Gypsy's Kiss

monkey

Guest
Finn, that would be great! I like your price too!!

Once I finally complete the story why don't we get together at The Raven and discuss the details. Drinks will be on me.

Thanks, and I would never confuse you with a redneck!!

(you don't have one of those pickups with four wheels in the back, and a shotgun rack, do you?)

Monkey
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Another possible goof, Monkey man...

Sallah's wife. You named her "Emira"... but in Raiders of the Lost Ark, her name is mentioned aloud, and it's "Fayah". Of course, there is not much sources about Sallah's family, I'm pretty certain that you made the bits of his oldest daughter by yourself, and I'm okay with that. But the wife... unless of course the wife's full name is "Fayah Emira" or something.

It's in the part when Indy and Marion are about to board the Bantu Wind and Marion gives Sallah the kisses... she says:
"This is for Fayah, this is for your children... and this is for you."

Now, of course it doesn't say exactly who "Fayah" is, but it appears most logical that it's Sallah's wife... after all, it <i>is</i> a female name. (Unless one of Sallah's daughters helped them so much in particular it gave Marion a reason to name her individually).

Nothing more now... keep up the good work.
 
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monkey

Guest
Lord Ex,
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy.

Finn,
Yeah, that's another goof. Actually I thought that Sallah's wife already had an established name, but I couldn't for the life of me think of it, and I didn't have time to watch Raiders to try to look for it. I was going to put out an e-mail and ask, but I didn't. I probably should have. Anyway, that's an easy fix, she only appears in that one chapter.

Thanks Finn for your attention to detail.
 

Indyologist

Well-known member
:eek: :eek: :D

HOLY MOSES and let me say it again-- HOLY FREAKING MOSES! I just wanted to say that Monkey's novel is great, but the love scene between Indy and Vadoma in chapter 46 totally BLEW ME AWAY! Being an avid, unshamed Indy Drooler, I was fanning myself furiously here at work in front of my computer and wishing they had shower stalls in the bathroom! Dag! That is one horn-i-fy-ing chapter! I posted the juicy parts on the ladies' "Indy Fantasy" thread and I can't WAIT to see the reactions of my fellow Droolers. AAARRRRROOOOOOOO!!!

Thank you, Monkey! You've captured a truly great Indy fantasy...
 

Canyon

Well-known member
Arroooooo indeed!

Indyologist, check out my reply on that very same thread!

Great work as always, Monkey! :D
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Hmm. Monkey Man, not bad. But as usual, the scene (like the whole chapter) can be reworked with just a few sentence and structure changes... and it will become even more better and juicier.

(But nope, I'm not going to go into detail now... I don't wanna drown, if you get what I mean, friend.)


And yeah, something more... the girl, she's going to die at the end, am I right?
 

monkey

Guest
My computer's been down for a couple of days, so when I opened this thread I was extremely happy!

First off, thanks so much for the compliments, I very very very much appreciate it. Frankly, I was a little bit worried about how that scene would be recieved.

I am delighted with your response!!

Hey Finn, I'm sure you don't seriously expect me to answer that question. It's a valid one though, and I'm glad you're wondering.

But you might just be surprised by this ending, which is coming up very soon. ; )
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, I seriously didn't even expect for a writer to spoil his ending.

Anyway, let's hope it's really something I'm not able to guess... always the better. For the writer and the story.
 

monkey

Guest
A note to all who might be reading Gypsy's Kiss:

There is an error in the posting of chapter 47. Some of the end of the chapter got chopped off, with some important passages.

hopefully you can re-read it after it gets fixed.

Sorry.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Time to bring this back up again... there is one really bad anachronism in chapter 51 I need to note you about, Monkey man.

When Indy arrives to the Russian site, the fellow who greets him is having a Kalashnikov rifle... in <i>1938</i>, when Viktor Kalashnikov, probably the most famous weapon designer up to date, born 1919, was 19 and nothing but a rookie soldier in the training of the Red Army.

The world hadn't heard about any kind of Kalashnikov rifle before WW II was over. Everybody probably knows the famous AK-47, and that's exactly what that "47" means there, the designing year. Kalashnikov did actually model his first submachine gun while in infirmary in 1941, but that never gained wide use... of course, this is just extra info. I already told you the probably most worst goof up to date in this story.

<small>Of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark had a bazooka that was designed in 1942, but we can always presume that in Indiana Jones universe, some inventions were made ahead of their time, but in the case of Kalashnikov... that won't work.</small>
 

monkey

Guest
Hey Finn,
First of all, thanks for posting again. I actually thought that everybody had forgotten all about Gypsy's Kiss, or were bored with it and had stopped reading. And I knew that you, if anyone would spot this.

By the way, today Chapter 53.......THE FINAL CHAPTER is scheduled to post.

Believe it or not, I kind of suspected that it might be an error when I used the "Kalashnikov automatic rifle" reference but I was too lazy, or didn't have time at the time (can't remember which) to check it. I knew that the AK-47 was not yet in existence in 1938, but I wasn't really sure if there was a "Kalashnikov" company that was making some kind of 'automatic rifle' in 1938.

Why did I intentionally put something in there that I knew might be an error? Good question. Two reasons:

1. "Kalashnikov"....It sounds so damn Russian! Lends a bit more of a 'Russian' atmosphere to the scene.

2. I felt that even if it were an error, that it wouldn't really matter in an Indiana Jones story. I think in an IJ fiction you can get away with stuff like that. I will liken it to the "Flying Wing" Delta wing aircraft in "Raiders".........futuristic....experimental....but there's no way that really existed in 1936.

So I thought I could get away with it since I felt that it would add to the feel of the scene.

...........once again, caught, red handed.

But I want to thank you Finn for taking the interest, and time to post. And mostly, thanks for reading. I hope you and anyone else reading will enjoy the final chapter, and the ending.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Monkey, all I can say is that for myself, when dealing with Indiana Jones fiction, I can stand Indy mingling with WW II era weapons, even though they were not yet designed on the particular year the story takes place. It is when we're going to detail when my mind goes alarmed... for example, when you mentioned name "Kalashnikov", accurate historical facts immediately flooded to my mind associated to it. If you had just written "Russian assault rifle" (even though even that kind of weapon didn't exist before 1942 by German design), I would have let it slip through my mind, thanks to my earlier experiences about Indiana Jones fiction.

Oh well, even Rob MacGregor goofed badly once. In Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy, Indy is burying the horn with the old Indian who notes that there are forces of evil in the world worth being aware of... and Indy assumes the man speaks of Nazis. The year is 1928 and Hitler's rise in power happened 1933... and it really was a thing one was not able to tell five years before.


Anyway, I just read the last chapter of Gypsy's Kiss...very nice work. Really nice.

And my head is coming up with several little bits of advice and reworking it wants to give or suggest to you.

And I better start right away.
I don't know should I cheer victoriously or frown in disappointment, but: don't reveal the ending before the story is even halfway through.
 

Canyon

Well-known member
Hey Monkey!

Just finished reading the last chapter of Gypsy's kiss!

The whole serial just blew me away!

The last two chapters were awesome and had me on the edge of my seat. :D
 

monkey

Guest
Thanks Canyon, I appreciate that a lot.

Finn, I'm very curious about your last statement concerning revealing the ending halfway through? What did you mean by that?
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
You fell into committing one general cliché that, I admit, may just pass through an everyday readers' mind unnoticed, but one that has read a lot and knows something about story structuring will go like "oh no, not <i>this</i> again..." and once that is written into the story, there is just one way it could possibly end between the protagonist and his love interest.

What it is, I'm letting you to figure out by yourself a little longer.

Then there's more... of course, majority of the fans of your story will now jump out of bushes and ask me how can I ever mock such a beatiful and well-written story like that, but it had a few structural bits that bugged me. Don't worry (anyone of you), I'm not going to tear Monkey man off that great shrine of the Indy fiction writers he had obviously just rised in your mind by trashing <i>Gypsy's Kiss</i> completely, because I liked the general idea in the story and the plot itself, I really did... but there's always something.

Gypsy's Kiss had a few problems with pacing. Every really good story has its beginning, middle and ending in close balance, something GK unfortunately had not. The beginning dragged (and was too long to serve the balance), the middle part was too shattered with some issues getting too much highlight and some brushed past even little too quickly (of course, this will most often be the case when one is writing a serial with every chapter ending to a cliffhanger, though there is a better way to work the structure and still come up with decent chapter endings that make the reader to crave for more), and the ending... it really didn't slowly rise and build up to the climax, it just suddenly kicked in and was over just as fast, this got it to lack majority of this so-called extra tension it could have received.

Then there is the issue about characters and the way they were pictured. To pace through the story, there must be lesser and more important characters, and the writing style should make it clearly out. GK however... well, to give you a concrete example is the Nazi major in the end. The final chapter was written in a way that gives you an impression possibly making you to think he was the main villain of the story... <i>but he had actually made his first appearance barely one chapter earlier</i>. I think I don't have to tell you the things that are for granted to make you figure out what is wrong in this picture. There are more similar things with characters, but more about them if Monkey man wishes for a more detailed report.

And it gets us to the another... the point of view the story used. For 90% of the story, the teller's eyes were locked on Indiana Jones. They only jumped to describe the things about some other character's POV only when it appeared you need to give a thrill impression or tell the readers something crucial that would seemingly appear more logical if they were told that way; which is actually a sign of a writer who still needs to hone his/her skills. Especially chapter eight was this kind of odd bird. It just suddenly jumped out of context, because there was no more secquences like that. And by this I don't mean that the writer should have told us more about the kid in question, but e.g. take us off Indy and describe what Marcus or the Nazis were doing in the meantime.

The writing style is good, dialogue flows smoothly with no artificial "cheap takes" to move them from subject to another, all in all good. It's the story flow that prevents GK from being a masterpiece. Too many odd things here and there.

<small>And please, do not try to play knight in a shiny armor and tell me I'm taking it too rough on an amateur writer, I'm well aware of that. But when the context itself goes out for being something like this (every chapter got an announcement on the main page, all the praising comments)... the critique has to be the same caliber, right? Keeps the world in balance.</small>
 
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monkey

Guest
Great critique Finn!! I have no problem at all with it. In fact I am very grateful for it, it helps me immensely.

As I said before, it's no masterpiece, just a decent Indy fan fiction. Something for an IJ fan who might have read all the books, and wants a new one to read. And it was an excersize in writing a novel for me.
 

Joe Brody

Well-known member
Monkey,

I look forward to reading the whole work soon. Do you have any other projects in the hopper?
 

Indyologist

Well-known member
Wow, GK was really a wonderful novel. I gotta say, though, that ending with Indy watching Vadoma being incinerated was a real downer. I don't care what anyone says. I hope Indy's married in Indy IV. Geez, I think the guy's MORE than entitled to someone who will love him and actually still be ALIVE when it's all said and done. Poor Indy. :(

Still, excellently done and fine writing! I was hanging on every word.
 

monkey

Guest
Thanks Indyologist. Sorry about that rather graphic ending. I hope it didn't throw you, or any of the readers too much. If so I apologize. It wasn't meant to be brutal or disturbing in anyway. In fact it was meant to be rather the opposite of those things.

I think I was trying to make some kind of a point about the transitory and impermanent nature of life; of the flesh, versus the immortal and eternal nature of the human spirit.
 
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