New Fan Fiction -> Come Hell or High Water
SiCo
EnglandPosts: 1,371M
A new treat for you all, a collection of short stories from Chris Stacey, Neal Kydd, Matt Raubenheimer, Paul Taylor & Jason Disley.
You can read more and download the new collection here: http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/come-hell-or-high-water.php
The original topic discussing this collection can be found here: http://www.ajb007.co.uk/index.php?topic=31298
I hope you enjoy this and all the hard work that everyone has put in to it. So a great big thank you to the authors and people behind the scenes thank you.
Please feel free to comment, ask questions etc. here about Come Hell or High Water.
You can read more and download the new collection here: http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/come-hell-or-high-water.php
The original topic discussing this collection can be found here: http://www.ajb007.co.uk/index.php?topic=31298
I hope you enjoy this and all the hard work that everyone has put in to it. So a great big thank you to the authors and people behind the scenes thank you.
Please feel free to comment, ask questions etc. here about Come Hell or High Water.
Simon
Comments
Cheers {[] , Scaramanga1 -AKA Jason Disley.
Hopefully this can be sorted out, because besides this it is a great looking bit of work. Well done Jason for organising it, and also to the other authors who contributed: I look forward to reading your tales, and I hope that you enjoy my short little story.
I just spotted this myself! Obviously the bit with fonts could have been me when I was putting the document together -each submission was given to me in different fonts and although I did try to make the fonts the same -with such a large document and not enough time I have obviously missed some sections. As for the hilighted bits -I think they must be parts that were added to the original tale by their original author -and I'm sorry to say now its in pdf format I'm not sure how to remove the hilights. But if they can be ignored and just the text read then I'm sure it won't be too distracting. Also should the document be printed - maybe those hilighted sections will come out normal.
All I can do is appologise for any errors within the final document. I'm not a professional and my only experience with this sort of thing is the work I do here. ;%
The Scarlet Ingenue - I thought that this tale was excellently written. It had an intriguing premise, well fleshed out characters and locations and vivid descriptive writing. I think that this is everything that a Bond short story should be.
To Die With Honour - As I understand it, this is the first part of a larger tale - and I think it has plenty of promise. There are obvious links to Fleming's YOLT which are very enjoyable. As usual with Jason, the quality of prose is very good - I look forward to seeing the rest of this tale - hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
I will add feedback for the other two stories once I get a chance to read them.
BTW, when will the prep for the next collaborative start?
I hope to have The Assassin's Memorandum completed and on the site mid May. The first part which is To Die With Honour is my Japanese section -then 007 moves to Spain and eventually South America and if all goes according to plan should be an interesting read with a twist that may be surprising.
I will be writing my thoughts on the stories in the near future starting with the opening tale and each one subsequently.
Once again thanks for those involved.
DAWUSS -the collaborative novel will probably start preperation at the end of May. My wife is due to give birth to our second child any time between the latter end of March and the beginning of April -so I will not have the time to organise things until after the child's arrival.
It will take me a little longer to read Sillhouettes and Shadows as it is a considerably longer tale, but I will endeavour to do so when I have sufficient time to read it.
Thanks for the feedback. Generally, my friends said the same thing. On reflection, I should have spent a little more time on the ending, and I am considering revising it.
I was struggling to get the story finished for a deadline and work kept interfering. It's a pity because it probably only needs three or four more paragraphs.
Curiously, when I read Fleming's novels, I am always surprised how poor his endings are. The final chapters of novels as good as OHMSS and YOLT are remarkably swift. The overall "Fleming effect" I was aiming for is good, but the execution isn't quite up to standard.
Jason clearly understands what makes Fleming's writing so interesting - the attention to the detail of "things" like fish, clothes, the feel of places, etc. I got a good sense of the places Bond was visiting.
My only mis-giving is that the story wasn't resolved, and seems to be the start of something much bigger. As a taster (perhaps in Playboy magazine, Jason?) it would work really well, but I am not sure it's a short story proper. What I'm really looking forward to is the full story, including the opening gambit re-written with a greater depth.
Currently, it reads really well, but is almost too swift; there isn't enough build up and background to what is happening. What do these character's look like? What's their motivation? How do they move? Dress? How does Bond think of them? React to them?
Scenes like the questioning of Nakamura are too short and don't develop his persona. Bond's stay at Tanaka's estate, while enlightening, doesn't go nearly as far as the conversations in Fleming's YOLT; it could be an opportunity for real reflection - explaining Bond's need to "die with honour".
I hope you can move this tale on, Jason, because it's got real potential, being modern, globetrotting and topical (terrorism). You've got a good feel for this story and I think you can really make a good fist of it as a full length adventure. Good luck with it!
A good depth within the characters, made them vulnerable and believable.
Bond's character accurately reflects the grizzled literary Bond of FRWL / MWTGG.
The fact that the story is set in modern times intensifies the gritty theme.
A good blend of detail, danger and intrigue.
A good read.
You have made some very helpful comments there -and in retrospect you are right - The tale does not lend itself to a short per se -but is perhaps more of a teaser as you may have read in a magazine (your choice was exemplary!
It brought to mind a lot of John Gardner's novels, especially the duplicity, cross and double cross and technical jargon. The problem I have with this style of writing is that the machinations of the plot take over from the development of character and place.
Neal's very good at the physical description of places and events, his turn of phrase is often exemplary when writing about what happens. But aside from the mid section where Neal explains Bond's fall to "absolute destruction" and has M allow him a tentative return to duty, I didn't share an identity with the people involved.
Partly this stems from no-one being as they appear; as soon as I settled on one persona, I was forced to re-imagine it. In a long novel this can work well, but in the short form, and involving so many characters so many times, it becomes tiresome.
However I did like the seeds of Bond's fall from grace and his rehabilition. It reminded me of a combination of the openings of YOLT and TMWTGG, while also alluding to the darker side of Bond's ego. I was also touched by the flirtaion with Nadia, although it isn't clear how she knows Bond or what happens to her (did I miss something?) Additionally, wasn't Tatiana in FRWL a Romanova?
The main villians are very thinly drawn, but I did enjoy the denoument, which felt very Fleming. I liked the way Neal cuts to the scene immediately without any preamble:
"The glass was blown in. The man was dead...All three figures were suffucied in green light"
Wonderful stuff! If the manner of Bruger's demise is unexpected, the same can't be said of Ruby's, which is telegraphed from the moment Bond pines for her in the cell.
Generally though, and most importantly, the story reads well. I can't fault the feel of the piece, which borders on the exotic, while retaining the necessary elements of gunsmoke, fire and fear prevalent in every Bond tale.
Thanks for the read, Neal.
What I enjoyed about this was the simplicity of the story: the tale featured only 5 characters, didn't dwell too much on the specific's of the story, told it straight, was tightly constructed.
Yes, there wasn't much in the way of descriptive detail; for instance Bond's hotel meal is described as "perfectly done, tender and juicy" the town of Santa Ana is described in picture-postcard style, and the look of people is sketchy at best. However, Paul doesn't need to offer explanations, because he allows his plot and sparodic bursts of action to maintain our interest. There is a sense of this being just "another day's work" for Bond and not even the beautiful Cuban surroundings are interesting him.
Bond's mission is clear and it's execution (somewhat Live and Let Die c.1973) is equally simple. Bond has some misgivings, but they are tempered as the action progresses and we learn something of his target.
Paul's economy of language is of great benefit during the climax as it suggests a closing of time, an urgency to finish what has started. The eventual outcome is a surprise; given the author's focus on Bond's distaste for cold-blooded kills, I sensed this was the caveat, only to be brilliantly proved wrong.
Thanks, Paul, this was a good read, a clever tale that utilizes a short story narrative to good effect. You haven't tried to do too much here and your restraint is thoroghly rewarding.
Only one thing to add - my name is Matt and not Paul!
Many thanks for the critique and sharing your ideas for character development against plot scenario.
The story is about people appearing as one thing while being another - Bond is almost a 'mirror' of himself at one point - as you mention in the fall from grace section...
To outline the figures to a degree which gave a 'slice of life' to all involved is all I wanted to convey. I agree that it's nice to be really immersed in each fictional life and live every experience through a different pair of eyes, but with Bond action and place share the identity. Place is definitely a character in Bond stories.
My brief from Scaramanga was to exploit that to the full. It also congeals the disparate lives involved in Bond's missions.
An agent never knows all - often people are not who they appear to be - but he or she has to make judgments on the intelligence available....
Bond was loosely described in Fleming's novels and his past and belief structures rarely mentioned. This helps convey a sense of mystery and helps a reader to construct their own hero.
I guess I could certainly do with more practice on shorter stories however, and some ideas you mention I will devise development for.
Guessing the endings of Bond books or films, to me, is not really the draw of the Genre.... I stick to enjoying the action and the plot outlines and thinking out how Bond makes his way round or through difficult situations. The sway of the results to each of his accountable moves during the story bring new challenges...
Remember Bond is accountable... his enemies or 'loves' are not!
Nadia was disposed of by the Commander Kramer B.T.W. It's there! Bond simply retrieves her platinum remains from a blotter and realises she is no more... They met two years ago at the Salon Le Glace... enough said!
I enjoyed writing the chopper scenes - they took a fair amount of research - and Jargon - in the military or police forces it's par for the course. I'm not even sure if the term 'For Your Eyes Only' was even known about outside official uses - until Fleming coined it for the general public. You may know more...
Of course now its second nature to everyone who thinks they know something about spies and their weapons, structures and confidantes...
The MOD, GCHQ plus the battle groups, Special Branch, MI5, MI6, SOS, SAS, SBS, all have their own parlance!
Oh well - enough from me - THANKS FOR THE READ!
Thanks to Matt for my cover and Scaramanga for uniting me with the Bond fiction team!
Sincerely - It was a Blast guys!
Ah, yes, sorry about that, Matt.... a few too many glasses of Dominga Cabernet-Carmenere I'm afraid!
This is a long read. It isn’t a short story and it doesn’t read like a proper Bond adventure a la Fleming or even Gardner, but more like the adaptation of a composite screenplay by Maibaum, Haggis and Mankiewicz. I think it’d make a pretty good Bond film c.2011, especially as there is some attention given to the “reboot” Bond of Daniel Craig: Quantum or the Illuminati make an appearance, M is a female and has a hi-tech office and a new Moneypenny, Q is presented to us much like a rogue Desmond Llewellyn, Dominic Greene is mentioned, Vesper’s death scene in Casino Royale is alluded to. Bond also has a nice line in dead pan ironic humour that Fleming would never have written. In fact some of the “reboot” filmic aspects work quite well, bringing Bond up to date and using the recent movies as a working canvas, but I didn’t think Paul exploited this enough and the result falls somewhere between the novel and the movie adaption genres.
So Bond travels to some well described exotic locations, but the attention to detail isn’t enough. It’s all too clinical, offering little impression of atmosphere or local character. Lots of action occurs on trains, in lifts, in health spas, at parties, in beautiful cities like Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong and Shanghai; there are fights, car chases, assassinations, some sporadic sex, gun battles and a host of villians, including a cross dressing ju-jitsu expert, an errant CIA officer, a mad professor and an even madder Ernst Stavro Blofeld. There is also an obligatory twist or three or four during the various climaxes presented to us. But it doesn’t cover up for the lack of poorly drawn characters. The one opportunity he does offer us, during the seduction of a Jewish scientist, is wasted under a tome of technical jargon.
The author has clearly made a study of the Bond films and I detected samples of various episodes being re-interpreted here. The one surprise that made me smile was the twist of Tien and Aki Danni, but too often I felt I was reading re-interpreted words and actions, as if this was enough. This reflected in the dialogue, so Blofeld starts off reading like Jonathon Pryce’s Daniel Carver, but ends up with lines more akin to Telly Savalas’ from OHMSS. Indeed the whole tale is something of a re-work of that story. While it includes several dull passages of mumbo-jumbo (similar to Fleming’s chapter “The Man from Ag & Fish”) it doesn’t have any of the emotional depth or tension of that story, although there is an unnecessary revenge motive for the heroine and, if it was a movie, it has the prerequisite action scenes.
Additionally I sometimes found myself reading passages twice because I lost track of what had happened. Even as early as the prologue (read “pre-title sequence”) I had to twice check the line “the fish and spear drifted down not two feet in front of him” because I thought I’d missed the appearance of the assassins, which is actually explained by the behaviour of the angel fish. Later on, some mercenary commandos attack Blofeld’s hideout and this too is presented as a very sudden event, with just one sentence of introduction: “... four black clad commandos appeared...” There was also a tendency to subtitle locations (e.g. CIA Situation Room) which is a screenwriter’s devise, not a novelist’s. These examples highlight to me how cinematic this piece felt. Bond isn’t always the focus of the story and the scenes often read like swift edits, rather than flowing narrative. One of Fleming’s writing traits was that although he often had early chapters devoted to the villain’s plans, he rarely cut to them after the introduction of Bond.
Although I’m sounding very critical, I do need to attest that I did enjoy the story. I liked the action, which was always well depicted, and I think the premise is great. I just didn’t like it much as story, certainly not as a short story. I’d be very interested to see it in screenplay form, with some of the long dialogue exchanges cut down to manageable chunks. As it stands, it just doesn’t draw me in enough and I felt detached from the character of Bond and his adventures. Sorry, Paul, I really tried hard to like it.....
There’s a lot for me to take on board, and a number of areas for me to work on to make improvements. Thanks for that.
I will respond to the positives now, and hopefully respond to the feedback with my next story.
I’m encouraged that you could see the potential that the story would scan in the media of film.
I do write and indeed read as if I am seeing the action on screen.
I took my inspiration from the Raymond Benson adaptations of TND and TWINE.
That I believe goes along way to explain my inability to draw out the characters (that, and not being a writer!)
I based the Blofeld character on John Malkovich, and tried to write how I thought he would behave in the part.
Bond, I see as Daniel Craig; and the humour, I believe sits between his and Brosnan’s portrayal.
For Bond’s positioning in the story I tried to replicate the feel in “High Time to Die” by Raymond Benson (which I personally think is one of the best Bond novels) and do not apologise for the cutting to other action throughout the story.
After re-reading your comments, I am pleased that you enjoyed it.
I feel comfortable writing the action sequences and I hope that comes across loud and clear.
I did not submit the story specifically for the “short story” section, in fact it was submitted in September (as it was on Commanderbond; where it has had over 1300 downloads) as a follow up to my first story Edge of Treason.
I wrote both stories as a continuation to Casino Royale (2006 film) simply in an attempt to stem my excitement whilst waiting for QOS.
My next offering “To Kill and Die for” is about 30% sorted, but I will certainly revisit the “technical” and “emotional” areas of the story.
If anyone can help me in those areas, let me know.
@ you off or anything.
Your response is well thought through and I accept a lot of the arguments you put forward.
I think it is interesting you were re-creating Benson's writing style and not Fleming's. I did read his movie adaptations and "Zero Minus Ten" -which I also thought was a very good Bond novel, a substantial improvement on Gardner's output post-1984. It was a long while back I read these, but as I recall they were not, for me, quintessential Bond novels. I felt Benson too was tending to take his inspiration from the movie franchise, not the Fleming originals. I will admit I probably need to catch up on Benson's tales to clarify my stand point here.
At the risk of your ire, I would still take issue with what you call "cutting to other action." It's precisely because you employ this style that the story loses it's ebb and flow. There is nothing wrong with visualising action on the page (I do this myself when I write, and I, also, am not a writer by trade) But I believe a story needs a focal character, and for Fleming - indeed for Markham & Gardner - this was always Bond. The cut-aways you use can more often than not be incorporated into the narrative text that follows or precedes it; it is a question of how you insert the necessary information. The reader for me doesn't have to be shifted from one scene to another, but does want a build up of tension revolving around one (or possibly two) characters.
I must say, this in no way deflects from chapters such as those set in Iraq and later Turkey / Armenia, without which your plot development would be awkward. These are precisely the sort of chapters Fleming would have inserted to develop his villians and / or explain the plot.
I also noticed that Silhouettes and Shadows was on CmdrBond, tho' I didn't read it there. I will make an effort to read Edge Of Treason. If you are interested I posted a screen treatment for Gardner's Icebreaker on CmdrBond last year. If you get a spare two hours, give it a read. I am also attempting to continue in my short story vein and will hopefully have 5 stories completed before the year is out.
It's always good to read other people's versions of the Bond myth, Paul, and I wish you luck with your next effort. Ultimately, you have to do it your way, I don't believe we find our own voice otherwise.