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.

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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.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #503, on the subject of Versers Progress.

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 fourth post for this novel, covering chapters 37 through 48.  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; and
3. #502:  Verser Setbacks, chapters 25 through 36.

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 37, Cooper 12
Chapter 38, Takano 96
Chapter 39, Brown 295
Chapter 40, Cooper 13
Chapter 41, Takano 97
Chapter 42, Brown 296
Chapter 43, Cooper 14
Chapter 44, Brown 297
Chapter 45, Takano 98
Chapter 46, Brown 298
Chapter 47, Cooper 15
Chapter 48, Takano 99

Chapter 37, Cooper 12

Our conversations had a major event ahead for Wilhelm, but we agreed that there should be something less dramatic in the Cooper story before that happened, and Eric had set up the idea that he was going to climb the northeast face of North Hill, so that was the focus of this chapter.  I had specifically said I wanted to write this internal dialogue thing in the middle of the climb.

After I had written the beginning through the internal dialogue, I encouraged Eric to expand the climb, which he did.

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Chapter 38, Takano 96

Before we started writing this book we had discussed bringing someone to Tommy to help her survive.  Our top ideas then were to bring Johnny Angel back into the story and give him a wealth of survival skills, or to create a new viewpoint character and bring him there.  We chose to create Cooper; but Cooper wasn’t really turning into the survival expert we needed and was very much involved in a very interesting storyline, so we came back to whether to bring Angel here.  Instead, I proposed a new indig.  Discussion included whether he was big like Grizzly Adams, or tall and thin, or just an unimpressive looking guy, and what his name should be, and Davey is what emerged.

I had pictured the meeting, and so I drafted this chapter.

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Chapter 39, Brown 295

As the musician, it was up to me to do a lot of the more musical end of things.  I also had the advantage that I had played the Sousaphone, and also dabbled on the trumpet, and had been in a wide variety of musical combos including a Dixieland band and a marching band.  I wrote this chapter.

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Chapter 40, Cooper 13

Eric drafted this, covering quite a bit of the story outline.  We are moving toward the famous apple story, but in our researches encountered a few other William Tell adventures worth adapting into our story.

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Chapter 41, Takano 97

Eric drafted this, but we went back to make a lot of changes, partly because there were things Tommy already knew and partly because I wanted to take her out of the middle and have Davey teach the tribe directly.

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Chapter 42, Brown 296

Eric drafted the beginning of this, including bringing forward the southern reaction to the “Yankee” opposition to apartheid in the south, and the initial arrival at the restaurant.  We had discussed the issue of whether the owner would pay them for playing, and his solution, that Pierre would insist on it, resolved that.

Once Eric started writing about the music, he passed the baton to me to continue it.  I provided music for Alphonso and created a couple of other acts, then ended with Derek’s band starting their set.  However, we eventually realized we had not done enough to push the racial tensions and devil involved in politics concepts forward, so I came back and cut the chapter short, adding the introduction of the mayor and moving the rest to a new chapter to expand the Brown stories.

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Chapter 43, Cooper 14

We were each waiting for the other to write this, but I realized that and drafted it.  I had some concerns about how to continue that story with Cooper as the viewpoint character, but it seemed still to be unfolding well, and I sketched some ideas for it.

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Chapter 44, Brown 297

Brown 296 was already long when I decided to use it to introduce the mayor, so when we were around chapter 80 I came back and split 296, expanding the second part as this chapter.  This increased all the chapter numbers below this point by one, and all the Brown chapter numbers also by one.

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Chapter 45, Takano 98

We needed Davey to teach survival skills to a large group of people without belaboring the story.  Also, I observed that Davey lived with his family but had never met a girl who wasn’t less closely related to him than a first cousin, so this would be his opportunity to find a wife.  I had suggested that Varlax and Sylwi would be candidates but problematic, but if we introduced someone else we’d also have to develop another character.  Eric ran with those ideas and drafted this, with only a few minor edits from me.

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Chapter 46, Brown 298

I was inclined to skip Derek’s set, but Eric said he enjoyed reading the music sections so I tackled it.  I combed the book to this point and found eight songs confirmed as in their repertoire; I wanted ten, but couldn’t think of more.  Peace in the Valley had been mentioned a couple times in our discussions, but it turned out to be written by Tommy Dorsey a quarter century in the future, so I put that on the back shelf.  While I was writing I thought of At the Cross, the words to the verses from Isaac Watts, and although I wasn’t sure about the music I thought it was probably nineteenth century and went with it.  I want to add Also Sprach Zarathustra, but want to have a session where the band learns it.

The setup with the devil at the card table was written by Eric quite a while back, originally set at the restaurant, but I objected that Hannah would not allow anyone to play cards at her restaurant, least of all the devil.  We agreed to move it here, and to split it so that the meeting was a cliffhanger.  The song reference is actually to one of my songs, entitled Never Alone, so it is unlikely that many readers will recognize it.

The original segment about the devil had ended with the restaurant mostly empty, and I simply copied that here; but the lead-in was very short, and it didn’t seem as if the hall would have cleared, so Eric expanded it with more music after the band, pies, and a bit more before moving to their departure and that encounter.

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Chapter 47, Cooper 15

Following the rough outline, I wrote this short chapter establishing that Wilhelm had been arrested, and suggesting that Hans was bound to be caught.

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Chapter 48, Takano 99

I wrote this mostly so I could continue the Brown story in the next chapter, but also because I wanted to lay the foundation for the idea that Tommy was not going to marry Davey.

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This has been the fourth 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 #502, on the subject of Verser Setbacks.

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 third post for this novel, covering chapters 25 through 36.  The previous mark Joseph “young” behind-the-writings web log posts are #498:  Characters Restart and #501:  Characters Orienting.  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 25, Takano 92
Chapter 26, Brown 290
Chapter 27, Cooper 9
Chapter 28, Takano 93
Chapter 29, Brown 291
Chapter 30, Cooper 10
Chapter 31, Brown 292
Chapter 32, Takano 94
Chapter 33, Brown 293
Chapter 34, Cooper 11
Chapter 35, Takano 95
Chapter 36, Brown 294

Chapter 25, Takano 92

This was originally about trying to find a way to catch a giant fish, but it was difficult because Eric had forgotten how they did their fishing.  Faced with the complications, he changed it to needing better weapons for confrontations with wild animals.  To some degree, this was because we needed to have Tommy develop more survival skills and had no source for her to learn them.

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Chapter 26, Brown 290

In our discussion for this chapter I had put forward the notion that Hannah would lowball Maurice on pay, and Derek would object to a black boy being paid less than a white boy, particularly by a black employer.  This actually fits into our long-term notion of a racially integrated battle against injustice.

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Chapter 27, Cooper 9

I made some suggestions for the outline, including the fact that Eric wanted a miracle connected to Cooper being arrested and escaping.  Making a few notes on all of that, I then wrote the arrest.

The four official languages of Switzerland are French, Italian, German, and something called Romansh.  I decided that the scene would be complicated if the soldier was less fluent in German and so tried to communicate in the other three languages first.

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Chapter 28, Takano 93

I had been thinking that it would be good to have someone else take over the sermons, so that we wouldn’t have to keep thinking about what Tommy was going to teach each week.  Sylwi seemed a good choice.

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Chapter 29, Brown 291

Our outline for Derek included that there would be a confrontation with something called a Grunch (pictured) on Halloween, and that Maurice would be there.  Eric had done the research on the New Orleans monsters for three confrontations we were planning, and he wrote this.

In Brown 302 Eric made reference to Derek and Vashti having explained who they were to Maurice.  At that point, I came back here and expanded a one-sentence statement to the effect that they explained who they were to him into the several paragraphs which actually did explain it.

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Chapter 30, Cooper 10

There had been significant discussion of the Cooper story, and I essentially pulled together pieces of it to which we had previously agreed, anticipating the next event, which would be the first miracle of Cooper’s experience.

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Chapter 31, Brown 292

I suggested that the Brown story should be accelerated here, and that the entire Halloween event should take three chapters.  Eric thought it would be completed in two, but as we reached the beginning of the second it was unclear exactly how it would resolve despite having an outline.

Eric wrote this, expanding on some of the ideas he had presented previously, and taking it to a cliffhanger as I had suggested.

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Chapter 32, Takano 94

I saw this as follow-up to Tommy giving Sylwi control over the weekly services.  I decided on Boronir because he had been one of the Tennans and therefore a noted fighter and probably a burly guy and less social.

I wrote this while waiting for Eric to catch up the Brown story.

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Chapter 33, Brown 293

Finishing the Halloween confrontation, Eric wrote most of this, but was faced with the problem of killing a monster immune to bullets.  I had suggested a “spiritual weapon” which was unclear, so Eric passed the writing to me to finish, and I brought in the notion of quoting something from the sprite scriptures which disempowered the Grunch and let them kill it with their weapons.

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Chapter 34, Cooper 11

Eric had suggested a miracle, and we had discussed the options, so I took to writing this chapter.  I had left two Brown chapters for Eric, because he understood the monster better, but filled in the Takano and Cooper chapters between them.

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Chapter 35, Takano 295

Eric had written this quite a few chapters back, but I said it was too soon, and there were a lot of little mistakes, “continuity errors”, about her situation.  It wouldn’t be until later in the year that there might be food shortages, but it was a good chapter.  Having reached early December in her story, Eric resurrected the chapter from the notes and made significant revisions; I had trouble with only a small part of it, which he revised.

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Chapter 36, Brown 294

We had several loose futures dangling.  One was that I had said the band would pick up the Sousaphone player shortly after Halloween.  We had also collaboratively written a portion in which the Devil is playing poker at a dance hall Derek visits for some reason, and I had decided that it should belong to an uncle of the Sousaphone player.  Eric wrote the beginning of this, with the owner of a music hall, Pascal Beaufoy, asking Derek to come play there, and then segued into the devil playing cards in the restaurant.  I moved that part back to the notes, because I couldn’t imagine Hannah Johnson allowing anyone to play cards in her restaurant, least of all the devil, and it would work much better at the music hall.  I then penned the section introducing Pierre Beaufoy, grand-nephew of Pascal, as a wealthy Sousaphone player who wants an opportunity to play in a band.

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This has been the third 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.