This also contains various links which can help you navigate to the other 'writing outside the story' kind of stuff (like the Journal, and version 1 of the origin story). Of course you can simply dip in now and again. The 'about' page also has links to the various places to start.
That would probably be a bad idea! My other half might have something to say about it! Then again, I am definitely one for Platonic relationships. And if you're in Connecticut and I am here in rural France then we may not have to worry too much about that kind of thing...
I know what you mean about the heart - fortunately I sort of got that kind of thing out of the way when I was younger, and now have my soulmate as a companion (for the last 20 years). I did, however, at least get some really good poetry out of it at the time! Well, that's to say the poetry seemed good. It's been a while.
It'll be an ongoing subplot as well, with another entry about it tomorrow.
Oh - do you mean you were born in 1969? If so you're only a few years older than me so we're kind of the same generation. So I do know what you mean there about another life. The world today is unrecognisable in comparison, hence all the painful cognitive dissonance...
I've been to Praha, it was about 25 years ago, and fell completely in love with the place. Salzburg was another one - I had that really curious thing where I could just find my way round the place without even thinking about it, despite never having been there before. Maybe it was a reincarnation thing. I'm a big believer in that sort of stuff.
Well...for starters, this is one of the most interesting one sided conversations in your comment section I've come across. Okay.
I love how you keep the story whipping along. That's a very good thing. Using the present tense keeps me in the moment. I'm glad to be in Katrina's head.
There is a lightness like sunlight through leaves and yet a darker intrigue like shadows.
Katrina's manipulation of people is close to unethical, but I'm okay with it. I think she has larger intentions and her manipulations are just a way to expedite her goal. She has no malice.
Ah - yeah - I meant to delete all my side of the conversation but totally forgot about it. It wasn't actually me who did those deletions. I picked up a bit of a strange fellow who subscribed and then got a bit, I don't know, infatuated, perhaps, with Katrina. Possibly my fault for responding to him as Katrina. Although I certainly had no intention of encouraging him. But then, a few days after I suddenly find that he's deleted all his comments, unsubscribed and blocked me. No reason provided!
What do you think - should I leave the intriguing one-sided conversation up there, or just delete my side of it?
There's another similar thing in another of my posts (in the comments), which is a bit easier to understand as it was just a troll (one of a bunch of them, actually, who popped up on Iain Davis' Substack quite a bit. So in that instance it was me who blocked them and deleted their comments. Come to think of it I haven't deleted my ones there yet and been meaning to. It's certainly not as intriguing as this one.
I would leave the ones I read. It was interesting to fill in the blanks and I imagined what you describe is what occurred. Let it stand on substack as a testament to how it gets on this platform sometimes.
Thank you for your comments on the story (I thought I'd do this in a separate post) - I really appreciate comments. I'm really pleased you understood that she doesn't have any malice to her. She has, after all, only just arrived in what she perceives as a dystopia and it's full of danger. So it's a self-preservation thing, really. She may able to calm down later.
Yes, I love using present tense now and again, especially unexpectedly. It is a way to keep people in the moment. And it's the switches that work too, kind of dissonance etc.
I love your line 'lightness like sunlight through leaves and yet a darker intrigue like shadows' - that's a great description and I am definitely taking that as a compliment!
I am so pleased you liked it, and I really hope you like the rest of it too. Do you think it's a good beginning?
Yes, a very good beginning. My mind had to snap to it to keep up with what was happening as I was dropped into a situation in progress that I had little knowledge of. That got me invested right away and intrigued me.
I agree about the present tense and the switches. Very effective. Augments the stay on my toes feeling. I like it.
Yes, the part about light on leaves and shadows. Again, both at the same time. Yet concisely written. I'm looking forward to more. Also clear Katrina has good intentions.
My only criticism is how perfect Katrina is in seemingly every aspect though I do understand she's from a utopian world. I suppose it's a matter of relational identity. I don't know anyone, nor have I, who is like her, so I feel some distance from her in that respect. Though not tragically so. I also understand she's coming from a more perfect world and in the context of nature and nurture, Kartina has had advantages that no one, myself included, have known, so...I guess I'm saying she's somewhat alien to me but she is alien to this dystopian world so maybe that's correct and not really a criticism. I do like her. She's not petty for instance in her manipulations of others I spoke of before. Or cruel or condescending and she could be if her ego was allowed. So...she's not psychopathic which is, again, kinda perfect of her as most master manipulators are psychos. In this world.
Again, I look forward to discovering the why, how, etc., of what Katrina is doing here and how it unfolds. I think I smell a mission of some kind.
Anyway, I came back after a nap refreshed and thought of more I had to say.
Hence the edit. That's also a good sign. I'm still thinking about the story after reading. More, please, says my mind.
That's a really interesting observation about her appearing perfect. You are correct about her nature and nurture, which you'll find about in due course. She's not, as it happens, completely perfect though. She does have what you might call a perfect attitude, though, which, yes, is to do with her utopian origins - this striking difference is one of the main points of the narrative.
You'll also notice how her seeming 'perfection' can masquerade as, or be perceived as, a kind of patronising and constantly critical attitude - so from others' point of view she's not perfect.
Of course I couldn't possibly tell you if there's a mission involved, let alone what that might be!
I'm also really glad you've started at the beginning, as there's already quite a few more instalments posted.
If you want to jump ahead a little and get little tasters of 'what happens next' then feel free to start with her Journal (Journal-K) - again, you can start at the beginning (I think there's a pinned post in that section).
Very enjoyable. engaging writing. definitely draws you in with intrigue and the promise of more premise...
I did find Katrina's behaviour slightly odd in one or two aspects... she seemed very antagonistic in places when compared to how she behaves immediately after... and also... a phrase i just couldn't reconcile in my head was "marble-brown eyes" as i cannot think of marble as anything but white, or those brightly coloured glass toys. made me think possibly you meant maple brown?,.. but perhaps there is something else you had in mind?
There is a reason for Katrina’s seemingly odd behaviour, although I wouldn’t want to give you any spoilers in that regard! Although her incipient sly smile at the very end is a kind of clue.
Yes, ‘marble brown’ - by marble I was thinking more of the texture rather than the colour, in the sense of striking and deep, if you see what I mean. I had lots of marbles as a child and they came in all sorts of colours, but they were all quite gorgeous and had depth to them (as if there’s something lurking in there - quite magical), so I guess that’s what I was thinking of. Maybe others associate marbles with a particular colour - that really didn’t occur to me when I wrote that bit! I think I’ll leave it as it is though.
I've read this a few times now, as that's what such a beginning deserves. Katrina certainly carves an intriguing figure - for me, a physical mixture of Audrey Hepburn and Rachel in Bladerunner, with a potential Mira Killian 'Ghost in the Shell' backstory vibe. Perhaps a little too perfect, but that depends on her originating world.
I think you can cut some of the narrator observations for pasting into a later chapter via dialogue. Mystery is sufficiently flagged and so detail can wait. Other text tightening might be to not let your author voice intrude too much and reducing the secretary-to-security visual flips by one or two.
You flip the tenses a few times. It was generally OK to adjust, but in a couple of places it made my brain jump sideways enough to derail my reading.
Like Nick, the 'marble-brown' eyes caught me. I get your explanation, but maybe something like 'marbled brown eyes' might work better to bring an other worldly/uncanny feel to her looks without inducing any lycanthropic or boggle-eyed traits - don't mess with Miss Perfect!
Hope all this is useful, Evie. Happy to delete if you make any edits.
Thank you so very much for your comments, Johnathan, and especially for reading it a few times. Re-reading is very much appreciated (oh - btw, I just read Brian's winner announcement so very well done there! Glad I have been one of the first to discover your series lol!).
Don't worry about edits, though, as I shan't be doing any anyway! That's not to say your observations are wrong or irrelevant or anything like that, because there are always two people involved in a story, one of which is the writer and the other is the reader - somewhat obviously - and the trick in being a good writer is to be mindful of the reader. Except of course there are innumerable types of readers, each of whom will read their own thing into it (this is kind of why I had to stick to what I myself wanted to do, mindful that some readers won't like it - it's simply impossible to please everyone all the time!). I think this different type of reader is especially true of writers who are readers. They sometimes approach reading with their writerly head on, thus from a different place (pardon the pun) from a pure reader.
This is kind of the case with Katrina. The narrator, for example, is indeed a presence in this opening, and that's entirely deliberate. Especially at the beginning when he/she/it (actually she) uses the 2nd person - like 'in your year 2021'. The other elements of narrator descriptions are partly cinematic (i.e. visual), and partly to create this cognitive dissonance. If I was a director filming this opening scene, for example, I would do it as a series of really sharply defined almost quick-fire camera switches, say three in a row, followed by a much longer close-up facial shot. It would require a good actress, of course.
But there is definitely an idea here of deliberate messing with the reader, rather than simply 'telling a story', if you see what I mean, in the sense of the 'silent narrator', that is. The narrator throughout the story is kind of otherworldly and a character in her own right sometimes - whether she is Katrina's Goddess or not is for the reader to decide. But one of the major points about this narrator, especially right here at the beginning, is to tell the reader that this is a history and you are looking backwards in time. If the reader keeps that in mind, then they should, I hope, feel the approaching, inevitable tragedy more acutely (even if it takes multiple episodes to get there), as well as at some point during the story, suddenly realise the tragedy is the whole thing right from the beginning, because Katrina never existed in this world (so it's not her tragedy so much, but the real world's). The flash-forward prelude is the most obvious bit there.
You may be right about the marble-brown thing tbh - given you're not the first to make the observation. I think this is a reader-writer difference, clearly, as it comes from my own visual memory of marbles. And maybe psychological memory, perhaps. I may have to think about that one actually.
I liked your visualisation of her a lot. You are correct about the Hepburn (the fragility thing especially), and although I never thought of it before I like the Rachel from Bladerunner reference. I have no idea who Mira Killian is or 'Ghost in the Shell' - as I've never heard of that before. Maybe I'll have to go look it up.
Anyhow, I'm really grateful for your comments and definitely for re-reading it. This is so very appreciated. I hope you might read on a few more instalments and let me know whether you think some of the aspects you mentioned clear themselves up as the narrative settles in. It does, however, take a very slow-burning approach, but then gradually starts picking up the pace without the reader fully realising, before the crash happens. It's an extremely psychological story, amongst other things. Perhaps it's important for a reader to understand that tbh, and perhaps I haven't communicated it within the story. So some, I don't know, meta-narrative thing might be in order there. I would imagine, though, that if I was to publish it as a book the back cover description would explicitly mention it so the reader is prepared - like 'this is in part a slow-burning conspiracy mystery...' but 'it will lure you in, such that you won't realise you have been captured, like her, in a perfect live bait trap'. Or something equally pretentious. But certainly, the slow-burning spy thing is important to remember. Likewise, in book form the reader can immediately move on to the next page. Maybe I should've posted the first 10k words all at once, in that regard.
Of course, finally, from my point of view, I am aware that not everyone will enjoy or be interested in the actual subject matter of the story. For those who are, though, I know they will love it. It's simply a matter of taste, in the end. Rest assured, though, there will be a series of tantalising glimpses into her parallel world throughout, so the SF fans will find that intriguing. I hope...
I had another thought, which is that you might enjoy the first version, D-Zero Meson Oscillation, a lot more. Partly because there's no pandemic stuff in it or, well, any of this conspiracy-related element (that element, btw, doesn't last that long here, just to reassure you, and soon takes a back stage - that's just her getting their attention more than anything else, like a way in kind of thing). DZMO is far more postmodern fun, and although her character is similar she's not as serious as she is here.
This final version (intentionally) is a lot deeper, darker, and at least in this first episode, quite intensely character-based.
Hmm. Maybe I should've done a better Evie's Intro. It does calm down though soon enough.
Thank you for reading, and for your kind comment!
Yeah, I have been busy! Obviously you don't have to read everything! I have done an intro to the serial, though, which you can find here: https://inadifferentplace.substack.com/p/what-to-do-about-katrina-evies-intro?r=2s9hod
This also contains various links which can help you navigate to the other 'writing outside the story' kind of stuff (like the Journal, and version 1 of the origin story). Of course you can simply dip in now and again. The 'about' page also has links to the various places to start.
I do hope you enjoy it all!
:)
That would probably be a bad idea! My other half might have something to say about it! Then again, I am definitely one for Platonic relationships. And if you're in Connecticut and I am here in rural France then we may not have to worry too much about that kind of thing...
I know what you mean about the heart - fortunately I sort of got that kind of thing out of the way when I was younger, and now have my soulmate as a companion (for the last 20 years). I did, however, at least get some really good poetry out of it at the time! Well, that's to say the poetry seemed good. It's been a while.
Flirting, however, is perfectly acceptable.
With regards to the trans thing - I am 95% certain you will find this Journal entry one of the most laugh out loud things you've ever read: https://inadifferentplace.substack.com/p/katrinas-journal-09-january-2022-685?r=2s9hod
It'll be an ongoing subplot as well, with another entry about it tomorrow.
Oh - do you mean you were born in 1969? If so you're only a few years older than me so we're kind of the same generation. So I do know what you mean there about another life. The world today is unrecognisable in comparison, hence all the painful cognitive dissonance...
I can certainly promise that if I ever did end up round your way then I would absolutely have a coffee with you... Thank you for subscribing btw!
I've been to Praha, it was about 25 years ago, and fell completely in love with the place. Salzburg was another one - I had that really curious thing where I could just find my way round the place without even thinking about it, despite never having been there before. Maybe it was a reincarnation thing. I'm a big believer in that sort of stuff.
Well...for starters, this is one of the most interesting one sided conversations in your comment section I've come across. Okay.
I love how you keep the story whipping along. That's a very good thing. Using the present tense keeps me in the moment. I'm glad to be in Katrina's head.
There is a lightness like sunlight through leaves and yet a darker intrigue like shadows.
Katrina's manipulation of people is close to unethical, but I'm okay with it. I think she has larger intentions and her manipulations are just a way to expedite her goal. She has no malice.
Very good. Thank you.
Ah - yeah - I meant to delete all my side of the conversation but totally forgot about it. It wasn't actually me who did those deletions. I picked up a bit of a strange fellow who subscribed and then got a bit, I don't know, infatuated, perhaps, with Katrina. Possibly my fault for responding to him as Katrina. Although I certainly had no intention of encouraging him. But then, a few days after I suddenly find that he's deleted all his comments, unsubscribed and blocked me. No reason provided!
What do you think - should I leave the intriguing one-sided conversation up there, or just delete my side of it?
There's another similar thing in another of my posts (in the comments), which is a bit easier to understand as it was just a troll (one of a bunch of them, actually, who popped up on Iain Davis' Substack quite a bit. So in that instance it was me who blocked them and deleted their comments. Come to think of it I haven't deleted my ones there yet and been meaning to. It's certainly not as intriguing as this one.
I would leave the ones I read. It was interesting to fill in the blanks and I imagined what you describe is what occurred. Let it stand on substack as a testament to how it gets on this platform sometimes.
Thank you for your comments on the story (I thought I'd do this in a separate post) - I really appreciate comments. I'm really pleased you understood that she doesn't have any malice to her. She has, after all, only just arrived in what she perceives as a dystopia and it's full of danger. So it's a self-preservation thing, really. She may able to calm down later.
Yes, I love using present tense now and again, especially unexpectedly. It is a way to keep people in the moment. And it's the switches that work too, kind of dissonance etc.
I love your line 'lightness like sunlight through leaves and yet a darker intrigue like shadows' - that's a great description and I am definitely taking that as a compliment!
I am so pleased you liked it, and I really hope you like the rest of it too. Do you think it's a good beginning?
Yes, a very good beginning. My mind had to snap to it to keep up with what was happening as I was dropped into a situation in progress that I had little knowledge of. That got me invested right away and intrigued me.
I agree about the present tense and the switches. Very effective. Augments the stay on my toes feeling. I like it.
Yes, the part about light on leaves and shadows. Again, both at the same time. Yet concisely written. I'm looking forward to more. Also clear Katrina has good intentions.
My only criticism is how perfect Katrina is in seemingly every aspect though I do understand she's from a utopian world. I suppose it's a matter of relational identity. I don't know anyone, nor have I, who is like her, so I feel some distance from her in that respect. Though not tragically so. I also understand she's coming from a more perfect world and in the context of nature and nurture, Kartina has had advantages that no one, myself included, have known, so...I guess I'm saying she's somewhat alien to me but she is alien to this dystopian world so maybe that's correct and not really a criticism. I do like her. She's not petty for instance in her manipulations of others I spoke of before. Or cruel or condescending and she could be if her ego was allowed. So...she's not psychopathic which is, again, kinda perfect of her as most master manipulators are psychos. In this world.
Again, I look forward to discovering the why, how, etc., of what Katrina is doing here and how it unfolds. I think I smell a mission of some kind.
Anyway, I came back after a nap refreshed and thought of more I had to say.
Hence the edit. That's also a good sign. I'm still thinking about the story after reading. More, please, says my mind.
That's a really interesting observation about her appearing perfect. You are correct about her nature and nurture, which you'll find about in due course. She's not, as it happens, completely perfect though. She does have what you might call a perfect attitude, though, which, yes, is to do with her utopian origins - this striking difference is one of the main points of the narrative.
You'll also notice how her seeming 'perfection' can masquerade as, or be perceived as, a kind of patronising and constantly critical attitude - so from others' point of view she's not perfect.
Of course I couldn't possibly tell you if there's a mission involved, let alone what that might be!
I'm also really glad you've started at the beginning, as there's already quite a few more instalments posted.
If you want to jump ahead a little and get little tasters of 'what happens next' then feel free to start with her Journal (Journal-K) - again, you can start at the beginning (I think there's a pinned post in that section).
Very enjoyable. engaging writing. definitely draws you in with intrigue and the promise of more premise...
I did find Katrina's behaviour slightly odd in one or two aspects... she seemed very antagonistic in places when compared to how she behaves immediately after... and also... a phrase i just couldn't reconcile in my head was "marble-brown eyes" as i cannot think of marble as anything but white, or those brightly coloured glass toys. made me think possibly you meant maple brown?,.. but perhaps there is something else you had in mind?
very much wanting to read more! thank you!
I’m glad you liked it!
There is a reason for Katrina’s seemingly odd behaviour, although I wouldn’t want to give you any spoilers in that regard! Although her incipient sly smile at the very end is a kind of clue.
Yes, ‘marble brown’ - by marble I was thinking more of the texture rather than the colour, in the sense of striking and deep, if you see what I mean. I had lots of marbles as a child and they came in all sorts of colours, but they were all quite gorgeous and had depth to them (as if there’s something lurking in there - quite magical), so I guess that’s what I was thinking of. Maybe others associate marbles with a particular colour - that really didn’t occur to me when I wrote that bit! I think I’ll leave it as it is though.
ah! i understand now. of course!
I've read this a few times now, as that's what such a beginning deserves. Katrina certainly carves an intriguing figure - for me, a physical mixture of Audrey Hepburn and Rachel in Bladerunner, with a potential Mira Killian 'Ghost in the Shell' backstory vibe. Perhaps a little too perfect, but that depends on her originating world.
I think you can cut some of the narrator observations for pasting into a later chapter via dialogue. Mystery is sufficiently flagged and so detail can wait. Other text tightening might be to not let your author voice intrude too much and reducing the secretary-to-security visual flips by one or two.
You flip the tenses a few times. It was generally OK to adjust, but in a couple of places it made my brain jump sideways enough to derail my reading.
Like Nick, the 'marble-brown' eyes caught me. I get your explanation, but maybe something like 'marbled brown eyes' might work better to bring an other worldly/uncanny feel to her looks without inducing any lycanthropic or boggle-eyed traits - don't mess with Miss Perfect!
Hope all this is useful, Evie. Happy to delete if you make any edits.
Thank you so very much for your comments, Johnathan, and especially for reading it a few times. Re-reading is very much appreciated (oh - btw, I just read Brian's winner announcement so very well done there! Glad I have been one of the first to discover your series lol!).
Don't worry about edits, though, as I shan't be doing any anyway! That's not to say your observations are wrong or irrelevant or anything like that, because there are always two people involved in a story, one of which is the writer and the other is the reader - somewhat obviously - and the trick in being a good writer is to be mindful of the reader. Except of course there are innumerable types of readers, each of whom will read their own thing into it (this is kind of why I had to stick to what I myself wanted to do, mindful that some readers won't like it - it's simply impossible to please everyone all the time!). I think this different type of reader is especially true of writers who are readers. They sometimes approach reading with their writerly head on, thus from a different place (pardon the pun) from a pure reader.
This is kind of the case with Katrina. The narrator, for example, is indeed a presence in this opening, and that's entirely deliberate. Especially at the beginning when he/she/it (actually she) uses the 2nd person - like 'in your year 2021'. The other elements of narrator descriptions are partly cinematic (i.e. visual), and partly to create this cognitive dissonance. If I was a director filming this opening scene, for example, I would do it as a series of really sharply defined almost quick-fire camera switches, say three in a row, followed by a much longer close-up facial shot. It would require a good actress, of course.
But there is definitely an idea here of deliberate messing with the reader, rather than simply 'telling a story', if you see what I mean, in the sense of the 'silent narrator', that is. The narrator throughout the story is kind of otherworldly and a character in her own right sometimes - whether she is Katrina's Goddess or not is for the reader to decide. But one of the major points about this narrator, especially right here at the beginning, is to tell the reader that this is a history and you are looking backwards in time. If the reader keeps that in mind, then they should, I hope, feel the approaching, inevitable tragedy more acutely (even if it takes multiple episodes to get there), as well as at some point during the story, suddenly realise the tragedy is the whole thing right from the beginning, because Katrina never existed in this world (so it's not her tragedy so much, but the real world's). The flash-forward prelude is the most obvious bit there.
You may be right about the marble-brown thing tbh - given you're not the first to make the observation. I think this is a reader-writer difference, clearly, as it comes from my own visual memory of marbles. And maybe psychological memory, perhaps. I may have to think about that one actually.
I liked your visualisation of her a lot. You are correct about the Hepburn (the fragility thing especially), and although I never thought of it before I like the Rachel from Bladerunner reference. I have no idea who Mira Killian is or 'Ghost in the Shell' - as I've never heard of that before. Maybe I'll have to go look it up.
Anyhow, I'm really grateful for your comments and definitely for re-reading it. This is so very appreciated. I hope you might read on a few more instalments and let me know whether you think some of the aspects you mentioned clear themselves up as the narrative settles in. It does, however, take a very slow-burning approach, but then gradually starts picking up the pace without the reader fully realising, before the crash happens. It's an extremely psychological story, amongst other things. Perhaps it's important for a reader to understand that tbh, and perhaps I haven't communicated it within the story. So some, I don't know, meta-narrative thing might be in order there. I would imagine, though, that if I was to publish it as a book the back cover description would explicitly mention it so the reader is prepared - like 'this is in part a slow-burning conspiracy mystery...' but 'it will lure you in, such that you won't realise you have been captured, like her, in a perfect live bait trap'. Or something equally pretentious. But certainly, the slow-burning spy thing is important to remember. Likewise, in book form the reader can immediately move on to the next page. Maybe I should've posted the first 10k words all at once, in that regard.
Of course, finally, from my point of view, I am aware that not everyone will enjoy or be interested in the actual subject matter of the story. For those who are, though, I know they will love it. It's simply a matter of taste, in the end. Rest assured, though, there will be a series of tantalising glimpses into her parallel world throughout, so the SF fans will find that intriguing. I hope...
I had another thought, which is that you might enjoy the first version, D-Zero Meson Oscillation, a lot more. Partly because there's no pandemic stuff in it or, well, any of this conspiracy-related element (that element, btw, doesn't last that long here, just to reassure you, and soon takes a back stage - that's just her getting their attention more than anything else, like a way in kind of thing). DZMO is far more postmodern fun, and although her character is similar she's not as serious as she is here.
This final version (intentionally) is a lot deeper, darker, and at least in this first episode, quite intensely character-based.
Hmm. Maybe I should've done a better Evie's Intro. It does calm down though soon enough.