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With permission from Valdron Inc, we have successfully presented seven previous Multiverser novels in serialized format. In them we have followed the adventures of now half a dozen primary verser characters--Joseph Wade Kondor, Lauren Elizabeth Meyers Hastings, Robert Elvis Slade, Derek Jacob Brown, James Donald Beam, and Tomiko Takano--plus perhaps twice as many associated characters, as they travel from universe to universe, trying to survive, make homes for themselves, and frequently make a difference in the worlds they visit. You can learn more about those characters from their character sheets in the novels' support site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, where there are Multiverser game-style character sheets for major characters in the novels, to be expanded gradually over time. Even better, you can read their stories in the books, still posted on the web:
If you haven't read the first ten books, they're not essential; as we bring you the eleventh novel, Con Version, it is in a sense a complete story in itself, and while continuing the stories of those characters it is also a discrete book despite being part of a longer story. On the other hand, the first ten books are free and easily accessed by anyone who can get here, so you can't complain that you wish you'd read them first if you don't.
I wrote the first nine books not exactly entirely by myself--Kyler C. B. Young wrote quite a bit of the original James Beam stories in Garden of Versers, and he and several others often consulted on characters and story ideas before and since. However, after I had started writing In Version Eric R. Ashley, who had independently written several books some of which were built on the Multiverser cosmology and played the game with me and with many others, reminded me that I had mentioned possibly collaborating at some point, and so I invited him to do so on that one. The collaboration worked so well for both of us that we agreed to continue it with this book. The behind-the-writings posts included in the index below attempt to keep clear who wrote what, to the degree that we are able to make that distinction.
For the reasons discussed on the indexing page of that first novel, I've chosen this format. Below are two columns, the one on the left listing all the chapters published so far in sequence--the sequence in which they are published as well as the sequence in which they appear in the book. The right hand column reverses the order, such that the first chapter listed there is the most recently published one, the last chapter currently available. That way if you've just discovered the book you can begin with chapter one and work your way down the left hand side, but if you've been reading regularly you can immediately go to the latest installment by hitting the top of the right column. Again each chapter is on its own web page, with a link near the top to the previous chapter and, once it is published, a link at the bottom to the next one, plus links back to this page to help you navigate. You'll have to keep track of your place, but that shouldn't be too difficult--I'm including a blurb with each chapter that should help you remember what you've read. To be first to hear of new publications, support my Patreon campaign, or follow me in social media.
As mentioned, I have again collected some "behind the writings" materials, which will be published on the mark Joseph "young" web log and listed and linked here. These are quite replete with spoilers, so you might want to delay reading them until you're well past the chapters they discuss, but quite a few readers have found them interesting. One has told me he is not much of a book reader but loves reading about creative process, and thus the posts on how it was created are to him more interesting than the story itself. I do hope you find the story interesting, but I admit that the behind-the-writings posts interest me as well.
Credit should be given. The above image was based again on the cover of the first novel, which was created by Valdron art director Dimitrios "Jim" Denaxas, with reference to previous covers I devised by modifying that original image and with Kyler C. B. Young's help on the fifth. The images on the individual pages were done by me usually by compositing images gleaned from the Internet which were said to be free for commercial use (I'm not sure this is commercial use, but I'm not sure it is not, so I'm not taking a risk there) with elements of some previous images some done by Eric York for the first novel and occasionally snippets from images by Jim and Multiverser artist William "Bill" Kozak; I again added the lettering in all cases. Eric and I did all the editing. Kyler is also responsible in significant part for the creation of the major characters in the James Beam stories.
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As to the old stories that have long been here: