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Books by the Author

#376: Characters Arrive

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #376, on the subject of Characters Arrive.

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 eleventh mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 61 through 66.  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.
  4. #359:  Characters Engage, for chapters 19 through 24.
  5. #361:  Characters Explore, for chapters 25 through 30.
  6. #364:  Characters Learn, for chapters 31 through 36.
  7. #365:  Characters Travel, for chapters 37 through 42.
  8. #367:  Versers Encounter, for chapters 43 through 48.
  9. #370:  Characters Confront, for chapters 49 through 54.
  10. #373:  Nervous Characters, for chapters 55 through 60.

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 61, Hastings 206

I perceived that the driders would upset the mules, so I needed people to calm them.  This would not be Lauren, as it was already established that the spiders made her nervous, but Malacon himself is a magically calming influence and he has members of his squad, such as Apatukwe, who would be good at calming animals.

I wanted to say “male and female drow”, but Lauren wouldn’t talk or think like that so I let her use the more awkward “men and women drow”.

I wanted to give the impression of size in the entry hall without saying it was big, and it struck me that the easy way to do it was to say that the other end was “distant”.

The light level in the room was problematic.  Drow see better in total darkness than in daylight, but I needed the non-drow party members to be able to see something so there had to be some light.  Technically this makes it more difficult for the drow to see, but then there are some creatures that cannot be seen in darkness (the drow vision sees infrared and ultraviolet light, so cold blooded creatures blend into the background) so some light is justified.  I mentioned the marble mostly because I wanted to explain why Lauren wasn’t using it.

I needed names.  I had thought of a good name for the queen while I was writing, but forgot it before I reached the point where it would be used so had to think of another.  I cobbled together Taranelle from Coronelle.  I had thought of a name for the younger sister but failed to record it anywhere, so I had to invent another, and again worked from Coronelle to get Corina.  After I had written it, I thought of using Sabina, the name of the dog of a friend of mine decades back, but decided it was too like Sabrina, a popular television character.  The town came to me as Tarantola; after I had typed it, it struck me that “Tarant” was closely connected to tarantula, which I was pretty sure was a Spanish name for a deadly spider and connected to a Spanish dance.  I thought of changing it to Taranton or Taranburgh, but told myself that it should be a Spanish suffix for town, and I didn’t know one.  It happened that I was writing rather early in the morning, and when I went into the other room to look for my son who has some significant background in Spanish, no one was awake, so I just used Tarantola.

I had known since shortly after the dragon encounter that Coronelle’s younger sister had arranged her disappearance and killed the queen so as to take the throne, and that this confrontation would happen.  I did not know in any detail what would happen, and was creating it as I wrote it.

Chapter 62, Takano 33

I mostly needed to move time forward, but also wanted to continue painting some of the world of the time.

Chapter 63, Beam 76

I knew he wouldn’t want them, but I needed Beam to have a following of indigs for the story ahead, so I had to crowbar them into his life at this point.  The terms dictated by both sides were a bit tricky to produce, but then it was enough to recognize that neither side had imagined this meeting so both were winging it.

Chapter 64, Hastings 207

Again trying to make combat interesting, and particularly in this situation in which I can’t have it resolve too quickly but I can’t let the presumably weaker side lose.

Chapter 65, Takano 34

I had finished the camp supplies, and I kept thinking I wanted to build the relationship between Tommy and Johnny Angel.  Meanwhile, I also had to figure out how she could do something dangerous enough to get versed out.  Traveling to the city probably wasn’t going to do it unless there was a car accident, but it at least put me moving in the right direction.

Chapter 66, Beam 77

At the end of the previous Beam chapter I had to have Beam walk off stage, and the only thing that remotely made sense was for him and Sophia to head for the bedroom.  Now I had to figure out what he was going to do there.

As usual, having my characters talk about their problems helped me figure out how to resolve them.

This has been the eleventh 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.

Bible and Theology, Elections, Law and Politics

#375: Fixing the Focus

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #375, on the subject of Fixing the Focus.

I have previously written decrying polarization, and have touched on it enough times since that it is a key word in this web log.  It concerns me that things are not improving.

Being a moderate, I have discussions with people on both sides of the divide.  In the wake of the past few months, some–Christians–have been actively attempting to prove that the Presidency has been stolen by voter fraud on a massive scale, while others–also Christians–have been thanking God that the madman has been removed from the White House.  Both reactions seem extremist to me, and somewhat foolish, but I understand them.

Obviously the attack on the Capitol building in Washington was unreasonable.  The degree to which President Trump was responsible for this is something that will probably be discussed for a long time, even if it is decided by Congress.

As to that, I think that the impeachment action is a vindictive and undemocratic display of fear.  There are only two reasons to impeach a departing President.  One is to make it possible for him to face criminal charges for actions taken while in office, which means that the evidence will have to be taken to the courts if the impeachment motion carries.  The other is to prevent the man from running for office again–and that’s the undemocratic part of it.  It suggests that the party in control of Congress believes it is possible that the outgoing President could be re-elected in a future run, and they want to prevent his millions of supporters from being able to put him back in office–clearly an attack against their rights.

As my friend John Walker recently posted on Facebook,

When either side of a political structure tries to convince you that the the opposite view is the enemy, it’s time to stop believing in sides.

Yet both sides have been espousing this for most of this new century, and our political landscape is riddled with people who believe it.

It has been so for long enough that I am fairly certain nothing I can say will have a significant impact on this.

Yet I will not say nothing.

I will, rather, cite a preacher I heard on my local Christian radio station this week.  He very wisely said that Christians are called to bring about spiritual change, not political change.  Political and economic and social change might come from spiritual change–it has happened in the past–but our calling is to focus on the spiritual, to point people to Christ.  Christians fighting political battles are probably missing what is truly important.

‘Nuf said.

Music

#374: Christian Instrumental Music

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #374, on the subject of Christian Instrumental Music.

Quite a few years back my wife and I picked up a pair of soprano recorders, and within a few days were playing a duet of the hymn Glorious Things to Thee Are Spoken.  One night a gamer friend, Bob Schretzman, visited, and we played it for him.  He thanked us for playing one of his favorite songs, Deutschland Uber Alles, the German national anthem.

That came back to me this morning as the local Christian radio station played an instrumental version of a spiritual song, and it being familiar to me I had the words to the first verse running through my head–but I only remembered the first verse, so when the music repeated, so did those words.  That got me wondering.

I’ve previously noted that Christian record producer and recording artist Chris Christian (who discovered Amy Grant) disdained Christian instrumental music, challenging that what makes music Christian is the words.  He would sit on stage and play Alley Cat, and at the end of each line speak a word related to Christianity, and suggest that made it a Christian song.  I have a hard time disagreeing with that.  I know that when I hear instrumental versions of What Child Is This, particularly around Christmas, those words are in my head–but I won’t swear that at other times of the year I don’t hear the words to Greensleeves, and I’m sure there are many out there for whom those are the first lyrics that come to mind for that melody.  The Reformers often put Christian words to bawdy bar songs, because their converts knew the music; at what point did those become Christian melodies?  It certainly seems that what makes music Christian is the words.

On the other hand, Johann Sebastian Bach expressed the view that all of his music was written to glorify God.  We can certainly see that in the hundreds of chorales, the B Minor Mass, and other choral works–but how many of us are moved to worship by the Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor or the wealth of other fugues he wrote for organ or orchestra or chamber ensembles?  Does the fact that he says it is Christian music make it so?  Someone has written words celebrating Christmas to fit Pachelbel’s Canon; does that make the original song Christian?  What of Christian bands that do what would be called parodies of secular hits, replacing the original lyrics with Christian words?  In my 1970s band The Last Psalm our soprano sang the words to Amazing Grace to the music of The House of the Rising Sun (although I heard someone else do that first, and stole the idea from them); does that sanctify the music such that a folk song about life in a brothel becomes suitable as a Christian instrumental?

Perhaps we would like to claim that all music is ultimately Christian, and we might do that by asserting that all creative efforts are imitations of the image of God and so glorify Him to the degree that they in their greatness reflect His.  If music is a medium of communication, perhaps it can communicate something about God without being bound to words.  Yet Tubal-cain, father of all who played the pipe, was a descendant of Cain, not Seth, and so we might argue that all music is inherently secular unless it is somehow redeemed.

I lack the answer to this question.  I know musicians who perform instrumental music they assert is Christian, and it is usually arrangements of familiar hymns or other songs of faith.  I even have a collection of midi instrumental recordings of nine Christmas songs I arranged that I often play around the holidays.  Yet it still seems to me that for music to be Christian it must inspire thoughts of faith, and that seems to require words.

But then I come back to Bach, and wonder whether there is Christian instrumental music which inspires us to faith without using words.

Books by the Author

#373: Nervous Characters

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #373, on the subject of Nervous Characters.

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 tenth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 55 through 60.  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.
  4. #359:  Characters Engage, for chapters 19 through 24.
  5. #361:  Characters Explore, for chapters 25 through 30.
  6. #364:  Characters Learn, for chapters 31 through 36.
  7. #365:  Characters Travel, for chapters 37 through 42.
  8. #367:  Versers Encounter, for chapters 43 through 48.
  9. #370:  Characters Confront, for chapters 49 through 54.

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 55, Hastings 204

I knew this was going to be a sort of non-encounter situation, but still thought I could bring out some tension through Lauren’s reaction to spiders.  I think this is unlike me, but I’m not entirely comfortable with the larger members of the genus, and would have trouble with giant ones.  I’m not sure whether knowing they were intelligent would make me more comfortable or less.

The hood was a last minute realization, and specifically that it was known that they had one but there was no indication they had more than one.  I thought the mules might have trouble getting through, so I decided that the most skittish of them would have to be gentled.

Chapter 56, Takano 31

My knowledge of camping gear goes back to the mid-to-late sixties, but I remember that some things were thought new by scouts, who weren’t much older than I, so I attempted to extrapolate what would be available at a good camping store.

I actually paused to debate what to call Tommy’s equipment, with “equipment” and “gear” going through my head as words that Clark might use, but settling on “stuff” as much more like Tommy.

It’s been decades since I was camping, and I was trying to remember a lot of stuff from those times.  I hope I managed.  It occurs to me that I might have included water purification tablets, but I never carried them myself and don’t know whether iodine or chlorine was preferred back then.

Chapter 57, Beam 74

I almost removed the attack up the ramp, which had been part of my original notion before I included the grenade, but I wanted more action in this and wanted Bron to be useful.

Chapter 58, Hastings 205

I decided that it was time to end the quest and reach the drow lands; I had begun working on what would happen when they got there.  I also decided that Lauren’s fear of spiders would be useful in a confrontation with the traditional AD&D drow guards, the driders.

Chapter 59, Takano 32

I realized I had set up the beginning of school and couldn’t put it off much longer.  I checked Labor Day on a 1959 calendar to make sure my recollections of the holiday back then were correct, and modelled a lot of the commute on aspects of my own childhood elementary school experience, but extended the escorting several days because this was a girl and I was a boy, and I have the impression that parents were more protective of girls then (unless it was only that I had three younger siblings so my mother thought it safer to let me walk alone than to leave them alone at the house).

I wanted to create stuff for Tommy to do that would justify her being paid to care for Tammy beyond merely that someone had to be there.

The elementary school is very much designed like my own.  We had two or maybe three kindergarten classes in different partitioned sections of a “gymnatorium” with a cafeteria kitchen at the opposite end from the stage.  The band practiced on the stage during the period that the kindergarten was changing from morning to afternoon session, but I made that the school lunch period as I didn’t have to worry about the band.  My own walk to school left the road to follow a wide paved path down a long probably two-block hill to a bridge over a brook, up three steps, and onto the paved playground at the rear of the school, but there was a path to the side which was as described in the story which I only took a few times when I was going to my cousins’ house after school.

The bus thing was how it was when my kids were in school, but I’m not sure how much of that was because the school system had reorganized so that each school building held all the classes for two consecutive years and the busses all did a circuit of picking up all the students in an area then delivering them to each of the schools.

Chapter 60, Beam 75

I spent some time thinking about this chapter, and then when I wrote it I omitted a number of details–mostly where the other members of the group were standing during the talks.  I decided not to bother with them, as they wouldn’t really add anything.

I wanted Beam to feed the entire tribe, separately from the delegation, and I thought a bit about how much he had to order for roughly a hundred people.  It’s not a lot, but it’s enough for everyone to have some.

I ended the chapter mostly because I wasn’t sure how it turned next.  I had spent twelve days in the hospital and in that time had thought only a little about where the story was going, but coming out I wrote the previous Takano chapter and then this one, and I had a fairly solid idea about the next Hastings chapter but opted to go to bed and sleep on it overnight.

This has been the tenth 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.

Bible and Theology, Music

#372: The Song “Heavenly Kingdom”

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #372, on the subject of The Song “Heavenly Kingdom”.

This song is tied for nineteenth on the list; I ranked it number eight for the overall quality of the song, and Tristan included it on his list, albeit at the bottom, tied for fifteenth.  The problem pulling it down was although there is a decent recording of it on Collision: Of Worlds, I don’t sing it, and I am still reluctant to use versions of songs I don’t sing.  Thus I had to do a recording in my living room on a digital recorder, with all the same “mistakes” I made when I recorded Still, Small Voice–automatic level control picking up room noise when the song got quiet (which this one does quite a bit), breathing difficulties because I had just gotten out of the hospital.  Add to that that the song was written for three vocals and never performed with fewer than two, and that at the ends of the lines there were always instrumental frills (lead guitar, keyboard, bass, and drums), and it’s a very disappointing rendition of the song.  However, it is a good song.  (The ranking system is explained in connection with the first song, linked below.)

The song was written during the 7dB days, and performed then.  It arose out of musings that I knew I was a teacher but I wasn’t sure how much of my music was teaching.  I had long had this idea in my head, but never as a song, and I decided it could work set to music, so I tackled it.

The idea arose from Jesus’ teaching about cutting off your hand and plucking out your eye if they caused you to sin, which for many years bothered and upset me until I realized that our body parts don’t cause us to sin–it is that inner person that does so.  This was such a relief to me, and ranks high in my list of great realizations.  I thus thought that a song that taught this, that it’s not your body parts of which you must rid yourself but that selfish person inside, would work.

My wife, not seeing it quite as I did, thought the song much too upbeat and happy for the message–that you have to die to yourself–but then, I found the happiness in the fact that I didn’t have to remove body parts.  Mohammed got it wrong, I would say.  Get rid of what really causes you to sin.

As mentioned, we started doing the song with 7dB and continued with Collision.  This recording is none of the above, and I tripped over several words and a few guitar strums, but it does give the flavor of the song.

Heavenly Kingdom.

So here are the words:

If your hand caused you to sin,
Would you cut it off to enter in
To the Heavenly Kingdom?
If your eye caused you to doubt,
To save your soul, would you pluck it out
For the Heavenly Kingdom?
If it’s not your hand and it’s not your eye,
Would you give your life, lie down and die?
Would you let yourself be crucified
For the Heavenly Kingdom?

If your feet caused you to stray,
Would you give them up, or walk away
From the Heavenly Kingdom?
If your tongue caused you to lie,
Would you bite it off–would you even try
For the Heavenly Kingdom?
But your feet don’t stray and your tongue won’t lie;
It’s your selfish self that has to die.
Would you let yourself be crucified
For the Heavenly Kingdom?
For the Heavenly Kingdom?

Would you be crucified with Christ,
Baptized and buried in His death,
Raised up and living in His life,
Breathing Him in with ev’ry breath?

If your heart is filled with strife,
Would you let it die to give you life
In the Heavenly Kingdom?
If your soul is filled with pride,
Would you let yourself be crucified
For the Heavenly Kingdom?
Give up your soul, give up your life,
Give up your pride, give up your strife,
Come and let yourself be crucified
For the Heavenly Kingdom.
For the Heavenly Kingdom.
For the Heavenly Kingdom.

I can only hope you benefit from the song in some way.  I will continue with additional songs in the future.

*****

Previous web log song posts:

#301:  The Song “Holocaust” | #307:  The Song “Time Bomb” | #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal” | #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods” | #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe” | #320:  The Song “Free” | #322:  The Song “Voices” | #326:  The Song “Mountain, Mountain” | #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice” | #334:  The Song “Convinced” | #337:  The Song “Selfish Love” | #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul” | #341:  The Song “Joined Together” | #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them” | #349: The Song “I Can’t Resist You’re Love” | #353:  The Song “I Use to Think” | #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good” | #362:  My Life to You | #366:  The Song “Sometimes”

Next song:  #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy”

Bible and Theology, Books by the Author, Elections, Games, Law and Politics, Logic and Reasoning, Music, Reviews, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel, Time Travel Movies

#371: The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #371, on the subject of The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty.

I believe the correct greeting is Happy New Year, as we enter 2021.  That means it is time for us to look back at everything that we published in 2020.

The big deal is the book, in paperback and Kindle format, Why I Believe, a compilation of evidence on the basis of which intelligent people believe in God and in Jesus Christ.  I’m told the hardcover version is out, joining the paperback and Kindle versions, but haven’t seen it yet.

The year began, appropriately, on January 1st with a look back at the previous year, web log post #325:  The 2019 Recap, doing then what we are doing now, providing a quick look at everything from the previous dozen months.

On the first of the year I also published a song, the first of a dozen continuing from the seven of the previous year:

  1. web log post #326:  The Song “Mountain Mountain”;
  2. web log post #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice”;
  3. web log post #334:  The Song “Convinced”;
  4. web log post #337:  The Song “Selfish Love”;
  5. web log post #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul”;
  6. web log post #341:  The Song “Joined Together”;
  7. web log post #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them”;
  8. web log post #349:  The Song “I Can’t Resist Your Love”;
  9. web log post #353:  The Song “I Use to Think”;
  10. web log post #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good”;
  11. web log post #362:  The Song “My Life to You”; and
  12. web log post #366:  The Song “Sometimes”.

That series continues with another song later today.

On the subject of series, there are several others, including both the Faith in Play and RPG-ology monthly series at the Christian Gamers Guild.  These are both indexed, along with other excellent material from other contributing authors, at 2020 at the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, posted yesterday.  Thanks to the editorial staff of the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, a large collection of the original Game Ideas Unlimited articles, thought to be lost when Gaming Outpost closed, have been recovered and are now appearing slightly repolished in these series.  (Quite a few of them plus other articles have been translated into French for their site.) We also finished posting the rest of the novel Versers Versus Versers, along with updated character sheets in the Multiverser Novel Support Pages, and started on the seventh, Re Verse All, which will continue well into the new year.  There were quite a few behind-the-writings web log posts connected to those, but they are indexed in the novel table of contents pages so we won’t burden this entry with them.

There was also the continuation of another series, reminiscences on the history of Christian contemporary and rock music from the early 1980s, which picked up with:

  1. web log post #329:  CCM Guys at the Beginning, a conglomerate of artists from Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill through Michael W. Smith;
  2. web log post #332:  The Wish of Scott Wesley Brown;
  3. web log post #335:  Bob Bennett’s First Matters;
  4. web log post #342:  Fireworks Times Five, one of the best rock bands of the era;
  5. web log post #345:  Be Ye Glad, one of the best vocal bands of the era;
  6. web log post #358:  DeGarmo and Key, Not a Country Band, another excellent early rock ensemble.

I should mention for the time travel fans that there is indeed a book in the works, possibly with a sequel, but it’s still in the early stages so that’s on the list for the coming year.  Meanwhile, temporal anomalies were not ignored, as we had several posts and pages.

Among the miscellaneous posts this year is one about the fact that my work appears under several slightly different names–Mark, Mark J., M. Joseph, M. J., and Mark Joseph–and the story behind that is explained in web log post #331:  What’s With the Names?  A musician asked a question on a Facebook group, which I answered in web log post #352:  Why No One Cares About Your Songs.

Giving extra confusion to the year, in February my second grandchild, my first grandson, was born, roughly a decade or so after his half-sister.  That was the beginning of a saga that still is not completely resolved, but it was several months before he came home, in time for Halloween.

My book reading slowed drastically, due largely to the fact that my Kindle was smashed and I’ve been trying to get it repaired, but there are a few book reviews (one of a book on writing) at Goodreads.  Also appearing are two republished book reviews, as web log posts #351:  In re:  Evil Star and #368:  In re:  Cry of the Icemark, recovered from the lost Gaming Outpost archives.

We were quiet on the political front until June, when events related to Black Lives Matter prompted the writing of web log post #344:  Is It O.K. Not to Make a Statement?  Some argued that it was not.  We later explained the mail-in ballot system adopted by our home state in web log post #360:  Voting in 2020 in New Jersey, with a follow-up a couple weeks later in web log post #363:  The 2020 Election in New Jersey.

The year ahead looks promising.  There should be another song posted today, with Faith in Play and RPG-ology articles already queued for publication later this month and well into the year ahead, chapters of the novel Re Verse All with their accompanying behind-the-writings peeks standing by, more CCM history, some time travel movies awaiting my attention, and–well, we’ll have to see what appears.  Meanwhile, this is your opportunity to catch anything you missed or re-read anything you forgot.

I would be remiss if I did not thank those who have supported me through Patreon and PayPal.me, and to invite and encourage others to do so.  The Patreon web log is the first place where all new pages are announced, and the place to go for glimpses of what is to come, and even as little as a dollar a month helps me immensely and gets you that information delivered several times a week.  Thank you.

Books by the Author

#370: Characters Confront

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #370, on the subject of Characters Confront.

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 tenth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 49 through 54.  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.
  4. #359:  Characters Engage, for chapters 19 through 24.
  5. #361:  Characters Explore, for chapters 25 through 30.
  6. #364:  Characters Learn, for chapters 31 through 36.
  7. #365:  Characters Travel, for chapters 37 through 42.
  8. #367:  Versers Encounter, for chapters 43 through 48.

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 49, Hastings 202

This was an abrupt inspiration.  My mind was working on what was going to be a non-combative confrontation with giant spiders, and how that was going to work, and how boring it was going to be ultimately, when I thought that something like a cave fisher would be a more exciting encounter.  It would, I decided, try to grab someone from the back of the line, so it might go unnoticed.  Then it struck me that Lauren should be in the back, and the one it attacked.  I didn’t want to use a cave fisher because I thought it was probably unique to Dungeons & Dragons™ and it didn’t have quite the threat I wanted, as barbed tentacles surrounding a large mouth would be much more impressive.  As I envisioned this, I realized it was very like a sea anemone (which I couldn’t spell without looking it up), so I went with that and called it a cave anemone.

I had thought at one point that Lauren would fall if she cut the tentacle, but then I realized that for her to turn around and see what had her she was going to need to use her telekinetic flight, so she would be supporting herself.  Then when she severed the tentacle I remembered that she wouldn’t fall, but then that she had been pulling against the creature’s tug, and so like a tug of war she was going to fall backwards.  That was good visually.  I also knew that the people on the ground weren’t going to be able to fire missiles while she was engaged close to the creature, but would as soon as she had moved, and that would end the encounter.

Chapter 50, Takano 29

I realized that up to this point everything about Tommy’s story in this world had been moving her toward meeting Johnny Angel, and now she had met him and I didn’t know what to do next.  She would consider what he told her, of course, and that would lead to decisions about actions.

I had dropped the part into the previous chapter about how you can’t live like it’s a dream almost incidentally, but as I considered it I realized that to some degree she was doing exactly that, so I had her realize it, too, and decide to change it.  That meant equipping herself for future travels.

I was stuck enough on this story that I asked John Mastick, on whom Johnny Angel is loosely based, if he might read what I had and suggest something.  He said yes, and very quickly I put together a copy of the entire Takano story up to the previous chapter and sent it to him.  Then he said he had some reading for a class he was taking, so he wasn’t going to get to the story any time soon, and I realized I was going to have to go forward without his help.

I also briefed my youngest son on the entire story to date, and got some feedback from him.

Chapter 51, Beam 72

I was a long time trying to figure out how this would work, and when I finally got it I also got what would happen next, when Bron invents his find persons spell.  The tricky part is that the gods of this world try to channel magic spells into technological results, and I had to think of how that might work.

Chapter 52, Hastings 203

I wondered how to make the spider encounter interesting, and the answer seemed to be to use it as a cliffhanger.  I know it’s going to be a non-encounter because the drow princess has an affinity for spiders and will gain them safe passage, but Lauren doesn’t know that.

I wanted to discuss her nervousness around spiders, but realized that were I to do so in this chapter it would weaken the cliffhanger, so instead I postponed that to her next chapter.

I had been sitting on this chapter for a while, but managed to break through just as I finished the Beam chapter before it.  The chapter was shorter than I wanted, but did what it needed to do.

Chapter 53, Takano 30

I don’t know whether the REI store was in Marlton in 1959, but I was looking online for a camping goods store in the Camden area, and it came up, and research showed that it was founded in Washington State in the 1930s so I figured I would take the chance.  I actually guessed correctly that it was out Route 73, although when I wrote that it was just because that’s how I would get to Marlton from most places, and the fact that the store is actually on 73 to my mind makes it more likely that it’s been there a long time.

Chapter 54, Beam 73

When I resolved what would happen when Sophia cast her scrying spell, it was a short step to figuring out what would happen when Bron cast his newly-created find people spell.  This was a short chapter, and I knew what came next, but I liked the cliffhanger and expected the next chapter to be considerably longer.

Originally this had been a group of about fifty adults.  Later the group was about a hundred thirty people, including children, and on the read-through edit I decided that I probably needed more adults for that to be credible, so I made it vaguely more than fifty, and did so in subsequent chapters as well.

This has been the ninth 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.

Books by the Author, Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel

#369: Toward a Time Travel Book

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #369, on the subject of Toward a Time Travel Book.

As many of you know, Dimensionfold Publishing, who recently published my long-awaited book Why I Believe, has asked me to compose a book about time travel and temporal anomalies.  It is in the works.

I will not be doing a “behind the writings” series of the sort that I have done for the novels.  However, I will be asking for feedback along the way–indeed, I have already done so, via my Patreon and Facebook accounts.  As of yesterday I have a rough draft–a very rough draft, the sort of draft which includes single sentences in places to remind me that I have to write a section of text on a specific point there.  However, there is enough of it, written from beginning to end, that I am here going to publish the contents page.  It is presently set up very like that previously named book, with an opening page outlining all the major and minor sections, something like a table of contents but without page numbers.  (This is in large part because I submitted the document in a format that was not going to go to print without repagination, and it made no sense to attempt to give page numbers that were going to change.  There’s probably a way to make a Table of Contents that adjusts its page numbers when the page size is changed, but it’s probably beyond me.)

In publishing this I hope that fans of the Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies site and other time travel fans will make constructive comments on changes that need to be made to the broad outline, any important points I didn’t include (which I might have included in the text but not in the contents page), or anything you would have liked to have seen that seems to be absent.  Of course, I am incidentally hoping to whet your appetite for the book, but that’s not going to be shelf-ready for a while yet.

So here is the contents page; you can comment below or on my social media sites.

Temporal Anomalies and the Replacement Theory of Time Travel

M. Joseph Young

Preface:  how this book came to be
List of Movies Cited:  so the reader can avoid spoilers
The Core Theories:  fundamental ways time travel is handled

    Fixed Time Theory:  that the past cannot be changed.
    Multiple Dimension Theory:  parallel and divergent universes.
    Replacement Theory:  the ability to alter history.

Fixed Time Theory Examined:  details and problems of the theory

    The Predestination Paradox:  loops with uncaused causes.
    Becoming Your Own Grandfather:  a particular predestination paradox problem.
    The Grandfather Paradox:  the reverse problem, preventing your existence.
    The Novikov Self-Consistency Principle:  a mathematical argument for fixed time.
    Clarifying Fixed Time:  immutable means immutable.

Multiple Dimension Theories Examined:  more than one history of everything

    Types of Parallel Dimensions:  what we might expect.
    Types of Divergent Dimensions:  a different way to the same outcome.
    Unparalleled:  how time travel unravels the theory.
    The Two Brothers in Multiple Dimension Theory:  a simple logic problem that complicates things
    The Temporal Duplicate Problem with Divergent Dimensions:  if the traveler repeats the same trip.
    Other Problems with Divergent Dimensions:  including thermodynamics.

Replacement Theory Examined:  real time travel with free will.

    The N-Jump:  the preferred outcome of time travel.
    The Infinity Loop:  the ultimate temporal disaster.
    Sawtooth Snaps and Cycling Causalities:  repeatedly changing timelines.
    Where the People Go:  explaining what happens to everyone when time ends.
    Niven’s Law:  uncreating time travel.
    Temporal Duplicates and Replacement Theory:  objects and people doubled by time travel.
    Rate of Change:  when does the change in the past alter the future.
    The Spreadsheet Illustration:  demonstrating the anomalies mathematically.
    The Butterfly Effect:  small changes can have big impacts.
    The Genetic Problem:  how the entire population of the world can be changed.

Analyzing Examples:  applying temporal theory to time travel stories.
Analyzing Back to the Future:  showing a film that got most of it right.

    The Beginning:  reconstructing the original history.
    Changing History:  how Marty altered his own past.
    Quibbles:  all the little problems.
    Another Change:  the other version of Marty.
    An Alternate Explanation:  applying alternative theories.

Analyzing Terminator:  reconstructing the analysis of the first film studied.

    A Fixed Time Solution:  looking at the story if time is immutable.
    Other Dimensions:  a consideration of whether Multiple Dimension Theory works here.
    Rewind, Replace:  the Replacement Theory solution.
    Ratcheting:  a sawtooth snap.

Analyzing Los Cronocrimines a.k.a. TimeCrimes:  studying a cleverly complicated story.
Analyzing Predestination:  unraveling a challenging paradox by popular demand.
Meeting Yourself:  what happens when the time traveler encounters himself.
Jumping Into Bodies:  a specific trope of some time travel stories.
How to Change the Past:  a workable method of using time travel to alter recent events.
Toward Two-Dimensional Time:  discussion of an undeveloped model for time travel.
The Perpetual Barbecue:  a short story built on Replacement Theory.

So that’s the outline.  It strikes me as I write this that in the editing process I might decide to create more subsections, particularly in the film analyses of Los Cronocrimines and Predestination, but that’s more a matter of dividing the text into manageable portions and would have the undesired effect of pushing the contents to two pages.  I look forward to your feedback.  The present draft is ninety-eight pages and fifty-six-point-five thousand words, but as I say there are sections that still need to be written, so it will be longer.  (For comparison, the similarly formatted text of Why I Believe is one hundred two pages but only forty-three-point-six thousand words.)

I look forward to your feedback.

Reviews

#368: In re: Cry of the Icemark

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #368, on the subject of In re:  Cry of the Icemark.

This was originally published at Gaming Outpost, preserved by the Wayback Machine, and republished here.

To say that Cry of the Icemark is a book for adolescent girls is not to insult it; I am sure that the author, Stuart Hill, intended this as his audience, and that Scholastic Books published it with their peculiar target market in view.  It still qualifies as a fantasy novel, of sorts, and having taken the time to read it I now offer my thoughts on it.

For me, not a member of the target audience, the book took a somewhat slow start.  The cultures which were borrowed wholesale to supply the backgrounds of the characters were too thinly veiled, and the religions both too recognizably real and too dimensionally shallow.  Despite the fact that the thirteen-year-old heroine battles a powerful werewolf in the first chapter, I felt that everything was predictable.  She loses that battle, incidentally, but the werewolf is apparently impressed by the courage with which she surrenders to face death, and lets her live.

That combination of courage and the willingness to accept that people who are different are still people become the real strengths of Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield.  As her fourteenth birthday dawns, she has befriended the king of the werewolves and a young warlock in the woods, a boy a year older than her with whom an appropriate amount of sexual tension is built.  The very Norse northern kingdom is threatened by an enemy to the south, a vast empire which takes Rome and infects it with the rationalism of the enlightenment.  This, to my mind, was the strongest element in the story, that Thirrin’s world is filled with spirits and legendary creatures come to life, and the enemy invading her country is certain that all such myths are superstitions to be ignored or explained by some other means.  It thus becomes a battle between those who believe in the supernatural reality around us and those who reject everything that science cannot explain, and we find ourselves rooting for the supernaturalists.

At first, the book seems to be broad-minded in its approach to its religious concepts.  Thirrin and her father are clearly Odinites, followers of a religion that leads them to put their lives on the line for the sakes of their people, to see falling nobly in battle as glorious even if it is defeat.  Her tutor from the south, Maggiore, is rather agnostic about all such things, but not to the point of rejecting them outright.  The boy from the woods, Oskan, son of one of the most revered of the witches (there is some teasing about the never-revealed identity of his father), is a sort of Druidic Wiccan, worshipper of the Goddess and skilled in the craft of the woods, including the language of the werewolves.  When we eventually meet Thirrin’s maternal relatives (her mother died when she was young), they follow a Greek religion focused on matriarchy.  This cooperation of various faiths is interesting enough; however, only Oskan has any real power in the story, and by the end of the book there is a tacit understanding that Oskan’s religion is the one everyone respects, whatever they may say formally.

As Thirrin turns fourteen, the empire to the south invades.  Winter is almost upon the land, and her father Redrought Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield, Bear of the North, King of the Icemark, is surprised that the famed and undefeated General Scipio Bellorum is sending a force into his territory so close to the snows–which are delayed, creating the real danger that Bellorum’s forces could crush the resistance at the border and lay seige to the capital before anything else could be done.  Redrought places the safety of his people in the hands of his daughter, adding Wildcat of the North to her titles, and instructs that they flee yet farther north to the cities held by her mother’s kin where her aunt rules as their vassal.  He then leads the bulk of his army against the invaders.  His force is slaughtered to a man, but not before destroying the advance guard of his enemy and holding the border long enough for Thirrin to evacuate the capital.  News and proof of the death of her father reach her eventually, making her Queen of the Icemark, responsible to save her land and her people from the powerful invaders.

Thirrin is as good a fighter as any man in the kingdom, and sometimes an inspired tactician, but her true strength proves to be uniting very divided people.  Her initial encounter with the werewolf is reinforced by a kindness she shows him, and this forges an alliance between the Icemark and its hidden residents.  Thanks to Oskan Witch’s Son she forges alliances with the Oak King and the Holly King who rule the forests of the north, and then she gains the support of her mother’s kin.  This, though, is just the start.  Her courage and character carry her to the realm of the Vampire King and beyond that to the northernmost regions of the world where the Giant Leopards do battle against the Ice Trolls, and are surprised to discover that the two-legged creatures in the southern lands who can speak in their language are more than myth.  Humans and cats return to the capital city just as the roads are opening, and so are able to fortify it against the southern army and make their stand there.

The details of the battle are interesting, laced with magic and medieval combat.  Thirrin and her forces hold their own while awaiting the arrival of reinforcements from their allies; Scipio Bellorum presses his advantages while explaining away anything that does not fit his enlightened view of reality.  Each side takes its losses, but the sense is constantly present that Bellorum’s resources are nearly inexhaustible and he can afford to fight this as a war of attrition.  Everything hangs on whether the vampires, ghosts, and werewolves will arrive before the city falls.  The invader also proves that he is without honor but willing to take advantage of the honor of his enemy, offering to face Thirrin in single combat to decide the outcome, and then fleeing and failing to accept defeat when he has been critically wounded.

There is a degree to which the climactic battle is brilliant, but I saw it coming.  Bellorum recognizes that the moon will be full, providing ample light for battle, and believes that a battle at night will prey upon the superstitions of the primitive barbarians he faces.  Thirrin and her people think nothing of superstitions, only of the realities of the supernatural world around them, and so this does not have the impact Bellorum hopes.  However, I suspect my readers see the flaw in Scipio’s plan and the intended surprise that the author brings at this point, when the battle is fought on the night of the full moon.  Suffice it that by the time she turns fifteen, Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield, Wildcat of the North, Queen of the Icemark, has routed and eviscerated the greatest army in the world, and established peace in her kingdom.

Overall the book was satisfying, and certainly so when viewed as a children’s book.  It is not so well crafted as the Harry Potter series, and the inconsistencies about the religious beliefs embraced by Thirrin detract from it.  However, it was a pleasant read with some excellent battle accounts, clever ideas in magic, and a delightful core character group that made it worth the time.

Books by the Author

#367: Versers Encounter

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #367, on the subject of Versers Encounter.

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 eighth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 43 through 48.  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.
  4. #359:  Characters Engage, for chapters 19 through 24.
  5. #361:  Characters Explore, for chapters 25 through 30.
  6. #364:  Characters Learn, for chapters 31 through 36.
  7. #365:  Characters Travel, for chapters 37 through 42.

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 43, Hastings 200

In thinking about this chapter, it occurred to me to wonder whether Malacon, the antipaladin, had brought his charger.  I decided against it ultimately, because I couldn’t imagine that a large black stallion was among the beasts for which Lauren had been caring and she never mentioned it.

I wasn’t sure how much detail to include, complicated by factors such as I wasn’t sure whether the monk and the assassin could climb cliff faces and didn’t look it up, nor was I certain how many thieves I had in the party and didn’t try to figure that out, either.

Chapter 44, Takano 27

It struck me that I should know what kind of car Johnny drove, partly because it would make a difference to the image of packing six people into it.  I, though, know very little about cars, so I contacted John Mastick, on whom the character is based, and asked him.  He said it would probably be a 1956 two-tone blue/white 4-door Ford Fairlane, cool enough for a musician but also roomy, three speed standard transmission on the column.  The next part was figuring out how much of that would wind up in a story told from Tommy’s perspective.

The parent sitting up is modeled on my father, complete with can of beer and crackers with cheese melted in the oven.

Chapter 45, Beam 70

Bringing Beam in contact with living humans is proving more challenging than I imagined.  There are also lots of little things about this world, such as repair robots, medical robots, the recycling system, factories, ventilation shafts, and more, that haven’t appeared.  The dead body is a step closer, but not there yet.

Chapter 46, Hastings 201

I was kind of stuck looking for a next idea for Lauren.  I really did not want to try to write a mass combat scene, as it is very difficult to make them interesting, but I was running out of logical obstacles and thinking that they needed to encounter something.  I was thinking of spiders, because the drow have something of an affinity for them, but not sure how to play it.  I had to get them across the floor of the chasm anyway, so I sort of stalled.

Chapter 47, Takano 28

I realized that I had completed the goal I had set for this world, and didn’t know where I was going from here, but for the moment it was important that Tommy react to what she had learned from Johnny Angel.

The dream was a last-minute inspiration.

Chapter 48, Beam 71

I wasn’t sure how to do this, particularly as the world is set up such that the gods interfere with magic and try to connect it to technological solutions.  I had to open Sophia’s character sheet for what spells I knew she had, the world book for what the bias of the world was, and the rule book for lists of spells that might work.  The idea that Sophia didn’t have a spell to find people but Bron could create one gave me something for Bron to do and made some sense given their general attitudes toward magic.

This has been the eighth 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.