Nocturna In Depth

Hopefully a quick one because I'm writing this up one the same day the last chapter of Nocturna is being uploaded.

I was actually a little less than halfway through a different part (The North Wind, which will occur later in the story and will have a substantially different direction and feel to it) when my Husband/Editor told me he didn't like the direction it was taking. I had to scrap six chapters and start over, even having to rewrite the last chapter of The Harbinger of War.

It took me awhile to think of what to do instead of the part that had been there previously, and at first considered to push up another planned part called Hex, where they ended up in the past to meet Jonah Hex. (This part may still happen later on, depending on certain things as the story continues.)

I liked the idea, but at that point the group had already gone to three DC worlds, and I wanted to wait on having them go to anymore for awhile. At least until Marvel caught up with them a little more. So I thought about it a little more and decided that maybe instead of going to the past, the past would go to them (Or something like that) and then began writing.

I wrote it all fairly quickly, with my Husband/Editor reading it chapter by chapter instead of in clumps like he usually does, to make sure that I didn't have to do anymore major rewrites or if I had to scrap the part altogether, then I'd be able to do it nearer to the beginning than with The North Wind.

I am personally a fan of Regency/Victorian era romances, so visualizing it was fun, and I didn't try to make strictly historical speech because it would have slowed down the writing and just been a huge pain to do. I did try to make it a tiny bit historically accurate, but I wanted to keep the conversations as smooth as possible.

There is also the fact that this Superman is the Red Son Superman. I did already mention that he was the Red Son Superman in my First Post here on Blogger, but this is the first time that anything relating to him actually being Red Son Superman is in the story.

Not much else can be said about this part. (Other than, look at that cool brain in a jar, I wonder where that's from.)

-EDR

The Harbinger of War In Depth

The Harbinger of War is so far the part with the most unrevealed details to it, which means I can't really talk about it too much. A few things that I can talk about:

Pepper coming back was always planned, and when my husband/editor got to it he was excited to see a little bit of continuity with an Earth that had been previously visited. At this point I'm not too sure how big of a role Sorcerer Supreme Pepper will have on the rest of the story (Other than what she's already done), and [her role] is still a little up in the air. It was nice to see a familiar face, and having them interact with someone on a long term for a change.

I had a huge change in The Harbinger of War, because for awhile it was The Harbingers of War. The original plan was for three different assassins to hit them simultaneously, one against J'onn and Martha, one against Stephen and Pepper, and one against Kal, Diana, Tony, and Kitty. My husband/editor, didn't really like it for a few reasons including that there was too much going on and there wasn't really anywhere to place emphasis. I kept only one assassin, while the two other assassins will make their debut later.

And also J'onn and Martha having their first kiss, which is sort of what I've been trying to build up for, and when I started I just couldn't wait to get there. When I first started The Space Between, it was set in the future, and even then I always knew that J'onn and Martha were going to be paired together, so it was always going to happen.

The last thing is something that doesn't even appear in this part, which is the changed last chapter. In the original, another unknown character ended up in the Sanctum, but was changed halfway through Part Nine. The character will still make an appearance, but not until at least Part Twelve (Subject to change)

Some details that will be revealed/expanded upon later:
The Eye of Ages will come into play in a larger way later on
The identity of the assassin (And the other two assassins that have yet to debut)
The identity of the previous owner of the Eye of Ages
Other things you probably wonder about

-EDR

Ghosts In Depth

Ghosts (Part Seven of The Space Between) was one of those parts that I always knew I was going to do. I may not have had it planned out step by step with all of the little details planned ahead of time, but I always sort of knew something like it was going to happen.

The basis for this Earth was the inversion of heroes and villains, not unlike Earth-3, even though it isn't outwardly obvious (Mostly due to the fact that events that happen in Ghosts is before the time of the Justice League/Crime Syndicate).

And a lot of Ghosts sets up for later things, so I will not be giving away all of my secrets relating to Part Seven.

The first thing is the original location that they appear in, Crime Alley. It serves both to shock Martha and to make her believe that this may be her Earth. As J'onn is the only one who knows her backstory (Through deductive reasoning by simply knowing Batman's origin) it was easy for her to convince him to help her.

After being discovered, Martha makes a split second decision to stay on this Earth, despite it not being her real Earth. J'onn also makes a decision to make sure that Martha comes back to the Sanctum, but would not allow himself to remove her by force, instead he turns to trying to reason with her by finding the real Martha Wayne.

Originally, Thomas had killed Martha, as she had been asking too many questions about his business partners, but my Editor (/Husband) had high objections to that, so I rewrote it to better suit Thomas's anger at Martha's return.

The emotional distress that Martha experiences at the end of Ghosts sets up for the events of Part Eight (The Harbinger of War).

At the same time, two other important things happen: Kitty gets a pug puppy she names Pompey (Named after William the Silent's pug) and a conversation between Stephen and Diana that hints that they may be a couple in the future (Which this is the case unless it is changed at the very last minute. Which sometimes things do, and it really isn't anyone's fault.) (Kal and Kitty seeing Stephen and Diana also supports this claim, as it is the two from the future, who came to the Earth, although accidentally in the same time period that they had come the first time, to fulfill that promise they made under the mistletoe. And the reason Stephen allows Kitty to have a puppy is because he is from the future and already knows that she has a puppy.)

There's not a lot of other stuff to say about Ghosts. :/

-EDR