guild, although some of it might come here; one of the web log posts (about Harry Potter has been slated for the Faith in Play series early next year, and probably a few articles and particularly the book reviews will be coming here.

This is the first of those, originally published November 5, 2007.

I was handed a reviewer copy of this book, Evil Star by Alexander Horowitz; it is billed as the second book in The Gatekeepers series.  The first, Raven’s Gate, escaped my notice despite being on the New York Times’ Best Seller list at some point.  (That has more to do with my inattention to such lists than with any lack of merit in the book.) It is entirely accidental that I received this book.  It was tossed in the bag with my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because the bookstore was celebrating the release of the book and looking for things they had around that they could give away.  The person who gave me this book had no idea that I was a reviewer (he did know I was an author, and had read my novel), and no expectation that I should review it.  However, I read it, and since it was a pre-release “early reader edition” copy I thought I would write a review.

I am sorely tempted to call this series, “Harry Potter Meets Cthulu”.  The connections seem to scream at me.

The hero of the series, Matthew Freeman who prefers to be called Matt, is in this book fourteen years old; that makes him a bit older than Harry was in his second book (he had just turned twelve).  It is not clear to me, however, how old Matt was in the beginning of the first book.  Like Harry, Matt is an orphan, although it seems his parents really did die in a car accident and not until he was eight.  That tale is told, apparently, in the first book.  Like Harry, Matt has powers he does not understand and cannot always control; he was aware of the car accident before it occurred, and he sometimes has similar premonitions here.  He also sometimes causes telekinetic events, but through severe emotional upset, not intention.  He is even described as thin with unkempt dark hair and blue eyes.

The similarities to Harry don’t end there, though.  We are told that there are seven gates, and apparently each book revolves around the effort to keep the next one closed.  first grade math says that means there will be seven books in this series, just as there were in the Potter books.  Matt is the hero, the focus of the stories; his friends, young and old, help him, but in the critical moments he is the one on the line.

In fairness to Horowitz, at least some of these are the tropes of the genre: fantasy books for adolescents have adolescent heroes.  Cry of the Icemark* was similar in some ways.  Matt does not have a group of adolescent friends; he has the friendship of a young adult reporter, and the support of a secret international organization, but he is completely estranged from his peers.  No one is helping him learn to use his powers.  He is not exactly unique; there is much in the book about “the five”, of which he is the first to be identified, and he dreams about the other four trying to reach him.  Still, in this book one of the others does reach him, recognizing him from his own dreams.  He, too, has powers he does not understand, but they are very different powers.

As to Cthulu, he is never mentioned; however, the series revolves around a set of gates through which the “Old Ones” threaten to return to bring darkness to the word, and this book focuses on an ancient newly discovered book which tells how to open one of those gates.  A wealthy reclusive businessman is the evil monster attempting to get the book and open the gate.

I did not feel that Matt was as familiar a character as Harry.  It was a weakness of the book that I had trouble identifying with its hero.  Harry stayed with family members who did not like him, but Matt had an insane former foster mother trying to kill him.  Harry was alone at school but for a couple of friends, but Matt was alone on the streets of the Peruvian slums with a boy with whom he shared no common language.  Harry meets creatures of fantasy and learns to control his power through the mentoring of those more experienced than he, while Matt meets Incan survivors and struggles to work through his own use of his powers.  Where Harry’s powers made us feel that he was special, Matt’s powers make us feel that he is different; we want to be like Harry, but not like Matt.  Even the fact that Harry goes to school in what seems a very ordinary way (despite it being a school for wizards) gives us a point of contact; Matt is behind in his education, because his life is constantly interrupted and he has to move to another school.  It just never felt like Matt was a sympathetic character.

On the other hand, the author takes us on quite an adventure.  Matt is the reluctant hero here; he wants to be a normal boy, but he’s not normal, and fate will not leave him alone.  In his new school he is the outcast, and the fact that he pulls the fire alarm before the explosion that would have killed almost everyone only makes him less accepted.  The Nexus, the organization that is fighting this battle, wants and perhaps needs his help, but he is trying to avoid getting involved–and yet gets pulled half way around the world and into the midst of the trouble as events unfold.  It is not always clear who are the villains and who the allies, and more than once he flees from those who would have helped him.  Scores, maybe hundreds, of people are trying to help him, but at the critical moment he stands alone but for the other, younger, boy.

The book is laced with some wonderful images, many of them descriptions of Peru from its ancient wonders to its modern slums.  If there is a fault here, it lies in the interlacing of fantasy elements–a hidden Incan city, secret passages in those preserved wonders known only to the surviving Incans–with the hard facts.  Even I am not certain where the facts ended and the fantasies began at times.  That is only a fault because of the wonderfully clear portrayals of the realities of Peru, the author’s skill at bringing us into that place, and because (being published by Scholastic) it is targeted at a teen or pre-teen audience who will benefit greatly from the look at that society, if they can sort out the reality from the rest.

The copy I have has a number of errors in it which caught my eye as an editor, which may also have caught the eye of Scholastic’s editors before the finished version went to press.  Most of these are minor typos, a wrong but similar word here or there.  The mistake which most bothered me involved a description of the actions of a minor character, a truck driver on his way to be beaten and robbed.  Before the incident we are told that he is thinking about asking a certain waitress at a certain truck stop out on a date; after the incident we are told that his wife was contacted and gave them important information.  I prefer to think that the author overlooked part of what he was doing, rather than that he perceives married truck drivers commonly asking women out on dates; I hope, at least, that this was a mistake, and that it was corrected before the final copy.

I am tempted to attempt to obtain a copy of the first book.  After all, it is often the case that one book in a series is weaker than the others, and this might be the weaker book.  It is not a bad idea for a series; the Lovecraftian horror concepts are present but not terrifyingly so (although I’m probably not the best judge of that–Lovecraft has never frightened me).  There is madness, there is betrayal, there are evil people working toward evil ends.  Matt does not always emerge victorious, does not always make the best decisions, and is not always eager to do what he must do.  However, he proves the hero through his efforts, and moves an epic story forward a significant chapter.  I wouldn’t expect this to be the stuff of a best seller, but then, such things are determined by factors other than how they appeal to fifty-something author-reviewers.

—–
*A review of Cry of the Icemark had been previously published, and has been saved, and will be copied here within a few weeks.

#350: The Return of Vazor

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #350, on the subject of The Return of Vazor.

What seems a long time ago, someone who posts under the name “Vazor” found Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies, and read extensively the articles on the site, including particularly the theory articles.  He then wrote Analysis of the Replacement Theory of Time Travel, in which he praised the ideas but also raised questions.  If the dates are to be credited, our interaction, including my reply Vazor’s Time Travel Questions First Response, appeared at the end of June of 2008.  Obviously from that title I was anticipating a reply from him, and now he admits that it is long overdue but presents for my consideration A Long Overdue Time Travel Post in which he raises some more questions.  Of course, since 2008 I have added a significant amount to my site, and I’m not certain what he has read from it, but we’ll see what we can cover.

I would say I have a lot of reading to do.  He is responding to something I wrote twelve years ago in response to his comments on articles I wrote before that, and getting a clear notion of what articles he has not seen will be part of the problem.  I have read his recent post, but I think I will have to read both his previous post and my response before I can tackle this.  Also, I am doing the initial draft as a web log post, but if it gets too long I am going to have to reformat it to add to the Temporal Anomalies site in the Conversation section that has been untouched perhaps since our last interaction.

Vazor spends a fair amount of time discussing parallel dimension theory and distinguishing it from what I have called divergent dimension theory.  I have not put dates on my pages, but I made the same distinction between parallel dimension theory and divergent dimension theory in my Theory 101 series originally published at TheExaminer.com.  I don’t see any complications there, other than that I think we both reject both of those theories as not being time travel.

I am then quite surprised when he says

I really only have one big question left.  How does an infinity loop get created?  Why does the fact that the young Traveler will not travel back, destroy the future of the C-D timeline?  Won’t Traveler and younger Traveler just live on in peace following the future of the C-D timeline?  In my original post I asked this question, but it was never answered.

I am surprised because it seems to me that this was the first thing I answered in my original post.  However, I will attempt to respond more briefly.  I discussed the infinity loop in that same theory series, in the section What Is an Infinity Loop?.

The short answer is that the arrival of the time traveler in the past is caused by the departure of the time traveler in the future.  Should the time traveler not depart from the future, he will not arrive in the past.  That part is simple.  The part people don’t get is that having arrived in the past the time traveler has created an entirely new history, and that history replaces the original one (hence the name “replacement theory”), moment by moment erasing the events which had occurred and replacing them with new ones.  Eventually time will reach the moment at which the time traveler departed for the past, and that departure is erased; since that departure is the necessary cause of his arrival in the past, that arrival is also erased–unless in the new history the alternate self, the version of our time traveler for whom this is the only history of the world, makes the same trip to the past for the same reason.  Failure to do this undoes the causal chain that created the history in which the traveler arrives in the past, and so restores the original history.

I feel like this is the hundredth time I’ve attempted to write that explanation for someone, but hopefully those three iterations together will be adequately clear.

Vazor seems almost to grasp this, but then asks

Why does the C-D timeline need to exist?  With the way the rest of the theory treats timelines, the timeline is determined from the moment of the Traveler’s arrival.  So wouldn’t it be at that moment that the cause is no longer found and the adult Traveler must cease to exist?  I suppose this is equivalent to saying that time travel is not possible, unless the traveler jumps with the planning and preparation that will ensure that an N-jump will happen.

But let us assume time travel is possible regardless of where the new timeline will go.  In that case, my question is, why does the C-D timeline need to revert at that particular time?  You might say “because that is the point at which it is now certain that the young Traveler cannot recreate the events of the C-D timeline.”  However I posit that you could be certain of that at different times.  Perhaps the point at which the Traveler changes the younger Traveler’s mind should be the revert point?  No, the young Traveler could change their minds.  Perhaps the young Traveler is delayed a little but would have left from the C-D timeline at a little bit later point in time than D and successfully recreated the events at point C?  I can see that you need to resolve the cause and effect somewhere, but wouldn’t it be simpler if it happened at the moment of the jump back to C?

I am again surprised because Vazor previously mentioned having read The Spreadsheet Illustration of Temporal Anomalies; however, many people who have read that have missed some of its critical points.  Permit me to clarify.

What the spreadsheet illustration attempts to posit is a chain of causes and effects that create either a stable or an unstable loop.  In essence, the value of cell A1 is dependent on the value of cell A5, which is in turn dependent on the values of A4, A3, A2, and A1 in sequence.  If this chain of formulae results in A1 having the same value derived from A5, we have a stable loop, and the rest of the spreadsheet can be derived from the value of A5.  If, on the other hand, the value of A1 keeps changing, then the value of A5 keeps changing, changing the value of A1, and the rest of the spreadsheet cannot be calculated because the value of A5 is not constant.

What people miss is sort of two-fold:

  1. The value of A5 changes instantly when the value of A1 changes, because A5 is dependent on A1; but
  2. Sequentially before the value of A5 changes the values of A2, A3, and A4 all change, and those steps are necessary for A5 to change even though they, too, change instantaneously.

In exactly the same way at the instant the time traveler arrives in the past he changes all of history up through the moment he departs or fails to depart from the future, and in that sense his arrival in the past is instantly either confirmed or undone, but all of the events that lead from his arrival to his departure must happen before that confirmation or undoing can occur.  Further, we experience those intervening events as time, and thus we have a CD timeline because we need the causal chain which determines whether or not the traveler will depart from the future.

Did we make sense this time?

How does replacement theory explain the conservation of matter problem?

Honestly this question has been asked before, but not quite this way.

Conservation of matter is simply that matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed.  Under the replacement theory, there would appear initially to be a creation of matter at the arrival point, as the time traveler (and whatever he brings with him) are introduced as matter and energy that were not present, and there is an increase in the total mass of the universe.  Since any sane time traveler aims for a space in which the matter currently there is easily displaced–air, typically–I would not expect there to be a problem of matter arriving atop matter.  It is, I suppose, a plausible problem, and one that would also occur if we were talking about matter transmission or replication, but generally speaking the worst ordinary outcome would be an increase in atmospheric pressure of a small amount.

That increase in the total mass of the universe is effectively borrowed from the mass of the universe in the future, and has to be repaid at the moment it was borrowed–that is, if we send two hundred kilograms back from 2020 to 2010, we increase the mass of the universe by two hundred kilograms at 2010, but decrease it by the same amount at 2020, thus preserving the total mass of the universe.  In a sense, we moved the barbells to another room and then moved them back.

As to the four proposed time travel stories, they would need more details to know what is intended and whether it is possible.  The third, though, is something similar to something done (or at least discussed) in a Multiverser game.  Let us suggest that your villain built his robot and his time machine in 2018, and sends his robot in his time machine back from 2020 to 2019.&nbsp Since in 2019 he already has a robot and a time machine built in 2018, he now has two.  In 2020 he sends back both robots and both time machines, which both arrive in 2019, and now he has three of each.  He can continue doing this interminably, but we’ll say he stops at ten, so now in 2019 he has ten robots and ten time machines.

To clarify, the first time through he has one robot, and in 2020 he sends it back to 2019 so that he has two robots, which we can call #1 and #2.  In 2020 he can send #2 back to become #3, but he must also send #1 back to become #2 or #2 will not arrive in 2019 in the third iteration.  Thus by sending two robots back from the end of the second iteration he has in the third iteration three, not four, robots.

The problem is that he must send back nine of them (and technically the right nine) at the right moment in 2020.  After all, number ten is technically number one whose history includes that he has traveled to the past nine times, and if number one now fails to depart for the past, all the others will cease ever to have arrived in the past, and we crash into an infinity loop in which our villain has one robot, one time machine, and a plan to duplicate them by using time travel.  Further, to move beyond the departure point in 2020 our villain must systematically send back eight, seven, six, and so forth until only the last robot, who has been sent back many times, is the only one which remains, and then one robot continues with the villain into the future.

So he has to be aware of this, and make good use of his robots in 2019 before he has to start sending them back.

I don’t think I’ve answered everything, but I think I’ve addressed everything that matters.  I look forward to Vazor’s response perhaps a dozen years in the future or, if he figures out time travel before I do, a dozen years in the past.

#347: Versers Scrambled

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #347, on the subject of Versers Scrambled.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first five novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, and Garden of Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I have posted the sixth, Versers Versus Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the eighth and last mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 78 through 86.  Previous entries in this series include:

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

Chapter 78, Kondor 168

At this point I had two problems.  One was pacing; the other was bringing each of my characters to a satisfactory end for the book.  I still did not have worlds chosen for Slade or Beam, and was going to have to do one of them next, but I had at least two more Kondor chapters to bring him to the finish point, one more Hastings chapter, and probably one more Brown chapter.  I also had to decide who would be last.

This had been chapter 67 before the addition of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 79, Slade 167

Sometimes in play one gets an idea for a world, and sends a player character there to see what might happen.  This was like that, only less so initially–I had the notion that Slade would return to a future version of the parakeet valley world, but I was not at all certain how far future.  My three notions were medieval, modern, and science fiction, but I was not seeing much of a story for any of these.  I put it to Kyler, and he said definitely modern, but perhaps not quite modern–mid twentieth century or even late nineteenth century.  The notion of our auto mechanic appearing in the age of steam appealed to me, so that’s where we went.

I had already decided that the version of the language he spoke would have become something known only to scholars, but would still be recognized as language.

This was chapter 68 until the Takano chapters shifted it.


Chapter 80, Kondor 169

I had originally thought to do most of this in retrospect, but remembered an editor friend suggesting that action was better, so I tackled trying to tell more of it as it happened.

Before the addition of the Takano chapters this was chapter 69.

I once saw a Doctor Who special in which one of the companions commented that her job was to say “What is it, Doctor?” so the Doctor could explain, and that there were only so many ways to say that.  I think of that as the Amir asks Kondor that question.


Chapter 81, Beam 55

I pondered where to send Beam, and the best thing I could think of was a published world called The Industrial Complex.  The player on whom he is based was there when I was running him, and did some surprising things, so it might be a good direction for me.

Prior to including the Takano chapters this was chapter 70.

On the last edit I discovered that this was double-numbered Beam 54; there were no further Beam chapters in the book, so it just involved fixing this one.


Chapter 82, Hastings 185

At this point I decided I had to add the other character, so I began writing the Tomiko Takano stories.

I had originally written that Lauren did not sense any other versers, but was changing events such that Tomiko would be the girl on the curb, and that meant Lauren would detect someone but would not have time to learn more.

This was chapter 71 before the Takano chapters were added.


Chapter 83, Kondor 170

I had thought that I would be going directly from the report to the Amir to the defense of the shoreline, but then I recognized that there had to be some discussion about where the attack would come.

This had been chapter 72 until the Takano chapters were added.


Chapter 84, Takano 12

I knew this would be the end of the book for Tomiko; I still had to write the last chapter for Kondor.  I had to integrate what Tomiko saw with what I had already written for Lauren, as the stories were now overlapping.  The other problem was exactly how much of this new world I should write, knowing that I was going to have to pick it up in another book.

Then, of course, I was going to have to interweave the dozen Takano chapters into the six dozen chapters of the main story.

The decision to place it here between two Kondor chapters was connected to the decision to switch the order of the final two chapters of the book, discussed in connection with them.


Chapter 85, Kondor 171

Even though I had only written four chapters of the Tomiko story, I expected this would be the last chapter of the book, as all the characters came to cliffhanger endings.

This was originally chapter 74, and the final chapter of the book.  The reasons for changing that are discussed in connection with the final chapter; moving it also meant placing the last Takano chapter before it, so I wouldn’t have two Kondor chapters in a row.


Chapter 86, Brown 195

There was a question about whether when Derek got to the bridge a voice would say “Captain on the bridge” and some mechanical crewmen would snap to attention, or whether it would go as it did, with an artificially intelligent humanoid holding the position of captain.  When I got here, I decided that making Derek First Officer had a lot more potential for interesting story, including addressing why the captain has not maintained the education of the humanoid indigs aboard.

I swithered about whether this would be the last chapter, or whether Kondor would end the book.  I had considered Lauren as well, but decided against her at some point.

Originally I ended the book with Kondor 171, with this as the penultimate chapter.  However, when Kyler was reading the chapters he said that the Brown chapter was the best ending for the book, the best cliffhanger.  However, if I moved it that would give me two Kondor chapters in a row–which was remedied by putting the last Takano chapter between them, also having the benefit that it prevented me from going directly from Lauren throwing the child to Tomiko catching her.


This has been the eighth and last behind the writings look at Versers Versus Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with another novel and more behind the writings posts for it.

#343: Worlds Explode

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #343, on the subject of Worlds Explode.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first five novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, and Garden of Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I have posted the sixth, Versers Versus Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the seventh mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 67 through 77.  Previous entries in this series include:

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

Chapter 67, Kondor 165

The ghillie suit idea seemed important to the flavor of the upcoming confrontation, and it at least had to be floated.  I also figured I could put some of their plans on the table before the event so that I didn’t have to say, oh, yes, Lauren had advised them to do this, or they had agreed to do that.

This had been chapter 57 prior to the expansion with the Takano chapters.


Chapter 68, Slade 165

I reached what was supposed to be the climax of this book much too soon, despite having dragged my feet quite a bit getting here.  Still, I was here, and I was going to have to figure out what to do from here.

This had been chapter 58 until the Takano chapters shifted it.


Chapter 69, Beam 54

I had suddenly had the notion that it might be possible for one of the versers to recognize Beam from earth.  I discussed it with Kyler, and he said it should be Slade, and I agreed.  I also decided on the lines Beam delivers about not being friends and sticking to his plan.

This was chapter 59 before the Takano expansion.


Chapter 70, Hastings 183

I kept trying to figure out the best perspectives for this battle, particularly as I wanted to give the impression everyone was involved but I didn’t really have enough for everyone to do.  I decided to go with Lauren, and focus on her two-front battle, fighting both the alien and the elemental, while giving fragments of the rest of the story through her eyes.

This had been chapter 60, moved by the inclusion of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 71, Brown 193

I was trying to decide to whose battle view should I move, and as I looked at the outline I realized that it was an ideal time for Derek to take over the story for a bit.

I also had some ideas about what Derek should do here.  Unfortunately, they’re slow, dull, long-scale preparation ideas that should lead into the beginning of the next book, but hopefully I can make them interesting.

This had been chapter 61 originally, shifted when the Takano chapters were added.


Chapter 72, Slade 166

I had left the battle in the middle, and was returning to it, trying to cover Slade’s fight with Dawn.  Everything was going to end very quickly here, and I was going to be faced with finding new worlds for several characters, but for the moment I just needed to get through this.

The inclusion of the Takano chapters shifted this from its original number of 62.


Chapter 73, Takano 11

The notion of lucid dreaming struck me while I was musing about how to make this transitional chapter work, so I began with that in view.  I knew by this point that Tomiko was going to land in the same world as Lauren, and be there first.

The person who used to fly when he realized he was dreaming was me.  I haven’t done it in years, but there was a time when I did it fairly regularly, recognizing that I was dreaming and derailing the dream so I could lift myself into the air and fly over the countryside looking at the landscape below.

I was starting to worry about where to put this chapter, because I didn’t want it too far from the next one but I needed to get Tomiko into her next world before Lauren arrived, and Lauren was coming.  I decided once more to chop the main battle with a diversion, at a moment when both Lauren and Bob were caught in the act of dying.


Chapter 74, Kondor 166

I had worked out the ending of the battle already.  The problem was the timing.  I needed Lauren and Slade to die at exactly the right moment so that Dawn would not be able to prevent Zeke from getting a clean shot, but they would be off the battlefield.

This had originally been chapter 63, shifted by the addition of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 75, Brown 194

It actually took several days to write this short chapter–not that I had started writing it, but that I couldn’t figure out what perspective to take, how to tell the story here.  I also was delayed by a day when I was under the weather, and a day when there was too much on my plate, but eventually I managed it.

Before the inclusion of the Takano chapters this was chapter 64.


Chapter 76, Kondor 167

At this point I knew how the book ended for Kondor, but that there would be at least a few chapters to get there.  I also knew what was happening with Derek, but had a question about the end.  I had not yet decided on worlds for Beam or Slade.  For the moment, I had to move Kondor gradually to his endpoint.

This was chapter 65 prior to the inclusion of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 77, Hastings 184

I was writing this chapter because I knew what would happen in this world, and it was going to be short.  I had even tentatively decided that she would be out of this world before the end of the book, despite the fact that there were a very few chapters remaining for everyone else.

Before the Takano chapters were incorporated this was chapter 66.


This has been the seventh behind the writings look at Versers Versus Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind the writings posts for it.

#339: Verser Tensions

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #339, on the subject of Verser Tensions.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first five novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, and Garden of Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I have posted the sixth, Versers Versus Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the sixth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 56 through 66.  Previous entries in this series include:

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

Chapter 56, Slade 163

It took a while for me to work out what would happen in this chapter because my mind was constructing the upcoming Beam chapter, but I needed to have Slade’s part first.  It was that aspect of needing to know what Slade thought that gave the opening about whether he was too suspicious, which was going to contrast against the Beam material already in my head.

This was chapter 47 prior to the inclusion of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 57, Brown 190

Although I knew I had been delaying Beam for quite a while, and I had a lot of ideas for his next chapter rattling in my head, I also knew that I had to keep that story from accelerating too rapidly, and I had to get Derek’s story moving somewhere useful.  I wasn’t entirely certain where that would be, of course, but as usual I decided to have my character think about it and see if he could give me any ideas.

Before the inclusion of the Takano chapters this was chapter 48.


Chapter 58, Beam 52

One point that I have often made is that “evil” characters always assume that other characters have the same motivation they have, and so can’t understand “good” characters.  Beam is to some degree becoming my illustration of that.  He creates a story of what nefarious scheme the other versers have executed, and believes his story because it’s what he would do if he could.

This had been chapter 49 before the addition of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 59, Hastings 181

At this point in the first edit I discovered that I had numbered two chapters “Brown 174” and had to correct all Brown chapter numbers from there forward.

I was several days pondering what to write here.  I discussed it with Kyler, but the best he could suggest was that she could send flowers to the emissary (which for practical reasons I figured she couldn’t actually do).  Yet that was the right direction:  she is considering how much blame for the accident falls on her, and whether she should do something about it.

Before the addition of the Takano chapters this was chapter 50.


Chapter 60, Brown 191

I struggled with this for a while.  For one thing, the story wasn’t moving fast enough, but I couldn’t see an easy way to accelerate it.  Also, I had two ideas in mind, and the first was to have Derek lock the door and then the second was for them to go find the kitchen–but my mind seemed to think that locking the door would potentially lead to consequences I couldn’t anticipate, and might severely delay the walk to the kitchen, making an already slow story slower.  I finally decided to turn the two around, and see where that got me.

The disarming move was something else I thought I should introduce.

This had been chapter 51 before the inclusion of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 61, Kondor 164

I looked up annual vehicular fatalities, and they’ve been in the tens of thousands for decades.

When I finished writing this chapter, my brain seemed to think I was going to begin with something else and then go to the stuff about psionics being dangerous, but in the couple days over which I’d considered the chapter I seemed to have forgotten what it might have been.

This had been chapter 52 before the Takano chapters were added.


Chapter 62, Slade 164

I almost put the Beam chapter in which the message is received before the Slade chapter in which it was sent, but decided that I should give the readers the message before I let Beam examine it.

This was chapter 53 before the inclusion of the Takano chapters.


Chapter 63, Takano 10

At this point I decided that I would be writing two more chapters for Tomiko, one in which she verses out of this world into the next and tries to get oriented, the other in which she has her brief encounter with Lauren which pushed me over the edge to create the character.  That meant twelve chapters, which would have to be inserted into seventy-four chapters, and be neither the first nor the last.  Seventy-two divided by twelve is six, so I would have to insert her roughly every six chapters.

I put this one here mostly because I decided to put a delay between Slade sending the message and Beam receiving it; it also helped that it had been more than six chapters since the previous Takano one.


Chapter 64, Beam 53

I had spent a lot of time thinking about Slade’s invitation to meet Beam, and knew that Beam would take it wrong.  Thus I had thought of at least some of the things his team would read into it.  However, it was after I had written the Slade chapter in which the letter was sent that I came up with Beam’s greater plot.

This had been chapter 54 before the Takano chapters were incorporated.


Chapter 65, Hastings 182

At this point I expected the pace to accelerate, and I knew where it was going, but I had to move Lauren and Joe and Zeke back together with Bob and Shella, because the trio didn’t really have a way to get to the meeting (Lauren had never been to the site, so she couldn’t teleport there).

This was chapter 55 before Takano was added.


Chapter 66, Brown 192

Still feeling my way through the new Brown world, I know what he has to do, but not quite whether I can make it credible when he does it.

I remember that Vashti doesn’t cook, but neither does Derek, so he’s learning to do so now, and she’s something of his guinea pig for that.

Before the Takano chapters were added this was chapter 56.


This has been the sixth behind the writings look at Versers Versus Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind the writings posts for it.

#327: Verser Separations

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #327, on the subject of Verser Separations.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first five novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, Spy Verses, and Garden of Versers, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I have posted the sixth, Versers Versus Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the third mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 23 through 33.  Previous entries in this series include:

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

Chapter 23, Kondor 158

Once I got this part of the story moving, it was difficult to interrupt for other tasks.  I had just written three chapters in a row (originally 16-18), but took a break here for other tasks.

The explanation to Zeke about primary and secondary versers arose organically, but as I wrote it I realized it was going to be vital to the resolution of a future encounter I had planned.

This was chapter 19 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 24, Beam 47

Mostly I wanted Beam to recognize that there were more versers than he’d guessed, and retreat to get better intel.  I picked up a few extra points along the way, including giving him the word “versers”.

This was chapter 20 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 25, Slade 158

The briefing was a necessity; it also saved me several telepathic conversations between versers in different locations.  By having Bob tell the Caliph what he had been told, I didn’t need to go through the part about telling him; I only needed to include his instructions to Lauren at the end of their conversation, so that worked.

This was chapter 21 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 26, Kondor 159

When I reached this point, I was not certain whose chapter this should be.  I wanted to delay Derek’s entrance to the next world partly because I wanted the reader wondering and partly because it was still coalescing in my own mind and I wasn’t entirely certain I had chosen a next world for him.  I wanted to delay Beam’s next chapter because it would move the plot closer to the endgame than I wanted to be yet, and I wanted to give the impression of time passing as he made the return trip.  I had just done Bob, so that left Lauren and Joe, who were in the same place, a place where I needed to figure out what was happening there.

While I was discussing this with Kyler, I commented that I was not certain what was happening at Vashti’s home, and among other comments said something about a memorial service for Derek and Vashti, which Kyler said was probably appropriate.  So I decided to go with Kondor’s viewpoint for it, and cover it as the deaths of heroes.

This was chapter 22 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 27, Beam 48

It took a while to work out this plot, and I still am not certain how it will play out, but for the moment it gave me a good solid direction for the story.

Before the Takano chapters were integrated this was chapter 23.


Chapter 28, Brown 182

I had been toying with what kind of world to use, and I wanted something high-tech.  I had been working on something called The Wanderer, a fairly stock lost colony ship world, and settled on it mostly by default.  Since I had never gotten very far with it, I had a lot of room for details, and one of them was what kind of indigs would be aboard.

I discussed the aliens extensively with Kyler.  The question was whether to make them humans, or if alien just how alien to make them–Vulcans who could hide a few distinctive features, Klingons who were entirely humanoid but could never pass for human, Greys who were still humanoid but very alien, or E.T.s, clearly very different.  We agreed on something like Greys.

We also discussed the functions of melanin and chlorophyll, and decided on a paler skin color with some melanin but also some chlorophyll.

I was going to have Derek reunite with Vashti in this chapter, and then encounter aliens in the next, but it struck me that if he were running down main corridors it would be incongruous for him not to encounter anyone aboard.  Thus I had to introduce my aliens sooner, and put Vashti on hold until the next chapter.

Before the Takano chapters were integrated this was chapter 24.


Chapter 29, Takano 5

I am still exploring this world and trying to figure out what happens here, but I’ve a feeling it’s going to come to an abrupt ending fairly soon.  Tommy’s meeting with the witch probably doesn’t go well.

I wrote everything here before the meeting with the eagle before I went to bed, and then did the rest in the morning; I had intended to include the part about eating apples and forgot it when I was writing about breakfast, but went back and added it before I finished the chapter.

It had been six chapters, and seemed a suitable place to insert this one.


Chapter 30, Hastings 177

I put Lauren here because she had gone longest without a chapter; I realized immediately that I didn’t know what she could do, but then that was because she didn’t know what she could do, sitting at the Amir’s castle with only Joe and Zeke, so that gave me opportunity for her to teach Joe and Zeke.

I needed the Arabian story to move considerably more slowly at this point, which was difficult because I had four viewpoint characters in it and I had to keep their stories active and prevent them from being dull.  I also had to figure out what was happening in Derek’s story, which was not happening just yet.  My one advantage was that my four viewpoint characters were on three separate stages, so I could see what I could do with each of them.

This was chapter 25 before the Takano chapters were inserted.


Chapter 31, Slade 159

Part of this was the feeling that the story had to slow a bit here, and on every front.  Things were changing, and Slade was going to feel it, but they were getting tense in a different way.

This was chapter 26 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 32, Brown 183

I had pondered the problems of the elevator, and it occurred to me that it would be a simple matter to adjust gravity to negate the feeling of movement, and that meant that the indigs would not realize the elevator moved but would regard it as a magical transport between decks.  It further would mean they didn’t have any sense that the decks were stacked above and below each other.

This was chapter 27 before the Takano chapters were integrated.


Chapter 33, Beam 49

I started from the point that Beam had no proof of his claimed victory over the unknown enemy verser, and went from there, winding up in the idea that he saw this as a game he would win.  It gave me a good spin on Beam’s thinking.

Before the Takano chapters were integrated this was chapter 28.


This has been the third behind the writings look at Versers Versus Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind the writings posts for it.

#325: The 2019 Recap

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #325, on the subject of The 2019 Recap.

Happy New Year to you.  A year ago I continued the tradition of recapitulating in the most sketchy of fashions everything I had published over the previous year, in mark Joseph “young” web log post #278:  The 2018 Recap.  I am back to continue that tradition, as briefly as reasonable, so that if you missed something you can find it, or if you vaguely remember something you want to read again you can hunt it down.  Some of that brevity will be achieved by referencing index pages, other collections of links to articles and installments.

For example, that day also saw the publication of the first Faith in Play article of the year, but all twelve of those plus the dozen RPG-ology series articles are listed, described, and linked in 2019 at the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, published yesterday.  There’s some good game stuff there in addition to some good Bible stuff, including links to some articles by other talented gaming writers, and a couple contributions involving me one way or another that were not parts of either series.  Also CGG-related, I finished the Bible study on Revelation and began John in January; we’re still working through John, but thanks to a late-in-the-year problem with Yahoo!Groups that had been hosting us we had to move everything to Groups.IO, and I haven’t managed to fix all the important links yet.

At that point we were also about a quarter of the way through the novel Garden of Versers as we posted a Robert Slade chapter that same day, but that entire novel is indexed there, along with links to the web log posts giving background on the writing process.  In October we launched the sixth novel, Versers Versus Versers, which is heating up in three chapters a week, again indexed along with behind-the-writings posts there, and it will continue in the new year.  There are also links to the support pages, character sheets for the major protagonists and a few antagonists in the stories.  Also related to the novels, in October I invited reader input on which characters should be the focus of the seventh, in #318:  Toward a Seventh Multiverser Novel.

I wrote a few book reviews at Goodreads, which you can find there if you’re interested.  More of my earlier articles were translated for publication at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition.

So let’s turn to the web log posts.

The first one after the recap of the previous year was an answer to a personal question asked impersonally on a public forum:  how did I know I was called to writing and composing?  The answer is found in web log post #279:  My Journey to Becoming a Writer.

I had already begun a miniseries on the Christian contemporary and rock music of the seventies and early eighties–the time when I was working at the radio station and what I remembered from before that.  That series continued (and hopefully will continue this year) with:

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it is evident that the music dominated the web log this year.  In May I was invited to a sort of conference/convention in Nashville, which I attended and from which I benefited significantly.  I wrote about that in web log post #297:  An Objective Look at The Extreme Tour Objective Session.  While there I talked to several persons in the Christian music industry, and one of them advised me to found my own publishing company and publish my songs.  After considerable consideration I recognized that I have no skills for business, but I could put the songs out there, and so I began with a sort of song-of-the-month miniseries, the first seven songs posted this year:

  1. #301:  The Song “Holocaust”
  2. #307:  The Song “Time Bomb”
  3. #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal”
  4. #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods”
  5. #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe”
  6. #320:  The Song “Free”
  7. #322:  The Song “Voices”

I admit that I have to some degree soured on law and politics.  Polarization has gotten so bad that moderates are regarded enemies by the extremists on both sides.  However, I tackled a few Supreme Court cases, some issues in taxes including tariffs, a couple election articles, and a couple of recurring issues:

I was hospitalized more than once this year, but the big one was right near the beginning when the emergency room informed me that that pain was a myocardial infarction–in the vernacular, a heart attack.  Many of you supported me in many ways, and so I offered web log post #285:  An Expression of Gratitude.

Most of the game-related material went to the RPG-ology series mentioned at the beginning of this article, and you should visit that index for those.  I did include one role playing game article here as web log post #303:  A Nightmare Game World, a very strange scenario from a dream.

Finally, I did eventually post some time travel analyses, two movies available on Netflix.  The first was a kind of offbeat not quite a love story, Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies unravels When We First Met; the second a Spike Lee film focused on trying to fix the past, Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels See You Yesterday.  For those wondering, I have not yet figured out how I can get access to the new Marvel movie Endgame, as it appears it will not be airing on Netflix and I do not expect to spring for a Disney subscription despite its appeal, at least, not unless the Patreon account grows significantly.

So that’s pretty much what I wrote this year, not counting the fact that I’m working on the second edition of Multiverser, looking for a publisher for a book entitled Why I Believe, and continuing to produce the material to continue the ongoing series into the new year.  We’ll do this again in a dozen months.