This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #512, on the subject of Versers Work.
With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first ten Multiverser novels,
- Verse Three, Chapter One: The First Multiverser Novel,
- Old Verses New,
- For Better or Verse,
- Spy Verses,
- Garden of Versers,
- Versers Versus Versers,
- Re Verse All,
- In Verse Proportion,
- Con Verse Lea, and
- In Version, in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley,
in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book). Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages. Now as I am posting the eleventh, Con Version, again written in collaboration with Eric R. Ashley, I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights. This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed. You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them. Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.
This is the tenth post for this novel, covering chapters 109 through 120. Previous mark Joseph “young” behind-the-writings web log posts for this book include:
- #498: Characters Restart covering chapters 1 through 12;
- #501: Characters Orienting, covering chapters 13 through 24;
- #502: Verser Setbacks, chapters 25 through 36;
- #503: Versers Progress, chapters 37 through 48;
- #505: Versers Advance, chapters 49 through 60;
- #506: Characters Involved, chapters 61 through 72;
- #509: Character Challenges, chapters 73 through 84;
- #510: Versers Debate, chapters 85 through 96; and
- #511: Characters Change, chapters 87 through 108.
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 also the longest book to date, and has quite a few long chapters in it, so there will be quite a few of these background articles.
History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.
Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 109 Cooper 35
Chapter 110 Takano 118
Chapter 111 Brown 322
Chapter 112, Cooper 36
Chapter 113, Takano 119
Chapter 114, Brown 323
Chapter 115, Cooper 37
Chapter 116, Takano 120
Chapter 117, Brown 324
Chapter 118, Cooper 38
Chapter 119, Takano 121
Chapter 120, Brown 325
I decided it was time to go back to alternating the three characters, so I started with Cooper heading back toward Tommy, and then inserted the Takano chapter after it.
I flowed from Cooper 35 into this, but got confused in the middle of it, shifting to his perspective, and had to go back and rewrite it to keep it with her.
Eric drafted this, taking Derek to another predominantly segregated church, where the segregation makes sense because most of the congregants speak Chinese and are trying to learn English.
After what was to have been the final edit, as I was setting up Derek’s character paper, I realized that we had confused Mandarin and Cantonese–Mandarin is the dialect Derek had learned as a spy, and Cantonese the one he was only now starting to learn. I had to come back and make a few changes to this chapter to clarify that.
I drafted this after finishing Takano 118, because I wanted to get in the conversation about computers and the suggestion that both Cooper and Tommy could possibly get jobs in the industry.
In Eric’s original draft Tommy went shopping but bought things she already had. I pointed this out, so Eric rewrote it as a trip to the laundromat.
Eric put Tommy in a dark blue calf-length skirt, but I shortened it, thinking that the skirts worn by teens in the 1950s were knee-length.
Eric had ended this with Tommy taking a long bath, but wanting to accelerate events in their secret identity lives I had inadvertently continued with Cooper taking her to meet Keller, so Eric came back and backwrote this to fit that.
On a readthrough following my hospitalization I spotted the fact that Pierre Hunter had given Derek a “ring of keys”, and realized that at this point he could only really account for the front door and maybe the back door. Between us we had dismissed the notion that there would be a gunlock on the shotgun, and decided that one of the keys opened a cabinet somewhere in the house that they had not yet found. We discussed what might be in it, and since I proposed that it would contain information about the monsters, I ultimately drafted this. I thought there should be “several” folders, but couldn’t figure out what they would cover besides the three monsters Eric had uncovered in his research, so I stuck to three.
Eric’s research gave him this: “locals believe that the city is actually the home of real vampires. During the 1930s, brothers John and Wayne Carter were executed for committing multiple murders. About a dozen bodies, drained of their blood, were discovered after a bloodied young woman managed to escape from their apartment. Sightings of the brothers are often reported to this very day, as their bodies mysteriously vanished from the family’s funeral vault.” We pushed them back a few decades, and discussed them in some detail.
I drafted this, but before I had finished Eric pointed out that the previous Takano chapter had her returning from the laundromat in different clothes and immediately taking a bath. Because it seemed important to streamline getting them working, we agreed to backwrite the previous material to fit with this.
Eric drafted this, introducing the idea that Brian and Tommy were sort of “rubberstamped” into their jobs. He also came up with Janus Cutter as the name for Doctor Mordenslice’ secret identity.
We discussed the design of these particular vampires, agreeing that they would be similar to but distinct from those in Lauren’s early stories. I pieced together some of what we had agreed on into Hunter’s file. We wanted there to be some sort of cryptic clue to the location of the graves, but all I could think of at the time was that they weren’t on holy ground so they could have been in a Cajun graveyard outside the city. I also added the notion that they were often active around Mardi Gras, as that was our next confrontation.
I was jotting down notes on this, and decided to go ahead and write it. The name Granville and some of the characteristics came from a veterinarian character in the original BBC television production of All Creatures Great and Small. I was going to cut it shorter, but decided to finish the meeting and then figure out what Tommy does next.
I did this wrap-up of the day largely to get back to Derek and Brian, but thought that a bit of the lot of girls in the workplace ought to be considered. My plan includes that at some point she’s going to show her worth to the engineers, but not quite yet.
I suggested that having been to a few Catholic services I should write the chapter in which Derek goes to church with Pierre, and Eric agreed that his own experience, limited to a couple weddings and a funeral, would be inadequate.
Realizing that there was separatism in the Catholic church that didn’t exist in the individual Protestant churches, I brought that forward into the theme.
This has been the tenth behind-the-writings look at Con Version. If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue with more behind-the-writings posts and another novel.