Re: A Game of Chess, Ch. 9 (PG-13)
Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 1:30 am
You make your characters so deep, Lucky. Not a one of them is a paper doll. Everybody has an inner life, an agenda, hidden motivations, hopes, fears, desires. I love reading your longer stories, especially the historical ones. 
I was struck by how unhappy someone like Sky must be in the middle of the 19th century. His "propensities," as it were, would be disastrous if discovered... not unlike the plight of a vampire, hmmm... Sky and Josef have more in common than he realizes, I think. Somehow I can imagine Sky and Ned understanding each other very well... and in my mind, Ned's the lucky one, at least in the short term.
We're beginning to see that there's much more to Cam than originally met the eye, too. You could have written him as a simple character--a besotted victim--but you're making him real... you're making us care about him.
The final line, I can hear in Josef's voice. He says it just as Josef said, to Beth, "If Coraline is back, and that's a big 'if', then she's back for Mick." And Cam truly is in jeopardy. A wonderful foreshadowing of Coraline's seduction of Mick a hundred years or so in the future.
I was struck by how unhappy someone like Sky must be in the middle of the 19th century. His "propensities," as it were, would be disastrous if discovered... not unlike the plight of a vampire, hmmm... Sky and Josef have more in common than he realizes, I think. Somehow I can imagine Sky and Ned understanding each other very well... and in my mind, Ned's the lucky one, at least in the short term.
We're beginning to see that there's much more to Cam than originally met the eye, too. You could have written him as a simple character--a besotted victim--but you're making him real... you're making us care about him.
The final line, I can hear in Josef's voice. He says it just as Josef said, to Beth, "If Coraline is back, and that's a big 'if', then she's back for Mick." And Cam truly is in jeopardy. A wonderful foreshadowing of Coraline's seduction of Mick a hundred years or so in the future.