Preface by the author
“Grimm’s World” has been my first narrative experience: in fact, previously I had dedicated myself only to educational experiences in the scientific field, without a doubt very interesting but which obviously couldn’t leave much space for imagination. Nevertheless I would have continued on these issues if it hadn’t been for my wife’s insistence who urged me to attempt another path, the adventure novel one. To this day, I still don’t know from where derived such confidence in my abilities since take on a novel is extremely different from describing statements of physics. However, I have always been inclined to accept challenges and therefore that is the way I tried… (after all it is never a good idea to annoy a woman, and wives less than ever).
Why a book?
I have always been attracted by mystery, so I told myself that if I really had to write a novel, then this would have to deal with something very intriguing, disturbing, that as far as possible wouldn’t leave space for downtimes. The narrative is obviously full of such arguments, even valuable, so picking up the challenge it has been immediately natural to direct the path that I was about to undertake towards the thriller, or even the horror genre. A mix that has always had on me (and not only) an undeniable charm. I believe in fact that a novel should give the reader moments of lightheartedness, relaxation: ultimately provide a break from the banality of everyday life that, at least for what concerns me, the suspense induced by such a kind of reading can certainly guarantee. It’s naturally my own point of view … but it’s mine! That’s what I like, and I have not had any hesitation in this regard.
So I asked myself: if I really wanted to try to illustrate a story like that, from where could I start? The choice then fell on the classic object with magical powers, that sort of relic from the distant past and which, breaking into our world, causes incalculable damages to the unfortunate who unluckily find themselves to run into its otherworldly qualities. The narrative is full of examples in this sense, one for all the Ark of the Alliance of the film Indiana Jones “Raiders of the Lost Ark”: probably the greatest panegyric of all magical objects. However, for my part, what could I use without getting to it?
The choice fell on a book.
Why a book? Well, first of all because I like books, I love them. Compared to other man-made artifacts they emanate a special charm, as a receptacle of the others’ wisdom. A wisdom that can express itself towards the reader in a positive but also negative way depending on the author’s personality and intentions. And precisely for this reason it is undoubted that it has always been exactly “the evil” to easily attract large numbers of readers. Cases in this sense are wasted: there are in fact positive personalities who illustrate negative situations, as Dante Alighieri for example does in the Inferno of his Divine Comedy, a real initiatory journey through human evil until it reaches the last canto with a sort of new rebirth, to emerge from the shadows of evil up … to see the stars again”, as if to reiterate the supremacy of the forces of good over the wicked and the sin. But it is the negative personalities who are even more easily able to externalize the characters of their personality: just think about the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches published by the Dominican friars Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in 1487, a papal pseudo bubble used between the 14th and 16th centuries to deal with witchcraft. Or about the Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, a vast collection of nonsensical anti-Semitic doctrines accompanied by a jumble of conjectures about a superior race, the Aryan race, in the Nazi ideology destined to dominate the world.
But without necessarily having to resort to these extreme examples, however, there are also innocuous books to which, for narrative needs, a characterization of negativity has been associated. This is the case, for example, of the second book of the poetics of Aristotle, where in the novel Il Nome della Rosa by Umberto Eco becomes a real book that kills: an actually non-existent text, the one of Aristotle, since it was lost perhaps in that famous disaster that was the fire of the Library of Alexandria. Event with which also begins “The Grimm’s World”.
Here, then, that the key to the beginning of that novel was all there, in that disastrous catastrophe of wisdom occurred many centuries ago. What could have been burned in the fire of the largest library in the ancient world? With a little imagination, taking a cue from such an event it is then easy to imagine how next to harmless – although precious – texts there was perhaps even something more. For example, with that work of destruction, perhaps someone wanted to erase the traces of something far more dangerous. Something to which today we could attribute the name of cursed book.
A quick search on the Internet for cursed books has led to several results of the so-called Books of Toth, a legendary collection of arcane forms that allegedly were handed down by the god Toth himself to his priests. Such texts would have disclosed to humanity the mysteries of the heavens, but above all granted an infinite knowledge to their owner and perhaps even the secret of immortality. In reality little or nothing is known of these alleged texts, but what little we know is more than enough to be able to outline the beginning of the plot of a novel. So it was precisely for The Grimm’s World.
Why the Grimms?
Once chosen the mysterious object on which to rotate a hypothetical story, I had to identify the unfortunate characters who would have, despite them, to submit to the whims of a wicked fate, leading them to face a kind of dangerous adventures in some way related to these phantoms Toth books. Here another of my passions came to my aid, that of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales and their horror character. Oh, yes, I said horror! When we think of Snow White or Cinderella, for example, I believe that in our collective imagination these stories remain linked to the stereotypes that have been told in the years by Disney films: nice fairy tales for children and young people, with a strong connotation of innocence, where good always triumphs over evil, and in a way we could say very “soft”.
But if you get to read an original story of the Grimm Brothers you will discover instead all the horror that permeated the society of the populations of Central Europe who had suffered the devastating conflict of the Thirty Years War, the consequences of which were still very vivid two centuries later, in the era when the Grimm were passionate about collecting ballads, folk songs and peasant legends, finally joining all in a collection of short stories certainly not dedicated to children. In these stories, in fact, cruel details and allusions to sexuality that have little to do with childhood are often described, recalling instead the dark and gloomy atmospheres of the Germanic folk traditions whose legacy was lost in the bloody past that had just seen involved the German and Central European populations.
I have always been amazed by this ambiguity present in the tales of the Grimm Brothers. Amazed and above all intrigued, so much to ask myself: how would an adult, a rational person, one of us, in short, behave once he came to find himself fallen into such a surreal reality? And so now that, with the appropriate horror ingredients, what was left to do was just to find the way to “enter” into the “right” fairy tales. That was the moment when “the power of the Books of Toth” was finally useful.
Why Frankfurt?
With the immense power of the Books of Toth “available” there was virtually nothing left preventing the characters of the novel that I was about to write to get caught up in an alternative reality as described in the the Grimms’ fairy tales. Yes, but which characters to choose? And above all on what scenario would it have been appropriate for them to act?
Here it’s been quite easy: the Grimm Brothers were originally from Hanau, a small town near the metropolis of Frankfurt, which was totally destroyed during the Second World War and now rebuilt, even if unfortunately its original medieval features have been lost. This is the reason why the choice fell on Frankfurt, which, as a large city, could offer many interesting narrative opportunities. In fact, it has parks, public libraries, financial centers, airports, universities, police stations, highways, all of which can contribute making alive a story set at least in part in a modern urban context.
Why K-Team?
Originally I had absolutely no idea where it would have been possible to arrive with this story. It’s true, I had the Book of Toth (so to speak), and I had chosen a current urban context where to set my novel. But the rest, that is both the title and the characters, was a project which had still a long way to go. In general, in these situations, I let the imagination go; I free the mind and take the first idea that happens to me: this is how the first name materialized, the name of Mark. Mark Schubert, to be exact. Why? I don’t know, there was not a particular reason. Both the name and especially the surname, identical to the one of the famous Austrian composer, suddenly appeared in my head, and I took them. But who could ever be this Mark? Well, having to hinge in some way the story on the Grimm Brothers, it’s been immediate to “transform” this Mark into a professor of German history and literature, specialized in Nordic myths. And to give vivacity to the story I imagined him still quite young, a young PhD student in literature passionate since childhood of Nordic folklore but at the same time a very rational and rather introverted person, the classic “striver”, in short. His figure might recall the nerd’s one, but in reality Mark is much more confident and when necessary he knows how to take his decisions, even risky. Even if sometimes he tends to ponder too much.
In the names’ choice something similar happened immediately after for Mark’s friend, Viktor Meier. But this time only the name was the result of intuition, for the surname instead I used a search on the Internet on German surnames. Among the many I found Meier, I liked it right away and I didn’t think about it twice. But who was supposed to be this Viktor Meier? Always to give vivacity to the story I immediately imagined a great friend of Mark, but of totally opposite personality. Where Mark is surly Viktor is exuberant, where Mark is reflective Viktor is definitely impulsive and often lets go to explosions of sudden laughter.
Even physically the two friends are different: Mark has a very athletic build, even not performing particular physical activity. In fact, his hobby is music and as a pastime he plays sax with friends. Viktor, on the other hand, is tall, very corpulent: he may appear overweight, and in part he is a little, but he is still extremely muscular, almost as strong as two people. Plus with an extraordinary peculiarity: the ability to influence the choices of those around him, to bend them to his will and to make them support his desires, an innate gift, possessed since his early childhood. To some he may also recall a sort of Killgrave of Marvelian memory (the purple man, if someone understands super heroes), but not so powerful and above all not so evil: Viktor is in fact basically a positive character, with a weakness for beautiful women and nevertheless the secret fear that bind to someone may sooner or later limit his individual freedom (a fear, besides, shared by many people).
The third character of our saga, in order of appearance, was instead the fiancée of Mark: originally I wanted her to be called Maria, Maria Frieda, it was in fact the first name which came to my mind and I liked, but in that phase I still didn’t had the title of the novel clearly in my mind. Until this came to me in a dream, during a half-sleep: yes, that’s how I chose to use the term K-Team. I practically dreamed of it! Evidently things work like that too …
The intuition had in the half-sleep was that K should be understood as the common letter in each of the names of this group of friends: but it was clear that at that point Maria didn’t go well, so I immediately switched to Klaudia: Klaudia Frieda Wolf, therefore, whose surname would have assumed, among other things, a strategic importance in the course of the novel. Yes, the role of Mark’s girlfriend, now called Klaudia, was one of the few things I already had in mind for the grand finale.
Once this optic was adopted, part of the road was addressed: at this point in fact all the main characters who would have succeeded in the course of the story should have had the K in the name. Which meant that everyone belonged to the same team.
Why the Japanese?
Good question: frankly, I don’t remember this. It must have been one of my intuitions to which I immediately give credit once they enter into my mind, even if with hindsight they may cause no small complications in the development of the story. But suddenly I “felt” that there should have been some Japanese, or rather one in particular: Fujita Atsuko, obviously with the fateful K in her name. Just as there would have been a K in the name of her boyfriend, Nichimori Koichi. But as far as I know in several Japanese names we find the sound of K, so here in a sense it’s been even easier.
But while some idea already started to take shape in mind for Atsuko, for Koichi instead I knew almost nothing: who he was, why he was there, what he wanted. I felt only that he must be there but without knowing why. Even on the evening of his arrival he goes around a city he doesn’t know, leaving his girlfriend alone. I swear, at the time of writing I didn’t know where he was going and why, although I felt there was something wrong with him. The answers anyway came later, and it was a surprise for me to slowly discover his true role: the plot was starting to unravel a little by little in front of my eyes … and began to become increasingly complex
Why Kaspar?
At the beginning of the project it wasn’t far in my mind to even include a policeman in the story. But at a certain point I found myself in the necessity of having to send Mark to a place where a heinous crime had recently been committed, to pick up a certain object that he would need for the task that awaited him. However, I didn’t want to turn my main character into a sort of adventurer who tricked law enforcement, going overnight to violate the seals placed on a site where investigations were still ongoing. But how to solve the problem? The answer came almost immediately: he would have needed help. And from whom? But from the police itself, of course!
But why would the police have to help Mark? Here then insert in the story the figure of Kaspar: an uncle, brother of Mark’s father, suddenly dead months before, chief inspector of the police in Frankfurt. And so the problem of going to the crime scene to take a potential evidence was easily solved. Well, almost.
Actually, the insertion of the figure of Kaspar only in the following phase has entailed the necessity of having to rework the first part of the story, inserting opportune hints here and there to make clear what his role should have been, in order to be able to actively enter him into the plot when the right time would come. And when that moment finally emerged then also the role of Kaspar unexpectedly proved to be fundamental, if we consider that he was a character that had not even been conceived at the beginning. Obviously, to be sure of his importance, I ensured his name included the K letter: so, just to leave nothing to chance. Kaspar Schubert, welcome among us.
After this phase I had now available the main actors: the others instead went to add gradually more and more natural, and that was how the “The Grimm’s World” was born. It was an experience that definitely surprised me, as I was curious as well to understand what would happen, how it would end up since initially I had only vague ideas of the plot as a whole, ideas that assumed a concrete form only when the description was directly prepared. In a sense, therefore, I found myself being a reader of myself. And it was while “I read myself” that I realized that “The Grimm’s World” left open situations that could not be resolved hastily, otherwise it would have distorted what had been done so carefully until then. And so I understood that to offer a comprehensive narrative it would have been necessary to deal with them separately: that is how the initial title “The Grimm’s World” switched to “K-Team – The Grimm’s World”: in my mind the idea of the saga was taking shape!
K-Team, a novel started almost as a bet with myself (and to make my wife happy), now evolves and then becomes a saga, a series of adventures. Where will they lead us? Again, at the time of writing these lines, I still don’t know. I don’t have the answer to this question yet: but if you have already read the first book and have continued to read up to here, my “faithful reader” (as the “master” Stephen King would say) it means that deep down you have as well enjoyed something I have narrated so far. Whereas if this is your first approach to the world of Mark, Viktor, Klaudia, Kaspar and Atsuko then, my good reader, be welcome. I hope you will like them and you will find them likable too, as if they were good friends.
So, what you are about to read is the continuation of “The Grimm’s World”. In fact, the events described here are temporally just a few hours after the conclusion of that first adventure and as you will see, there are still many situations that have not been resolved yet, left unresolved by the conclusion of the previous story.It will therefore be inevitable to newly need the intervention of the K-Team!