Interlude

I know I've begun to detail more things about the different parts I thought I'd interlude with something else for a little bit. Most of this is probably just babble to just help me work things out, because things always get worked out better when you're able to express your thoughts physically instead of trying to sort them all in your brain.

Currently I'm having trouble keeping up with how much I post. I really hope that I'll be able to update three times a week, but the buffer that I was able to create before I actually posted the first chapter and throughout November and December have been waning quickly. So far posting three times a week means that I've been publishing twelve to fourteen chapters per month, but in January I only wrote five chapters, and only seven in February. (I had actually written eleven chapters in February, but four of them had to be scrapped for re-writes that I have had to do this month.)

But really all this post is dealing with is trying to convince myself that I either need to spend more time writing (Which I'd rather not do because I don't want to burn myself out on it) or decrease the number of chapters I publish down to two a week, or even one a week. I don't really want to do this either, but it seems I may have no choice considering that I only have about a fourteen chapter buffer currently.

If I am unable to finish more chapter this month to at least meet how many chapters I've published, I will decrease it down to two a week during the month of April, posting every Tuesday and Friday instead of Sundays as well. The current part (Part Nine) that I am rewriting the last two chapters of is called 'Nocturna' and after it will be (Part Ten) that will be 'Lost', and then a short story to serve as The Space Between's first Interlude.

If I am unable to write as many chapters as I publish during April, then the Interlude with be the beginning of a hiatus, in which I will use a month's time to not only rebuild my buffer, but to take a short break in order to keep the story from becoming stale. If all goes according to this plan, the Interlude will be published in mid-June and I'll probably restart publishing in mid to late July. 

Even if I am able to write an equal number of chapters to what I publish, I may go with this plan anyways, I personally feel that I've been relying too much on DC and Marvel properties, as I have yet to write anything outside of it besides the Hellboy chapters. The original intent was not for it to be exclusively DC or Marvel, but for whatever Sci-fi stories I wanted. I haven't really been able to do that so far, and I'd like to take some time off to be able to work some of these things out. Currently, Nocturna, Lost, and the Interlude are all inwardly set, so we won't be seeing any new worlds or characters for the time being.

After the Interlude I have basically no options other than parts that only drive forward the story of the villain (Who has yet to be revealed so I won't spoil anything) or other important elements of the story, with nothing in between as a 'cool-down period' or anything to add to the group itself.

Currently I have one other core member that has yet to be added, but he may not make it because he's a DC/Marvel character and I'd like to have some differences in the core group. (The core group, including any that will be added in later chapters of this first 'book' will become something different in the 'books' to come.)

I do have a few ideas of new members that are not DC/Marvel characters, but I have yet to narrow them down or come up with an interesting/logical way to incorporate them.

TL:DR Things might change.

-EDR

'Hero' In Depth

The third part, 'Hero', of The Space Between is really a straight-forward of what I wanted it to be. It's set on an Earth that takes place roughly twenty years after the events of 'All-Star Superman' or something similar.

I really wanted to use it to focus a little more on Kal-L and Tony, since Part Two was about Stephen, J'onn, Martha, and Kitty.

There's not really much to say, at least as far as background goes, and I will admit that I'm not overly proud of the part as a whole. But it was a necessary part, in the fact that it shows the group acting as a group in their first outing together. It also introduces the nanites (which, even though they have yet to be mentioned again, will return in much later chapters), and has my Husband/Editors' favorite part, the 'Parallel Bat-Fight'.

It may be revamped in the future, and if/when I do, I'll make another post about it that (hopefully) goes into greater length and detail.

-EDR

'The First Jump' In Depth

In my first post I introduced myself and talked a little bit about The Space Between and about the characters within it and how they became involved in the story. Since I wanted to talk in depth about each part, and the introductory post covered most (if not all) of the Prologue, I thought that I'd skip to Part Two: 'The First Jump'.

After the original five characters meet, they decide on what they will be doing; surviving in the Between, which isn't easy because they have no renewable sources. Or any sources at all for that matter. Which means that they need to jump to other worlds just to even do their shopping.

The First Jump, as you may have guessed, is their first outing to another universe. Like most of their jumps, they gather as much food, water, technology, clothing, books, etc. Whatever they need, they need to travel through the dimensions to get it. And with Martha's want of finding her own universe, they decide to try to visit as many different Earths as possible.

The prompt I got for this world (From my husband) was 'Magic and Technology are switched'. So I thought of it more of, what if Tony Stark were a sorcerer and Stephen Strange were a wealthy man who made Iron Man suits? And from that thought, the story unfolded before me.

Not much of the plot was rewritten, it (for the most part) stayed intact to what I wanted it to be. The biggest change from initially writing it to rewriting that chapter was the Kitty Pryde chapter. When I had written it, it was about J'onn and Martha going to the Xavier Mansion, and asking the X-Men for help to save Stephen. Kitty was already a grown woman, and a member of the X-Men, who went with Wolverine and Jean Grey to stop the clearly mad Sorcerer Supreme Tony Stark.

This iteration of her would have eventually joined the group of the Space Between, but not until much, much later (At that point it had been planned for Book Two). But my Husband (/Editor) was unsatisfied with that, so I wrote what is now J'onns' chapter, where he and Martha end up in Mt. Vernon, NY for a short amount of time.

Then the idea struck me to make her a young orphan that was sort of a reluctant thief, being chased by mutant-hunters. This made it so that she would have a better reason to join them than I could have probably come up with later, and the group would have had more reason to accept her.

In the end, the Sorcerer Supreme Tony dies, and the mirror Pepper Potts (Who is just Pepper on this Earth, and takes the place of Clea as a Faltine Princess), becomes Sorcerer Supreme after him, and the first real ally of the 'Betweeners'. I hadn't really fully planned for all of that, but as soon as it was written down I knew that it was the right thing to happen. This version of Pepper will appear again in the story, although to what extent I can't be sure of yet.

-EDR

First Post Introduction

This blog is mostly a place where I talk about my fan fiction The Space Between, which is up on my AO3 along with a few other things. I may also talk about what I'm currently watching or reading at the time. (I'm currently making my way through The Far Kingdoms by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch)

First to introduce myself: I'm a 25-year-old married woman, who currently lives out of a closet, and is impatiently awaiting the day that the Automatron dlc for Fallout 4 drops. My husband is my editor, and has so far facilitated the re-write of just less than half of what has been written so far.

The story is about both DC and Marvel characters who have ended up in a place that they eventually dub The Space Between, because it is sort of like a pocket dimension that exists between already existing universes. As they travel to other dimensions they will meet up with both alternate universes of DC and Marvel comics, movies, shows, etc. and even other comic characters, like Dark Horses' Hellboy (Albeit based on the Hellboy movies rather than the comics) or other SciFi stories like Star Wars, Star Trek, Men in Black, Stargate, Halo, Fallout, Ender's Game, Ghost in the Shell, Niven's Ringworld, etc. Basically just a huge dump of whatever I want into a story of parallel-universe jumping. (And suggestions are always welcome, I already have a long list of things I want to watch that may or may not make it into the story itself.)

The story that is up now will eventually be re-titled as Book One, once it's finished, of course, and Book Two is already in the pre-planning stages.

The main characters of Book One are Martha Wayne, Tony Stark, J'onn J'onzz, Doctor Stephen Strange, Kal-L, Kitty Pryde, and Diana of Themyscira. (Other main characters have yet to join the crew, but there will be at least one more to join the 'Betweeners')

Martha Wayne is the Batwoman of her Earth, on an Earth similar to both Earth-11 (Where the Justice League has been gender flipped) and Flashpoint's alternate Earth. In this timeline Bruce was killed in Crime Alley instead of his parents, like what had happened during the events of Flaspoint. Instead of Thomas becoming Batman and Martha going insane, it's flipped, where Martha becomes Batwoman and Thomas becomes beyond help and is remanded to Arkham Asylum, and eventually dies.

Other notable differences include Kara Zor-El and Kal-El arriving on Earth at the same time (In the same ship, where Kara held her baby cousin) and were both found by the Kents. This difference in age makes it so that Kara becomes Superwoman and Clark becomes Superboy.

Tony Stark comes from an Earth that is directly parallel to the first Avengers Movie (Earth-199999), but during the climax of the film, when Tony goes through the portal to stop the chitauri, it changes time, so time on Earth continues, which allows the chitauri to ravage the planet to human extinction even though the mother ship has been destroyed just a few seconds earlier. When Tony falls back through the portal he's in fact in the future, and has to come to terms with the fact that he is the last of his planet.

He then pours his time into creating a portal to another dimension, after remembering a theory (By Reed Richards) he had heard during his college years that there were Earths parallel to them. It takes him more than twenty years (Plus a few robotic replacements for lost limbs/extremities) before he is able to make any sort of trip with his machine. When the rest of the group meets him, he is not the same man that everyone knows him as.

J'onn comes from an Earth that is set far into the future. He lives in isolation from the rest of the world, though not for lack of trying. He no longer knows any of his friends from the Justice League days, the only one who has lived as long as he has is Superman, who lives off-world with his children and grandchildren. J'onn, during the re-settlement of the Earth, is still vying to be a hero, but is brushed off by the newer generation of heroes and humans.

Doctor Stephen Strange lives on an Earth that is closely related to Earth-2772 (The universe of Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme animated movie of 2007). He meets and befriends a Doctor Strange of a parallel universe, who teaches him to jump through the universes to gain his trust, then destroys Stephen's Earth. He is only able to escape by expending all of his magic (While also being fed magic by the Sanctum Sanctorum itself) and transporting the whole Sanctum into the Space Between, where all of our heroes meet.

Kal-L is the last of the main group, who comes from Earth-30 (Red Son). There isn't that much to explain about him if you've already read it, but it is a parallel Earth where instead of landing in Kansas, he ends up landing in the Ukraine. (SPOILERS) At the end of the story, Kal-L disappears in an explosion during a fight with Brainiac, but returns later, disguised, and never comes back as Superman to the public again. In my version of it, Kal ends up teleporting to the Sanctum Sanctorum, like the rest of the group, but his suit is badly damaged, so no one knows that he isn't actually American. (END SPOILERS)

These five, through one way or another, find themselves in the 'Space Between', and even further, they find themselves in the Sanctum Sanctorum, and must work together to jump from parallel world to parallel world to sustain themselves. The only one who has a clear and decisive motive is Martha, who wants to find her way back to her own Earth.

Kitty Pryde and Diana of Themyscira, who join the others later (In part two and part four respectively) couldn't be more opposite. Diana is a very traditional sort of take on Wonder Woman, with a combination of both comic book and tv series (Justice League / Unlimited, and Young Justice) personalities. Kitty could not be further away from her counterparts, where she is orphaned, hunted, and turns to thievery just to survive. What I believe to be her core character is intact: She is a young genius with an incredible sense of curiosity (That hopefully won't kill this cat ;P).

And after relating all of that, I must confess that I only began to write for this project/universe because I hoped that by doing so I'll become a better writer. I was originally inspired by AuraChannelerChris, who began and still writes The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest, the longest piece of fiction to date with now over 4 million words.

I haven't personally read The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest, but only because I'm not really a player/fan/follower of Super Smash Brothers. I have, however, read an interview with AuraChannelerChris, where he says that he first began to write for it to learn English. He really inspired me to actually begin writing down the dreams I had that eventually became The Space Between. It may never reach 4 million words, but hopefully it will help me become a better writer.

The original version of the story wasn't going to start off the way it is, it was going to begin in these characters' futures, and would follow their children (Or, in particular, one of their children) as he worked his way through the world that The Space Between will eventually become. I wrote the first five chapters (Part One: 'Prologue') to gain a better understanding of the origins of that universe, but decided that their story was too good to just skip over.

So, to conclude this post before it gets too long, I've got a fan fiction, and I'm going to talk about it here.

-EDR