With the publication of Nothing Ever Ends, the third book in the Eververse series due on 10/1, I thought it would be a good time to talk about where the series is going.

Ever The Hero, The Judgment Of Valene, and now Nothing Ever Ends is something of a relay race between the characters of Kit, Valene, and Abi, each handing off the baton of the POV character to the other. That will continue into Book Four and beyond, but I’ll hold the identity of that book’s MC for now.

The turn from one character to the other was pure instinct and I was following my intuition as I explored all three of these women in the early drafts of these books in 2016-2018. At first, I thought it might only be a trilogy. That had a lot of appeal to me. Then I began to miss Kit, and she was impatient to explore other ideas. Those became the novellas, and as I explored this world, it expanded, and so did my view of the series.

All along, I had been thinking a lot about Watchmen, a comic book that looms large over superhero fiction in all its forms. I didn’t want to repeat or echo the book in any real way, but I wanted somehow to convey its perfect sense of symmetry and structure. What I found myself thinking most about was the nine-panel grid.

The syncopation between panels – the light and color, the action, the themes inherent that continue to reveal themselves decades later – is the product of artist Dave Gibbons, and of course, writer Alan Moore. Gibbons’ rhythmic choices though give comics perhaps the closest thing to rhyme and meter. There is poetry in these panels. There is Shakespeare. There is a structure I wanted to emulate.

Somewhere I settled on the idea that the Eververse will be nine books. How that reflects the nine-panel grid and Watchmen perhaps we’ll have to wait and see – Book Five will be key in that regard – but the comics aren’t the only influence on the decision. Readers may have noticed the recurrence of the number nine in the story.

There are nine Ever out there in the universe, for example. This has a lot to do I think with the prevalence of the number in some of my favorite fiction. Star Wars, certainly; Lord Of The Rings, maybe more directly. There are nine Ringwraiths, as there are nine members of the Fellowship, parallels which may or may not reflect in the work.

The roaming nature of Watchmen’s POV is an influence on the Eververse as well. I love the idea of exploring the world through other perspectives and voices, and so almost all of the books will be from unique points of view. Kit will recur, but I’ll leave how and when a mystery for now.

She is also the focus of the novellas and short stories – look for a collection next year. I will say odd-numbered books involve Kit, Abi, and related characters; even-numbered books involve Valene and her related characters, of which it’s not unreasonable to count someone like The Interdictor.

There is a larger story in the Eververse, a macro narrative whose shape only begins to gain definition in Nothing Ever Ends. It’s not the only story, and the world is big enough to go in many directions. It may in the future, but for now, my focus is on telling the story of Kit Baldwin and The Ever, of where they came from and where they’re headed.

Hopefully this is exciting and of interest to readers. I’d love to have you along for the ride!