This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #518, on the subject of Versers Plan.

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 fourteenth post for this novel, covering chapters 157 through 168.  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; and
13. #517:  Versers Moving, 145 through 156.

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 157, Takano 133

I pulled together several of Tommy’s concerns into this chapter, and managed to get Cooper pointed at some of their domestic problems.

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Chapter 158, Brown 339

This began the second half of the chapter Eric previously drafted, bringing in his idea of an attack on the diner through legal proceedings.  Looking for a solution, I decided to involve the bishop.

The line “I don’t know what you came to do, but I came to praise the Lord” comes from a song sung by Barry McGuire in the early 1970s.

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Chapter 159, Cooper 51

I wrote this mostly domestic chapter to try to get the new home in order to some degree.

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Chapter 160, Brown 340

I wanted to resolve the banking crisis quickly but also set up some expectation for Mardi Gras itself, so I drafted this.

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Chapter 161, Takano 134

When I had suggested that National Parks didn’t exist, Eric had suggested that the volcano under Yellowstone could be part of Mordenslice’s plot.  After writing the chapter in which Gorillaxe was questioned, I put forward the suggestion that he would be killed in his cell but scratch a cryptic clue into the wall.  Coming to this, I wrote that part, but the only cryptic clue I could think of was Yellowstone, so I went with that.

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Chapter 162, Brown 341

Eric took over the Brown story at this point, putting together much of the Mardi Gras festivities with only a few comments from me.  He wrote a massive chapter which he then divided into three, with minor editing from me.

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Chapter 163, Cooper 52

Eric was hoping for a behind-the-scenes look at being a choir director, which I thought would be terribly boring, but agreed to tackle it and started with this.

Dame Maggie Smith is the British actress who played Professor Minerva MacGonagel in the Harry Potter films.  Mary Bligh, the organist, was just the first given name and the first surname that came to me when I was writing.

There are actually two well-known settings of Crown Him with Many Crowns, either of which would lend itself to a decent choral arrangement.

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Chapter 164, Brown 342

This was a continuation of Brown 341, the second of three parts very much as Eric had drafted it.

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Chapter 165, Takano 135

I decided to have Tommy go to church as well.  Her family was Presbyterian, so it made sense.

The name Megan Fairchild came to me exactly that way, and as I repeated it to myself I recognized that it must have come from the name of the actress Morgan Fairchild.

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Chapter 166, Brown 343

Part three of three, of what Eric wrote as Brown 341 and then divided.

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Chapter 167, Cooper 53

I was looking for a name for the pianist, and trying to avoid another “M” name came up with Donna, then Brown.  I had to look up a lot of details including the name of the church secretary Miss Granger, whether Tommy had any music skills on her character sheet, and the date of Kumbaya.  I finally could no longer get away without naming Cooper’s predecessor, so I grabbed the name of my own high school choral director.

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Chapter 168, Brown 344

Eric left this final confrontation to me; my first draft was not nearly so complicated or long as it needed to be.  Eric picked it up and expanded it significantly, and I came back and split it, inserting a continuation of the Cooper choir story in the middle.

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This has been the fourteenth 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.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #517, on the subject of Versers Moving.

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 thirteenth post for this novel, covering chapters 145 through 156.  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; and
12. #516:  Versers Stymied, 133 through 144.

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 145, Cooper 47

I decided that Brian could find a place to live if he prayed about it, and came up with the idea of renting the manse of a church no longer needing it.  I also decided on a whim that it would be just outside what Brian was seeking, but better than he hoped, and that he could also work as choir director for a bit of extra cash.

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Chapter 146, Brown 334

Again I penned this, building toward the vampire confrontation.

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Chapter 147, Takano 130

Eric drafted the original of this.  We had trouble with it because he overlooked the fact that Tommy’s costume and weapons were bulky, she had no way to carry them other than her backpack, and she wouldn’t be taking that to work with her, so we had to figure out how to have her change to being Truth on her lunch break several miles from her room.  We were still working on the problem while several other chapters were written.  It was reasonably simple to assume that Cooper brought his duffel bag with him and said it was his workout gear, but a lot more trouble to find a way to bring her protective leather coat, disguising mask and hat, and the kawanaga on a clip on the utility belt.

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Chapter 148, Cooper 48

Eric also drafted this, finishing everything I had outlined as what they had to do during this lunch break before he decided that they also had to be interrupted by the need to catch a supervillain.  I did a lot of edits to get it to fit with what had already been written about Brian’s earlier visit to the church, and Eric left the part about the choir director’s job for me to write.

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Chapter 149, Brown 335

Eric left this for me.  I wanted the visit to the tomb to kill one vampire but not the other, but it was a task of working out the details as the text was crafted.  Eric had recommended the holy water, and also suggested that Maurice had spent time praying over his knife, making it effective against the vampire.

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Chapter 150, Takano 131

I wanted an excited Tommy to move into the new house quickly, but having accomplished that decided both that the chapter wasn’t long enough and that she needed to eat something.  I considered whether to have her encounter another crime along the way, but decided instead to have her chance upon Robinette again.

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Chapter 151, Cooper 49

I drafted this mostly because I wanted to get back to the Brown story.  At some point Eric had said something about me writing something about “the job”, which had stuck in my head even though it was about the choir director job, and it drove me to think about designing processor and memory circuits, so I put that here.

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Chapter 152, Brown 336

Eric and I discussed this, and Eric said I should draft it, so I did.  The only remaining question, really, was how to top it at the climax–but there were several scenes that had to be included before we got there, and not a lot of time.

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Chapter 153, Takano 132

This fell to me, partly because Eric wanted to include several things in the very limited time left in the Brown story and partly because I wanted to have Tommy pass on the information about Mordenslice.

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Chapter 154, Brown 337

I decided that the accelerated Brown story warranted putting him every other chapter, and so slotted this one for that.

Immersing in running water is one of the traditional ways to kill a vampire, and so I had suggested burning the body and drowning the head in the river.  Eric ran with that, and brought in Mossyback, the ancient giant alligator.

I had also suggested that Vashti would want her practice knife back, and that meant a trek to the crypt, which Eric also included here.  It was his idea that pulling the knife would bring the creature back to life, sort of, and of feeding the entire monster, in two parts, to the alligator.

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Chapter 155, Cooper 50

I had suggested questioning Gorillaxe, and after staring at Cooper’s name in the heading here for a while decided this was a good time to do that.  I had intended at some point to have one of the questioners attempt to embarrass the villain by suggesting that Mordenslice might be smarter than he, but the flow of the conversation didn’t easily admit that.

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Chapter 156, Brown 338

Eric had drafted this.  I made some notes, which Eric incorporated, and then I added the meeting with the Bishop and sliced the second half of the chapter to be Brown 339.

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This has been the thirteenth 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.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #509, on the subject of Character Challenges.

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 seventh post for this novel, covering chapters 73 through 84.  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; and
6. #506:  Characters Involved, chapters 61 through 72.

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.

Return to Top

Quick links to discussions in this page:
Chapter 73, Brown 307
Chapter 74, Cooper 24
Chapter 75, Brown 308
Chapter 76, Takano 108
Chapter 77, Brown 309
Chapter 78, Cooper 25
Chapter 79, Takano 109
Chapter 80, Brown 310
Chapter 81, Cooper 26
Chapter 82, Takano 110
Chapter 83, Brown 311
Chapter 84, Cooper 27

Chapter 73, Brown 307

I suggested that we needed a chapter to fill in an ordinary December before we hit Yule, so Eric drafted this.

He left gaps for me to fill in music, and I picked I Heard the Bells because it comes from the Civil War.

There was also a question about the Rougarou, Eric having written that Emma Malcolm had mentioned it, and I not recalling that but thinking she had only suggested trouble coming at Yule.  We discussed it, and went back to Brown 303, later bumped to 304, to add it.

Reading Eric’s section on the Biloxi hurricane, I suggested expanding to include questions of the mayor’s integrity, and eventually added several paragraphs for that.

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Chapter 74, Cooper 24

We had a lot of discussion concerning the locale of our superhero setting.  Eric wanted to avoid New York City mostly because everyone uses it.  I wanted it to be close to the mountains because of the equipment problem.  We agreed on somewhere in the Rockies, and by the time Eric wrote this we had agreed on southern Colorado, in the area currently labeled the Rio Grande National Forest.  I suggested that John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt never met, and so the national parks and forests systems were never launched.  Eric brought forward the possibility that some supervillain might plan to do something with the volcano under Yellowstone.

I rewrote much of this.  Eric had overlooked the fact that there would be no light in the library until the power was restored, and when that happened there was at least every reason for Brian to believe the force field would reactivate.  His take was that Brian would eventually find the force field generator, which would have been built of components he did not recognize but melted mostly to slag as a single-use device.  My view was that it would have been built of components available in the 1950s, and so look very like the inside of a radio or old television with vacuum tubes and such, and would be plugged into the wall somewhere.

We were also uncertain whether he would get anything else from the house, or indeed whether the house would be left to him.  Eric decided to give him a few things and leave everything else to family.  That meant that he would have to leave the house, and couldn’t take the device with him.

I also am old enough to remember how you call the police in the 1950s.

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Chapter 75, Brown 308

When it appeared that the Brown story was reaching the deadline date without having achieved sufficient backstory, I inserted this chapter as a space to be filled.  I was brainstorming for story ideas, but for a time the only one was to have a white boy assault a black girl and apparently get away with it.

The insertion of course shifted all subsequent chapter numbers and Brown chapter numbers plus one, which made plus two.

Returning from the hospital, I began re-reading the entire book to get back into the sense of things, and saw that in what became Brown 309 Eric had mentioned that one of the bands at Yule was a mixed-race band.  I immediately balked at this–mixed race bands were unknown before about the 1950s or 60s–but then thought this could work if 2) the existence of that band was emphasized and 1) if they could set up some kind of event which suggested that Living Colors was responsible for it.  That was my objective here.

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Chapter 76, Takano 108

Eric drafted this to give us more of a feeling of struggling through the winter, and to give Tommy bowhunting experience.

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Chapter 77, Brown 309

We had agreed that Yule was coming, and the band would face the Rougarou, which would be rampaging through the city.  Eric put it together with a bit of tweaking from me.

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Chapter 78, Cooper 25

Trying to figure out what Cooper could do with his grocery bags, I considered a hotel room, which would require money, which meant selling one of the gold coins from the money belt.  This put me on a search for the price of gold in the 1950s and the value of money at that time, and while I was working on that it occurred to me that a bus locker would be adequate to the purpose, for which he would still need money, but then I remembered that the equipment sheet Eric had provided included a few coins, and while they weren’t legal tender they were the right shape and weight for a coin machine, and particularly the nickel, which had not changed much.  So by the time he had finished this chapter we knew what the gold coins were worth in the money of the time, and what that meant in terms of purchasing power, even though at that point we didn’t need it.

Eric picked up the story to create the Blackmask Gang encounter, which I tweaked a bit to eliminate a problem with reopening and relocking the locker.

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Chapter 79, Takano 109

Eric had left the hunt in the middle, and after reading it I thought that the hunters were probably killing deer rather indiscriminately, and remembered that one of the rules of modern hunting is you prefer the bucks.  If you kill enough does and fawns you reduce the deer population drastically, but as long as you have one or two surviving bucks you get another generation.

Picking up from this, Eric drafted this chapter, putting the problem directly in Tommy’s face.

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Chapter 80, Brown 310

I commented about here that it often seemed we were playing Multiverser, that Eric would create a situation and wait for me to figure a way out of it.  That, though, created interesting stories, so it was good.

Puzzling over the problem set up at the end of Brown 309 (previously 307), I considered and rejected the same solutions I wrote for Derek, and for the same reasons.  However, when I thought about having Derek turn into a sprite, it struck me that a sprite looked like a tiny angel, and he could use that to his advantage, except that before he could become Morach he would have to become Ferris, who looks more like a gargoyle than anything else.  That, though, got me thinking.  The body skill Derek uses lets him reduce himself by up to half in every dimension, and increase himself by as much as doubling in every dimension, done by thinking of the person he is when that size.  The only reason he couldn’t get larger or smaller ultimately is that he doesn’t have a named persona conceptualized for those sizes.  Could he imagine such a persona, give it a name, and become that person?  I posed it to Eric, and separately to John Walker (on whom the James Beam character is based, who has been playing since before the game was published), and while both were hesitant, both agreed it was possible, and so I drafted it into the story here.

Eric had to do a bit of editing at the end because I got the geography wrong, not realizing that Alphonso had left the stage.

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Chapter 81, Cooper 26

I had left a note for Eric concerning the trip ahead, and in the process composed the meeting with The Eagle, including most of the conversation and the mention of William Tell Junior.  He came back the next day and covered the hike very briefly, going directly to the meeting, and adding a few bits including the motorcycle and the offer of a ride to the city.

The comment about why it wasn’t a National Park is of course one of the differences between universes:  in our world, this location is the Rio Grande National Forest, but we eliminated the National Parks system and put a city on the river here.

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Chapter 82, Takano 110

I drafted this, and as soon as I finished it I realized that I had thought Davey would be at the meeting and forgot to include him, so I mentioned it to Eric who went back and tweaked it to include him.

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Chapter 83, Brown 311

I thought it was important for Derek and Vashti to go back and thank the bull for his hospitality, and that it would only be meaningful if they had treats.  I also thought that the restaurant would be closed on Christmas, recalling that so many people attended church on Christmas day back then that they had to make it a Federal holiday because of all the call-outs.  That also meant that the members of the band would be in church.  Pierre would be Catholic because it’s the leading religion in France, Maurice Baptist because that was strong among southern Blacks, and a lookup confirmed that Presbyterians were a strong group in China around 1900.

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Chapter 84, Cooper 27

Eric drafted this, but I swept through and made a lot of suggestions for changes, because we had a different notion of when Cooper would change out of his uniform, Eric having it done at the bus station and so revealing his identity to The Eagle, I keeping him in costume until in the room so he could keep that secret.  I also expanded the dialogue at the front desk, and this led to questions about later parts of the chapter.  We agreed on a cooperative rewrite of portions to accommodate this.

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This has been the seventh 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.