Kristina

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PeteMork
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Re: Kristina

Post by PeteMork » Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:39 am

Now, this is really getting interesting! Is it Eli? Or a strange, new vampire? Or the vampire that Eli met so many years ago that wanted to nom her? All these questions, and no answers. For those answers, tune in for next week's installment, same time, same station. :geek:
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain. (Roberto Bolaño)

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EEA
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Re: Kristina

Post by EEA » Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:50 am

: :o I wonder to who could it be? :think:

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dongregg
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Re: Kristina

Post by dongregg » Wed Jun 18, 2014 5:45 am

gk, this is way good enough to publish. It's first rate story telling, and a compelling story it is. Re-reading, I believe the story stands on its own feet, without the reader needing to know anything about LTROI. And what PeteMork said...the sounds, the smells, the breeze, the sailors...and so much more. I feel I'm really there as I read. And it's a place I want to be at.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:44 am

Wow, I have readers! Thank you very much for your kind words.

I've been on a trip and during those days I was completely off line. This story pestered me the entire time. It just kept going. So it got written out.

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Clubmeister
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Re: Kristina

Post by Clubmeister » Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:04 pm

Very interesting and promising story. All these slow and enveloping descriptions (Gk’s style) are preparing us to some big and unobvious events.
Who is Kristina? We don’t know for sure, - we can only speculate on some hints.
This style captured me first time in Gk’s parts of the story “Another way to live - 'Ginia/Lacke variant”, started by DMt.
And yet this child... I hoped for his appearance, but was ready that this story will unfold without him. And again, - who’s this child? We can only speculate…
He is looking at me, silently, expectantly, in the near-dark room, neither smiling nor frowning; gaunt as a Belsen child, proud as the Devil, distant and beautiful as a star. [DMt.]

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:43 pm

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 5 oOo oOo o.


Father had made the arrangements when I was at maturity. Our family was with a pittance of means and he had through some negotiations arranged for what he hoped would be a better situation for us all. I would go to stay with a man who was a close associate of his oldest brother. It was not decreed to be as a marriage, yet on this the door was not closed either.

The mud season was at its end when my family had bundled me up with a few possessions. An uncle had then taken me with this wagon to the crossroads at Åby where I had been handed off to another man, a proper gentleman and lady escort. Before it had fully settled on me about where I was and where my life was going, everything around me had changed. I never saw my family again. Nor did I ever hear from them. My brothers and sister, my father and mother, the aunts and two uncles, the herd of cousins – they all simply dropped from my life in the turn of a week and I was under a new roof.

My new master was a recluse. I saw him seldom and after some confusion –for I felt I had proved a disappointment- found that I preferred it that way. Strongly preferred it thus.

He was wicked. And preposterous. His men feared him. Yet he must have had something over them because they stayed. By day he was in town and I was allowed free range of the main house, kitchen and garden. At night he could be heard but I almost never saw him. In this new life my duties were appropriate for my station - a young lady of the house. Yet it was not my place to go off the grounds or to go to town, and so I never did. Rather, I tended to a few assigned tasks and was instructed by a much older woman on letters and how to conduct myself. I did not understand where for me this was headed, but it was the path offered.

The house I had come to live in was made of stone and had windows that contained glass that sat within wooden frames which in turn held the assembly into the stone. Yet more, the creation where I now lived had a multitude of small fireplaces, a second floor and steps within. There were servants of all types and a man who, while also being a servant, ran the house from top to bottom. Above, there were chambers, one of which was assigned to me. I had a room for myself, a small fireplace, a toilet and a sitting area, although I did not know what to do with any of this space. (There was even a secret: a concealed door which opened into a stairwell that led down steeply into a sort of basement room and exit below and to the rear of the house.) Another chamber held the old woman who in the evenings gave me instruction. She was never to be bothered during the day. And in a third, the one opposite mine across this second floor, was the chamber of the Master. This, I never approached and it was most often shut.

Outside the house lay a walled and gated courtyard. Here, merchants from Norrköping would come and bring news and wares. I was soon assisting in the evaluating of the produce men would bring, although for as much as I could I got away from and ignored the commotion.

Beyond this courtyard there was a second structure- a tower keep. The tower and its stables and armory sat opposite the house and within it were stationed the Master's men. In time, I learned there were rooms below it, a hall on the ground level, and rooms up within it. But all this was off limits to me and truly of no interest. My attention was drawn elsewhere.

I was misled.

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Thu Jun 19, 2014 10:03 pm

Time for a little audience check...

I wrote this while taking a train ride down and then back up the east coast of the U.S. and then have started to post these little chapters onto this forum immediately after returning home. As a result, I've not passed this through the eyes and hands of my reviewer, as I ordinarily like to do. Rather, for this story you are my proofreaders. Yes, you can play along by making little guinea pig noises - go ahead. And... my apologies for not having warned you at the start.

Our protagonist for this story is Kristina. All of the story told so far and all the parts yet to come will be told from her point of view. And as the story progresses, she's being kind enough to take mental detours into her past; this allows the back story to come out. If she was not to do this, you'd have idea why she is haunting the docks of Malmö, Sweden.

I'll walk through the story quickly. This is more from my point of view, as the Writer. If there are things here that you didn't get while reading, please let me know.

ch1: We meet Kristina. She is on the docks of Malmö. Some clues are provided to help frame the story's time period (gas lights, oil lamps, canvas ships (i.e. sailing ships)). The chapter does not say what Kristina is, but again there are clues given. It is night time and raining (thus very dark as there is no moon), she is alone and seems to be on a hunt where she's trying to find a lone person - that is a bit ominous! - and that she will "slip away into the darkness" if things don't work out.

ch2: This is continuation of the same setting. It might be something like 10 or 20 minutes later - doesn't really matter. Further time period framing is provided by what is and what is not mentioned. She ruminates about steam ships. Steamships likely started to appear into the mid 1800s. I have no idea, of course, but my guess is regularly appearing steam ships would not be found before the 1820s. Also, in her thinking about the slow evolution of things around her, she does not mention trains. In my poking about on the Web, it looks like Sweden was building railroads in many places by the 1860s. Perhaps there were some before then, say the 1850s. But I did not find any mention of railroads before or during the 1840s. So, given that she's trying to stay current with changes, this should narrow the time period for ch1 and ch2 to somewhere from 1820 to 1849.

ch3: Katrina really takes us away into her memories for most of this part. This last paragraph is what ties the importance of it all into the story. And by this point, I'm hoping it's pretty clear what she is (ex: zombie, human, vampire, werewolf, etc.).

ch4: We find out that while Katrina was off thinking about steamships in ch3, a little visitor arrived on the scene. It is sill the same ongoing scene that has been playing out in ch1, ch2 and ch3. The key is that whereas she was distracted by her thoughts and, well, dinner in ch3, she's come out of that now and is suddenly alert to the unexpected arrival - the child. At the tail end we get a further time line clue with the "I thought back. It would have to be at least fifty years. Seventy, perhaps." So if we go from either end (1820 to 1849) and subtract off 50 to 70 years, she's inferring the time period that would be from 1849 - 50 => 1799 back to 1820 - 70 => 1750.

ch5: This entire chapter is a dive into her memories. It's a little unbelievable that she would recall the entirety of this during her "present moment" of being startled by the child in the alleyway, but in the way that I've put the story together I wanted to insert this much here at this point. Here, we learn that she "when I was at maturity", she gets shipped off from her home and into a new life. My guess on what "when I was at maturity" might indicate is poor. I'm going for the range of being from 12 up to 20 years old, preferring something in the middle such as Katrina being 14 to 16 years old. What I see now as being weak, also, is that need to provide better setting information that _all_ of ch5's remembrances take place at/near Norrköping (and not Malmö) (the two are very far apart). Her mentioning the glass windows was to show a couple of things: she is not very worldly and that her years prior to this big move were at simpler accommodations. My expectation is that simple agrarian families of about 1760 central Sweden (Norrköping region) did not travel much - and that a move of about 25 to 30 km would be about all it would take to effectively lose contact with your prior family, especially when intentionally cut off.

The other weakness at this point is there's no explanation about "the arrangements" that sent her from living with her family and over to where she is now. Part of that is that this is her point of view. She's a bit naive about things and I was trying to bring out in the 2nd paragraph of ch5 that events move a little too quickly for her. She ends up "under a new roof" before she's really had time to digest what has happened and why it has happened. This is a bit of a murkiness by me since I have no idea how "arrangements" would have been made - what I should be including is that there was a bit of duplicity by her new Master in "the arrangement". Her family is presumably benefiting by this "arrangement" and so is the new Master, of course, but in a story such as this (heh heh), there's a bit more to it.

... your thoughts? Things move on in ch6 and I'm worrying that my attempt to keep developments moving along at a fairly brisk pace (the entire story is about 4,000 words) I'm leaving too much out, or to speculation.

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dongregg
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Re: Kristina

Post by dongregg » Fri Jun 20, 2014 2:51 am

gkmoberg1 wrote:... your thoughts? Things move on in ch6 and I'm worrying that my attempt to keep developments moving along at a fairly brisk pace (the entire story is about 4,000 words) I'm leaving too much out, or to speculation.
It's your job--you're a writer. A balance between concision and full exposition is always a challenge. So far so good, I'd say. So very good... :mrgreen:
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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metoo
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Re: Kristina

Post by metoo » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:22 am

The first gasworks in Malmö bas built in 1854. Since it reasonably would have taken a some time to install gas lights, the time of chapter one must be later by some years.

Malmö Central Station was inaugurated in 1856, so there would have been trains if there was gas lights. ;-)
BTW, the station is across the canal from Norra Vallgatan.
Last edited by metoo on Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:53 am

Ah, thank you! Both of you.

Looks like the story then loses its gas lights. Yes, we are pre-1850s, so cross them off. Thanks - detail like this is pretty hard to figure out. Thank you for taking the time to find these dates. I had seen there was a significant shipyard build in the 1870s - fortunately that's even later on.

I have, btw, had fun touring the city from above. I've seen the rail lines and what is now called the 'inner harbor'.

If only Malmö was not so far away! I'd like to see the main cathedral and some of the museums. Probably lots of good food as well!

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