When Writing Worlds Collide

When I first started writing all the stuff I've worked on since high school, I thought that each story took place in a different world. But the more I learned about each story, the more I realized that they were all practically taking place in the same world anyway, or in a world so similar that it would be more difficult to keep the many worlds apart than it would be to combine the characters and histories all into one world.

Actually, I should mention that not all of my worlds have become one. Just that it's only been the more recent stuff that I started earlier this year that isn't part of the main world. Though I keep trying to figure out ways that they could be only to say, 1. I don't want them to be in the same world, 2. That makes absolutely no sense for them to be in the same world, or 3. That's contradictory to what I already have established in the main world.

At first I thought my characters all existed in different worlds, but then I realized that three of my characters shared a cousin. The cousin isn't even mentioned in any of the writing or the notes, only in some vague impression I have of their backstories. But that led to two characters being sisters, and the older sister's boyfriend's friend being their cousin. Though yesterday or the day before, I might have added one of my other characters and her older sister to the mix of cousins. This family is somehow highly supernatural or affected by the supernatural and the majority of them don't know it. Which begs the question: why?

I'll try not to think about this too much for the time being since I really want to finish editing Kitsune/Butterfly Mask. But who knows, maybe that'll be important somehow. Though I'm looking forward to finding out the secret behind this supernatural family.