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Never Kiss A Stranger


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#31 chrisno1

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Posted 29 October 2011 - 12:35 PM

Chapter 13 up and running.

#32 chrisno1

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Posted 01 November 2011 - 11:59 PM

Chapter 14: James Bond discovers the horror behind the tremor of a scream....

#33 chrisno1

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Posted 04 November 2011 - 11:00 PM

Chapter 15: James Bond ... buried alive ??? Read it now!

Next week, Never Kiss A Stranger reaches its shattering conclusion.

#34 chrisno1

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Posted 11 November 2011 - 05:22 PM

Never Kiss A Stranger concludes today and tomorrow....
James Bond learns the truth behind the life of Lini Kiriakopoulos...

#35 chrisno1

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Posted 12 November 2011 - 11:57 PM

The final chapter of Never Kiss A Stranger has been posted.

I notice the story has just crept over 500 views. I'd like to thank all those who have read all or pieces of NKAS. It won't be everyone's tastes, but I like it. There. Tough.

I'd like to thank JIM for approving the submissions so quickly and for all those unseen who have encouraged and comforted me as I struggled to complete this latest opus.

As always any feedback is much appreciated.

James Bond will return...

#36 007jamesbond

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Posted 23 November 2011 - 07:30 PM

Finally got the chance to finish it..I like it but I need to re-read it because some parts were a bit confusing especially the main purpose of the plot. Hope to see another one soon

#37 chrisno1

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Posted 24 November 2011 - 12:25 PM

Finally got the chance to finish it..I like it but I need to re-read it because some parts were a bit confusing especially the main purpose of the plot. Hope to see another one soon


I'm glad you liked it, 007jamesbond. I wouldn't worry too much about being confused by the plot.
Even Amy says she isn't sure what the hell's going on.
:S

#38 chrisno1

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Posted 22 February 2012 - 03:49 PM

Ahh, my pet project...
Nice to see Never Kiss A Stranger has passed the 1000 views mark, which is when I consider my Fan Fiction to be a reasonable success. I hope everyone who has viewed it has dipped in fully and read the piece - it has some merit and isn't your usual 007 adventure.
Thanks to you all.

#39 MkB

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 05:32 PM

Here are my long, long, long overdue comments after reading NKAS! 

 

At first - it's probably my old age speaking - but I found Amy Porter disturbingly young (she's about 22, if I reckon well?): 

1) to have a rather disillusioned, analytic view of her own life
2) to be a love interest for a late thirties / early fourties James Bond. And I mean it from Bond's viewpoint, not hers: I'd like Bond to go for more experienced - and I don't mean sexually - women, achieved women, more on par with him. 

Although I must admit that when her life story is developed one understands better her character and its depths. 

 

I particularly enjoyed chapter 6 and 7, although I have been a bit unsettled by the chapter giving account of the first meeting of Amy and Bond from Amy's point of view. It's just a minor point, mind you: the "It was rather impressive", was it necessary? It made me cringe a bit, but not for the reason you may think, I'm not especially a Puritan. But the fact is, it seemed to me that with this, the description is entering pastiche territory, if you see what I mean? 
The same goes for "I think he was pleased. In fact I know it, because I’d seen him twitch, you know, down there." 
I hope you won't mind my saying so, because I think you're interested in honest feedback from your readers. 
Apart from this minor point, I really like their meeting (in both versions). The version by the author-narrator has my preference: their flirty dialogue is very well done. With the "male fantasy / female fantasy" banter, the characters are precisely playing with the clichés in which they are set, and it gives the whole thing a sort of literary distance. 

 

But I really had a problem with chapter 12... I'm annoyed with it on two grounds. 
The first is, how to put that... "moral". Bond is involved in borderline rape. I can hear and understand all the explanations and interpretations possible, but all I want to do is deliver to you my own feelings, as a reader, and I felt rather distressed and disturbed. Look at it coldly: man chases woman he's never seen on earth, catches her, pinions her on the ground, kises her while she's trying to get free of his grip, and... blam! She suddenly changes her mind, decides he's a handsome fellow and she really should have taken a second look before running away, and reaches for his fly... That's the sort of things that happen in pørn movies, or the sort of things Fleming would conceive ("all women like semi-rape", sic[k]). That's not realistic - OK, OK, not an argument for a Bond story, fair enough ;),  and more importantly for me as a reader, that's not the kind of attitude I'd like to find Bond involved in. 
The second is more about the story-telling. To me, using Lini spilling the beans in this way does not work to make the story progress. It's too quick, too caricatural, if you see what I mean? I can't see this conversation happening in real life, and if it did happen, even a flacid-brained Bond should think "Eh? Wait...". 

I may sound a bit blunt, and I sincerely hope that you won't find my comments offensive or depressing. 

 

But hey, I'm not so Victorian as I may sound after all, because I did not have issue with the other deeply twisted scenes coming after ch. 12 :)

Maybe just one thing: I didn't feel very comfortable with the melodramatic scene in which Bond shoots dead the bad guy in front of his mother - although he certainly had it coming! It's a bit like the henchmen in Austin Powers: you don't care watching scores of them being hacked to pieces in a Bond film, but you don't really want to know each of them had loving parents, a devoted wife, and 3 children! :P
More seriously, you lost me a bit in the plot, in the end. It grew complicated very quickly, and at a point when the action was also complicated. In the final action/slaughter scene, there's a lot going on, plot-wise and action-wise, maybe too much for my poor old tired brains. 


But I must say that, although I had reservations about Amy in the beginning (as I wrote earlier), she certainly grew on me, and her character is the major highlight of the novel! 

 

Keep up the good work, Chris! :)



#40 chrisno1

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 04:33 PM

Thanks for the feedback, Mkb, always welcome.

I'd like to spend a few moments addressing some of the points you raise, but first I think it's worthwhile admitting that, twelve months on, if I wrote NKAS again, I might do it differently.

 

My original intention was to write a first person narrative about Amy Porter and some of the assorted hoodlums she meets while working in Crete. Like Fleming's TSWLM, the idea was to have 007 appear in the final third to sort out the problems she'd uncovered. The trouble was I couldn't sustain the first person narrative. I quickly became bored trying to write through Amy's eyes and the prose read too much like a female James Bond. The only way to resolve the situation was to insert 007 earlier into the narrative and run parallel tenses - 'I' for Amy and 'Bond' for Bond. This skews the story some what and while many chapters work exceptionally well (eg 6,7,8, 10) others are a bit flat and feel like padding (9, 13)

 

I don't write sequentially. The incident with the "impressive.. twitch... thing..." was the first scene I wrote. I retained the lines for sentimental reasons and also because I thought they showed Amy's relaxed and rather churlish attitude towards sex. I tried to reinforce this in the first 3 chapters which describe her energetic love-life. She isn't a dirty girl, but she's experienced and isn't supposed to fazed by nudity. She takes in Bond's attributes in the same way Bond notices she isn't wearing a bra. It was supposed to be a reversal of the famous intro to Honey Rider in Dr No, but it's not quite funny enough and its not quite erotic enough.

 

The laison with Lini was very problematical. If I'm honest, I'd redo this scene completely if I was writing it now. I still think it works, but the context is all wrong. The problem lies not in the suggestion of rape - I was very careful to ensure Lini was a willing participant - but the paucity of any relationship. You are quite correct: these two people do not know each other and their sudden copulation is inappropriate. It doesn't really ring true for a modern Bond or indeed a 1950's Bond - let's face it, this is an even bigger rip off of the Honey Rider scene and Fleming's Bond doesn't chase and molest her. I was also struggling at this point to link the threads of my story together. My original ideas had Amy discovering Lini on the island, but there was no friction between the two characters. That was when I scrapped Amy's involvement and switched the main focus of the story back to 007. The sexual tension between Bond and Amy is heightened by his guilt over Lini and his betrayal of Amy. She meanwhile, retains the same resigned practical air that she has with all her previous lovers. She is hurt but she perseveres, either from duty or love. That she wins Bond's affections is important, both to her and 007, but they haven't quite recognised it yet: the kiss at the end of chapter 11 demonstrates this. It is only the on rushing drama that resolves their unspoken love.

 

Lini of course is revealed as a manipulative nymphomaniac, but her portrait is very thin. I had real problems with her character and it spoils the climax that she is so shallow. I should have concentrated more on Papa K, a dying patriach lost in the modern  world. For such a slight story, there is a lot going on and the revelation of the plot is confused - deliberately so. Shall I come clean?

 

If you read NKAS twice or thrice, you'll notice at least four or five plot holes, threads I do not explain or resolve. Basically, I'd hit a dead end. I couldn't unravel my own plot and chose to hide it with enough padding so it made sense without actually explaining anything. It's a dreadful fudge and I'd like to apologise for it. I think I was scared of throwing away so much good writing simply to make the narrative work. In the end I decided it was better to keep the excellence of the prose and do away with the dumbness of the plot, after all, the novel wasn't really about Lini, Papa K and Angelos, but about Amy Porter and James Bond.

 

I'm glad you warmed to Amy, she was after all the original inspiration for the piece. She is a very strong character. If I was writing NKAS now, I'd probably feel more confident continuing the novel along my original plans. As it stands, the book is somewhat disjointed. At times it's dramatically effective, descriptively rich and full of character; at others it is bland and stereotypical. There isn't much action and when it comes it's all a bit sordid, as is the sex. I think it just about succeeds. If pushed, I'd call it a 'flawed experiment' and I think Cbn-ers recognised this as it is the least popular of my outings. A year on, I would do so much differently (indeed it will probably be the basis for my third non-007 novel) but I hope the errors I have committed do not detract from a reader's enjoyment. It is after all James Bond Fan Fiction, even if it's flawed !!