We’re now a fair way into the story. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that black smoke has happened, and our characters have all been all over the place. If you’re new to the story, the easiest place to get up to date is probably the blog site.
This morning (Australian Eastern Standard Time), I thought I’d share links to each of the characters.
Of course, (I may be biased…) Toni’s at the top. (@toniwantstovote)
Antoinette Louise Clark – suffragist and medical student – you can access her thread here.
Lt Roger Carver – of HMS Thunderchild can be found here.
Special Ops 4th Coy Coldstream Guards can be found here.
Breaker Morant (yet that one!) can be found here.
HMS Thunderchild can be found here.
And of course, the great man himself HG Wells, can be found here.
But if you’ve not been following along, and you’d like to start, you can find the complete story in Chronological order, here.
I have to say that the blog is incredibly impressive. Andrew J. Harvey, from Hague Publishing put it together, which was clearly an epic undertaking.
Leonie Rogers 
Hello there,
Great post! I’ve been following the story and I find it really interesting that you’ve provided links to all of the characters’ threads. I was wondering, how did you come up with the idea to tell the story in this unique way?
Thanks again
– Stephen Wilk
Hi Stephen – it was the brain child of Andrew Harvey from Hague Publishing. He then contacted us all individually, and asked us to come up with character concepts. He had a very clear vision from the start, and it’s been an incredibly fun project to be a part of.
Making our stories mesh has been the key – along with of course, making them mesh with HG Wells’ original work.
I’ll ask Andrew to pop on over and reply in more detail!
Hi Stephen. The initial idea was to have a bit of fun and try out a ‘shared world’ with a couple of writer friends , using HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ as the sandbox – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_universe for what this normally involves. In a shared world the guests use their own characters, the creators own characters (at least the main ones) are off limits. The big difference with this retelling of War of the Worlds was to try and tweet the story, while setting the story securely within the historical context of 1897 (so many movies based on the book simply don’t bother).
I provided everyone with a summary of what Wells had written, day by day, and let them loose.
Michael put his hand up first to write from the perspective of HMS Thunder Child (Hence Lt Carver), I think I was probably next with Lt Dullanty of the Cold Stream Guards, Leonie was next with Toni, and Ken and I worked together to try and bring in an Australian link (as we’re both Australian), although the idea of using Breaker Morant was solely and exclusively his.
Leonie’s character was the biggest shock when she sent me some early drafts. I had wanted to tweet the story, but using plain English. As you’re aware, Toni uses the modern vernacular. I had to sleep on that for two weeks before I realised that I really liked what Leonie had done with the character and that Toni could successfully sum up in a single hashtag what Wells and the other characters might take a paragraph to describe. Though I have to say that as the creator of the ‘Line’ I still think Toni’s views of the #Gascoyne-Cecil-Line remain a trifle harsh.
Once everyone had submitted their first drafts I read them and took several deep breaths. Everyone had done what I had asked, just not what I had expected. Deciding that what they had given me was better than what I had expected I then looked around for opportunities to weave the individual characters stories together. So Ken wanted to have the Curies meet Breaker, I thought Toni would probably offer chocolates for a chance to meet Marie and Pierre. Michael’s Lt Carver was going to Woking, I volunteered use of some of my special ops characters to help with his mission – in the end that wasn’t required as Michael managed to pull together a scratch force by himself. I needed Dullanty to travel north through London, I had him use the tunnels when Breaker was involved elsewhere.
On a couple of occasions I asked authors to email each other when I felt they needed to talk to sort something out, and when this happened it was always a joy to see the solution that evolved.
It was only in the final stage of breaking up individual threads into tweets, and attaching a specific date time to each time that the beauty of the interweaving of the threads became fully apparent. For example on 7 July you get the juxtaposition of Toni and Breaker’s views:
—
07-Jun 07:32 @toniwantstovote
And #TheSundaySun says #Martians have massacred a whole battalion of the #CardiganRegiment! They have #armour, #heatrays, and #tripods! #fear #heartpoundingagain
07-Jun 08:00 @BreakerMorant
We are at war with the Martians, but Brown and Vogan agree that the threat of a court-marshal means it is unsafe for our health to re-join the regiment.
—-
So, in short I had a plan, fortunately the authors were quite prepared to ignore that plan when occasion demanded it, and in hindsight it is the interweaving of the individual character’s threads that make our retelling of the story so unique.