This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #519, on the subject of Versers Congregate.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first ten Multiverser novels,

1. Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel,
2. Old Verses New,
3. For Better or Verse,
4. Spy Verses,
5. Garden of Versers,
6. Versers Versus Versers,
7. Re Verse All,
8. In Verse Proportion,
9. Con Verse Lea, and
10. 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 fifteenth post for this novel, covering chapters 169 through 180.  Previous mark Joseph “young” behind-the-writings web log posts for this book include:

1. #498:  Characters Restart covering chapters 1 through 12;
2. #501:  Characters Orienting, covering chapters 13 through 24;
3. #502:  Verser Setbacks, chapters 25 through 36;
4. #503:  Versers Progress, chapters 37 through 48;
5. #505:  Versers Advance, chapters 49 through 60;
6. #506:  Characters Involved, chapters 61 through 72;
7. #509:  Character Challenges, chapters 73 through 84;
8. #510:  Versers Debate, chapters 85 through 96;
9. #511:  Characters Change, chapters 87 through 108;
10. #512:  Versers Work, chapters 109 through 120;
11. #515:  Verser Troubles, 121 through 132;
12. #516:  Versers Stymied, 133 through 144;
13. #517:  Versers Moving, 145 through 156; and
14. #518:  Versers Plan, 157 through 168.

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.

Chapter 169, Cooper 54

I stuck this in the middle of the Brown climax for three reasons.  One was that the Brown chapter was simply too long and needed to be split.  The second was that having covered the youth choir I thought I couldn’t skip the adult choir, and the third dovetailed into that, that my next thoughts for Tommy had to happen the next day, so I had to finish the choir practice before I wrote that.

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Chapter 170, Brown 345

This was the second half of the major confrontation, mostly written by Eric although within a few bits of framework I had previously drafted.  The verse-out was largely my construction.

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Chapter 171, Takano 136

I had the idea that the boy who delivered the interoffice mail would take an interest in Tommy, so I ran with that here.

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Chapter 172, Cooper 55

We had discussed having Justice meet with The Eagle and Tell, those two having flown to Yellowstone City to talk with the superheroes there.  They don’t know that they’ve learned something important, because they don’t know that Cutter is Mordenslice.

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Chapter 173, Takano 137

I wanted to cover the date and bring some complications into Tommy’s life.

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Chapter 174, Brown 346

I had some specific ideas about the meeting between the Browns and the other versers, so I drafted this.

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Chapter 175, Cooper 56

This was my continuation of the first interactions of the Browns with Brian and Tommy.

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Chapter 176, Brown 347

Our collaboration was partly disrupted at this point, as I lost nearly all access to the internet where our shared file was.  Eric wrote some material that I eventually copied to use offline, fragmenting some of it into parts of several chapters, communicating by occasional e-mails, and writing about twenty-five chapters over a few weeks.

Eric had pushed a lot of events into one chapter, but I wanted to spread out some of it, and so created this chapter to talk about Derek being a superhero.

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Chapter 177, Takano 138

Eric wrote much of this as part of a longer chapter, excised, expanded, and reconfigured some by me.

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Chapter 178, Brown 348

Eric had written that Derek offered to teach skills to Tommy, but I thought that out of character and so reversed it to Tommy asking to learn, particularly since she knew Lauren did a lot of things she had been unable to teach.  This was to start a progression of Derek teaches Vashti teaches Tommy.

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Chapter 179, Cooper 57

Eric wrote this chapter in its entirety, with some minor edits by me.  It was mostly to keep the feeling that Mister Justice was an active superhero, but also to bring forward the notion that Brian was accepting this as his reality.

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Chapter 180, Brown 349

This was mostly my work, with a few inclusions from Eric’s material.    The ideas about fixing the robot were Eric’s, and the question about Superman, although a lot was redacted–not possible that a girl who had learned to navigate a spaceship wouldn’t know the speed of sound.

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This has been the fifteenth 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.