Veronica Knox's Blog, page 11

WHY SO BLUE?

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middle-grade time-slip ‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ – by V Knox

The ‘Green Man’, is a mythological figure depicted with leaves for hair, in the tradition of the god Pan, protector of woodlands and defender of natural green spaces. He is usually green or autumn colors, depending on the season.

 

 

 

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These two ‘Green Man’ cover illustrations are blue because when the Green Man is absent from the countryside, vegetation atrophies, legend declares a permanent winter settles over the landscape, and the world hovers in a state of frozen decay.

Winter looms big in my middle-grade ‘Bede Trilogy’ set in a liminal landscape on the edge of reality and enchantment where a sentient stately home presides over an area of Great Britain linked irreversibly with Pangea and ancient Egypt.

Bede Hall, the star of the series, is named after the ‘Venerable Bede’, a scholarly Anglo-Saxon monk c. 670 A.D. to 730 A.D. – an historian, best known as the Father of English History who devised a way of calculating calendar dates. An idyllic luminary inspiring a time-slip adventure that links science, history, and the folklore of Great Britain and Ancient Egypt.

Bede Hall is a fictional stately home near Hadrian’s Wall and close to the Isle of Lindisfarne. I liken Bede Hall to Downton Abbey for middle-grade readers. A great family’s seat for generations, set against the challenges of aging in the modern world. The curmudgeonly Hall thinks for itself and rules its tenants, the weather, and time, in no uncertain terms during an extremely uncertain year. Bede Hall lies empty with a for sale sign on its imposing gates while its eccentric matriarch drifts in a fog of memories in a retirement home. It faces its worst nightmare when circumstances wake an ancient foe eager to have a second  chance for victory.

But before the Hall can save the world, it must save itself. It faces demolition, or, what it considers the worse case scenario of being sold to greedy developers who want to turn it into an hotel.

The Hall has no intention of such an ignoble end. In fact, it claims responsibility for saving humanity if only its pesky financial concerns would go away. In desperation, it summons its aging matriarch, wasting away, who brings her twin grandchildren to live, rather more like camping out, in musty rooms with dodgy electrics, near a village with decidedly strange inhabitants. The Hall’s is not the only voice calling for help.

It’s resident child ghost still calls for her lost friend and missing family.

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Ghosts, time-travel, a dozen terrible secrets, and a curse of snow takes a pair of telepathic twins on an adventure in ancient Egypt and into the future where the safety of earth’s ecosystem lies in their hands
Twelve-year-old twins, Kit (a keen boy-scientist) and Bash (a girl with a natural ‘green thumb’ and a flair for elaborate words) are forced to move from a noisy city to Bede Hall, their eccentric grandmother’s crumbling stately home, set in the sleepy English countryside.
With all that’s gone horribly wrong for a year, moving to a grand old mansion seems a solution that promises an adventure of endless exploration and freedom. Bash can create the garden of her dreams and Kit has an abandoned space to set up his own laboratory.
Instead, the pair discover a portal to the future with a terrible secret, begin to untangle the supernatural riddles of a mysterious village as bizarre as their grandmother’s magic snow globe, and meet the resident ghost-child of Bede Hall and some unexpected life-forms, some who appear to be as haunted as the presence of the hapless young girl trapped in the attic.
In order to save the planet from a natural disaster, one twin must ground the landscape of Bede while the other travels to the past to unravel the missing gaps of natural history.
The answers lie in Ancient Egypt, but only time will surrender its hidden knowledge.
Book one, ‘TWINTER’ (combining the words twin and winter), becomes the name of a team of teenagers, ghosts, and sentient animals given the task of settling an old score with an ancient curse in order to protect the future.

 

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HOURGLASS OF TIME – a painting by Veronica Knox

THE BEDE TRILOGY

Book one: ‘TWINTER – the first portal’ by V Knox, is available on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/TWINTER-first-portal-footprints-silence/dp/0993738044/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1473280585&sr=1-1

Book two: ‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ by V Knox – the continuing time-slip adventure for older middle-grade readers, that links the mythologies of Great Britain and ancient Egypt, will be available in May, 2018.

Book three: ‘TOMORROW AGAIN’ by V Knox – concluding the Bede Series, will be launched in 2019

**the cover art is from a series of original paintings by the author and may not be printed, reproduced or digitally posted without written permission from the author.

A list of V Knox’s novels and samples of her artwork may be viewed on her website. www.veronicaknox.com

 

 

 

PEARL EARRINGS, A RED HAT, and A SMILE

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VERMEER – ‘GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING’

Be it an iconic image, a true representation, or a ‘tronie’, a face belies a thousand secrets

A TRONIE: a face created from memory or a consummate sketch of several people and costumes that ‘stand in’ for no ‘one’ in particular. And yet, if you read between the brushstrokes of a portrait, ICONOGRAPHY ALWAYS RULES!

“Girl with a Pearl Earring” is considered a tronie – a type of portrait from the Dutch Golden Age that features an unidentified model as well as exotic costumes. While these works may have been based on actual models, they were not meant to be exact portraits of the sitters. The artist took liberties in changing the subject’s features in order to demonstrate studies in expression and physiognomy. The exotic garments were added to show painterly skill and to provide entertainment to the viewers in the open art market. The exotic details in “Girl with a Pearl Earring” include the turban on her head and her large pearl earring. These details were considered taken from Vermeer’s imagination.
FOUND & LOST… generic or real?

REAL PEOPLE FOUND: an old snapshot of a stranger in a box of family photographs or a vintage postcard find in an antique shop. Waxwork images of a stern-faced Victorian matron or a gentleman wearing a suit that’s too small sporting a top hat and mustache that are too large. A romantic headshot of a dewy-eyed girl, a young boy in a sailor suit hugging a teddy bear, An elegant woman in a glamorous hat at the end of the second row in a formal wedding party portrait. Time swallows all clues, but one thing is certain, these were real people who lived.

Not so with painted portraits. The famous and great knew a thing or two about immortality. They were sure of one thing… their deeds (all victories of a sort) would outlive their likeness and so they may as well order an artist to capture them in the prime of life in paint and marble. An image they may never have been. Beautiful, handsome, and commanding. In this way, an idealized portrait is a psychological likeness. A representation for all that the subject never was who chose to be remembered for what they professed or desired to be. In other words, larger than life. Vanities indelibly fixed into the gallery of history. Ineffaceable as a mountain among men or a goddess among women.

REAL PEOPLE LOST: unnamed, undated, unreferenced. Identities lost within a single lifetime or over generations. A face from the past stares out of time, captured in a frozen moment begs contact. Remember me? How infuriating when even initials or a date might have been easily scribbled. but instead there’s faded sepia-stained paper, empty as a blank canvas.

A painted portrait is a different reality. In many cases, an unsigned work of art with no provenance, lacking verifiable historical reference. No historic record. No diary. A living face undated and unsung. A brief hearsay from an unreliable historian and then… a cold case of a missing person revived in fiction – a literary version of reincarnation.

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VERMEER – ‘GIRL IN A RED HAT’

GENERIC LOSSES: Some up front and personal famous faces of historic heroes who want to be remembered as classic ‘beauties’ ie. Young, aquiline profiles, dynamically posed, athletic ‘fighting fit’ bodies, clear skin, dressed in expensive clothing and accessories. Most figures in a background scene or domestic groupings. Yes, servants stood in for some, but many are the faces of a TRONIE.

IF PAINTINGS COULD TALK…

and if you were a one-of-a kind-psychic-listener who could hear their indignant echoes huffy with age, you might have heard that servant girl from Delft: “My name is Griet, and I’ll have you know, in my time I prepared Master Vermeer’s paints in his attic studio.” Is she a tronie? We may never know.

Or, where there’s evidence:

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‘THE MONA LISA’ detail

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‘LISABETTA’ a novel by V KNOX

“My name is Lisabetta. You know me as the ‘Mona Lisa’. I was Leonardo da Vinci’s beloved kid-sister, his assistant and apprentice, and the mother he was denied. We were born six-years-apart, as close as twins, and when I was old enough to walk, my brother made me a promise that we would never be parted.

My dear brother sketched me all my life but I was forty-five-years-old when he immortalized me in paint.

And during a particularly gloomy season painting the dreary wife of an even drearier silk merchant, circumstances conspired that I pose for a new kind of portrait.

Leonardo looked beyond my face to what had made me happy and sad, to where I came from and who I’d become. He saw me as a human landscape. A mature map rather than a mere likeness. My portrait is our countryside. You can see there are two disparate horizons in my portrait.

Leonardo favored pyramidal shapes. I am the human ‘mountain’ separating two sides of the same world. Twin landscapes. Life and death. One on the left; the other on the right. Can you tell which one is me? If you can read the language of art and of the trees and rocks and hills, the answer is plain, the way Leonardo like to paint stories – out in the open for all to see.

We were inseparable even after my death, and so I remained his touchstone to life as well as the receptacle where his soul would retreat at his transition.

And so, I traveled with Leonardo as his companion to the end of his days as an icon painted on a small panel of poplar wood. If you look closely, you will see the traces of Leonardo as he wanders the twin landscapes behind me. We are still together. This is why I smile.”

Lisabetta – a trilogy by V KNOX. Launch date October 31, 2017

PITCHING ON A STORMY SEA

[image error] The concept you pitch could turn out to be the story that cannot be named!

I’m an indie author. And one thing I’ve learned, after pitching directly to agents at a writers conference, is that beauty is in the eye of the market.

SPOILER ALERT: Be careful of writing for your ideal reader, aka yourself, you may not be the average bear.

Standing in line waiting to pitch a novel at a writers conference to agents is nerve-wracking. Authors are given three minutes. Go overtime and someone hauls you off… but no pressure.

It’s not life-threatening in the same way as being mortally judged by an Egyptian monster that devours your soul if your manuscript weighs heavier than the feather of truth. Marketing favors the moment, and the moment is aligned to the ‘same-but-different’ latest bestseller genre. Your story fits or it doesn’t. Publishing calendars take no prisoners. You can roll with the punches (I mean ride the waves) and live to write another day.

But be forewarned, in a world based on language skills, one misspoken word has the power to sever a writer’s confidence from his sanity. Here are four killer words: paranormal, fantasy, historical, and literary. Once out, these words flap valiantly to be understood for all their nuances yet writhe beached on the shore, dead as beached whales.

CASE IN POINT… I deliberately booked six formal pitches to agents, back-to-back for momentum at a recent writers conference.

AGENT ONE: “Hello,” I say after introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ is paranormal history.” Ms. Agent looks up from my first page and vehemently declares “This is literary fiction!” in an accusatory tone. I am so busted.

AGENT TWO: “Hello,” I say, introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ is literary fiction.” Mr. Agent looks up from my first page, shakes his head, and vehemently declares in an exasperated tone, “Why on earth would you want to alienate 90% of your potential readers! Market this as historical fantasy.”

AGENT THREE: “Hello,” I say, introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ is historical fantasy.” Mr. Agent looks up from my first page and vehemently declares “This is paranormal fiction!” in an affronted tone. “If it’s paranormal you have to say so!”

AGENT FOUR: “Hello,” I say, introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ is about a ghost boy from the Titanic.” Mr. Agent looks up from my first page and blinks myopically. “What’s the genre?” he asks. Cautious now, I reply like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel. “Please sir, I’m not exactly sure.” The comeback is brutal. “If you want to compete with professional authors you have to come prepared. You must know its genre!” I am dismissed – an amateur… a newbie… an emerging author with a debut novel about something they want nothing to do with, and three minutes isn’t enough time for a return comeback. In fact, it’s considered rude to linger with a question after the clock has run out. Apparently it smacks of sounding argumentative to an agent who has been wined, dined, and paid to encourage the hopefuls waiting in line for their master’s voice to say here’s my card. Please send me the first three chapters.

AGENT FIVE: “Hello,” I say, introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ is a paranormal historical fantasy about a ghost boy from the Titanic.” Ms. Agent looks up from my first page, disappointed. “That’s a pity,” she says. “Paranormal historical fantasy isn’t selling right now. Literary fiction is the ticket.”

Whoever said third time lucky was a hopeless romantic. So, I changed hats and brought out a ‘time travel paranormal romance’ to pitch, instead.

AGENT SIX: “Hello,” I say, introducing myself by name. “My book ‘The Indigo Pearl’ is a paranormal romance about a comatose woman savant whose memories are downloaded into an android designed to withstand time travel. When the woman regains consciousness inside a hybrid body, intelligence is no longer artificial.” The words ‘paranormal-romance’ triggers a deafeningly silent ‘wrong answer claxon’ reminiscent of a game show. Mr. Agent sighs in dismay. “No way. Any story containing an android is science-fiction by default.” But,” I splutter, “it’s a fantasy time travel love triangle.”

Is there a way to back-peddle from such gaffs? Not within the minute left of a sink or swim interview. At least in an elevator there’s the option of pressing the emergency stop button and pause time.

The imperfect storm of self-publishing dictates that my own website, as imperfect as it may be, is the only venue under my control where I can freely promote my novels from a virtual sea of books. I send you a few rafts. Please grab hold as a book floats by with a pitch that catches your imagination.

SO, HERE GOES… PITCHING INTO THE WIND on a VAST BLUSTERY OCEAN TOSSING and ROLLING (dare I say, ROWLING?) with unsung BOOKS to a captured audience if you stay here awhile.

ALTERNATE HISTORY

‘LISABETTA’ – a fictional biographical trilogy of Leonardo da Vinci’s sister

The embittered spirit of the ‘Mona Lisa,’ trapped inside her portrait, escapes from the Louvre and causes havoc in an autistic boy’s worldview in order to be acknowledged for her true identity. *estimated launch date December 1, 2017.

‘WOO WOO – the posthumous love story of Miss Emily Carr’
begins where the historical Emily’s true memoirs end. An eccentric artist and iconic spinster, comes to her senses sixty-seven years after her death and calls down the energy of her animal totem, Woo the monkey, to rekindle the love of a rejected suitor. https://www.amazon.com/Woo-posthumous-love-story-Emily/dp/1481057901
‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ –An extraordinary love story of reincarnation and sacrifice when two children on board Titanic, who were destined to marry, are separated by death. www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Shoes-Save-Our-Souls/dp/0993738036

POETRY

‘I WAS THERE’ – the art of time travel – a poetic stroll through fifteenth-century Florence. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993738087

PARANORMAL ROMANCE

‘ADORATION – loving Botticelli’ – a time travel romance

A retired art history professor, haunted for years by a self-portrait of the artist Sandro Botticelli, is lured into one of his masterpieces to consummate their romantic longings for each other five-hundred-years in the past.

https://www.amazon.com/Adoration-Loving-Botticelli-V-Knox-ebook/dp/B019JKI3GE

 ‘THE INDIGO PEARL’ and ‘PEARL BY PEARL’ An autistic female savant trapped in an extended near-death experience reincarnates too soon. When the memories of a comatose woman, able to converse telepathically with paintings, are downloaded into a hybrid android designed to withstand time travel, a conflict of interests ensues. And after the woman regains consciousness inside a hybrid body, intelligence is no longer artificial.

But the reluctant android, has its own agenda – to destroy its creators. As the woman regains control over her mind, the sentient android evolves organically, and when the two lifeforms meet halfway, they become rivals with a singular purpose, competing for the love of a young man in a 500-year-old portrait. Neither can win his affections without the unique abilities of the other. As the love triangle plays out, one female must eventually supplant the other. Who will prevail?

Ultimately, will it take two lives to make one woman?

https://www.amazon.com/Indigo-Pearl-once-child-shines/dp/0993738028/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1450488621&sr=1-3

and

https://www.amazon.com/Pearl-past-life-memories-renaissance-woman/dp/099373801X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1450487558&sr=1-1

MIDDLE-GRADE

‘TWINTER – the first portal’ – a time-slip adventure for ages ten to grandmother.
book one of ‘The Bede Series’ – Bede Hall is an abandoned stately home, and it’s desperate. It must rally its dispersed family before being sold to developers. Its youngest residents, a pair of telepathic teenage twins, must rescue a girl lost in time whose apparition has haunted the estate for generations. But rescue only opens a time portal that reveals terrible secrets. BEDE HALL IS ALIVE, BUT ALL IS NOT WELL.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993738044?ref_=pe_584750_33951330

‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ – book two of the ‘Bede Series’
‘DOWNTON ABBEY MEETS NARNIA’ It falls to Bede Hall’s time corridors, the Great Sphinx of Egypt, the rules of twindom, the power of nine, and a team of teenagers, with several otherworldly allies who call themselves the Twinters, to save earth from becoming a ball of blue ice orbiting the sun. The ‘Twinters’ have six years to try in a landscape where history is positively ancestral.

*estimated launch date December, 2017.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEONARDO!

[image error] Born April 15th – 1452 in the town of Vinci

“There was born to me, a grandson, the son of Ser Piero my son, on the 15th day of April, a Saturday, at the third hour of the night. He bears the name Lionardo.” – Antonio da Vinci

The face of ‘the Vitruvian Man’ is said to be a self-portrait of Leonardo, age thirty-eight
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‘The Vitruvian Man’ – c. 1490

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But the earliest image we have of him, is age 14 in this bronze sculpture of ‘David’. Leonardo posed for his teacher, Andrea Verrocchio, when he was the master’s fourteen-year-old apprentice

 

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Verrocchio’s bronze ‘David’ – c. 1466

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But my favorite likeness is Leonardo’s unfinished self-portrait in the ‘Adoration of the Magi’ when he was twenty-nine
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Detail from Leonardo’s ‘Adoration of the Magi’ – c. 1482

I wonder…

Could Leonardo’s self-portrait be proof that Tom Cruise was a teenage time traveler?

Anything can happen in the movies.

WONDROUS & DISASTROUS

[image error] APRIL 15 – A DAY TO REMEMBER

Leonardo da Vinci was born – April 15, 1452

 

 

 

 

[image error]HMS Titanic sank – April 15, 1912

It’s uncanny that these are both subjects about which I’m most passionate.

I wrote ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’ as an homage to the lost children of the Titanic after I visited the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was moved by a pair of child’s shoes salvaged from the doomed liner.

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‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ – is a love story of reincarnation and extraordinary sacrifice. When death separates two children on board the Titanic who were destined to marry, the spirit of the boy, Finn, chooses to remain earthbound as the surviving girl’s invisible childhood companion.

Finding a pair of lost shoes is the only way to silence Finn’s inner demons and imagined sins, keep an unthinkable promise made in haste, and give them a second chance.

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www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Shoes-Save-Our-Souls/dp/0993738036

SERENDIPITY-DOODAH HOOPLA

[image error] DON’T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT!

Mr. Dickens may have written ‘Great Expectations’ but today, we authors are plagued with them:

A PLETHORA OF POSSIBILITIES

AN EXAGGERATION OF EXPECTANCY

AN HYPERBOLE OF HAPPENSTANCE

Definition (mine): SERENDIPITY > A triad random hit of perfect-timing, perfect-placement, and a perfect human carrier pigeon in a single, spontaneous, advantageous intervention that radiates from its impact point, multiplies exponentially and champions a cause. HOPEFULLY yours and mine. But there’s the rub. Hoping cancels out serendipity.

Bob Dylan expressed serendipity’s elusive nature best when he sang “you may as well try and catch the wind”

The road to literary success is not paved with anything. Its not even a road; it’s two roads – a crossroad where divine intervention is said to occur. Except, it’s not divine; it’s human. A collision we euphemistically call a happy accident. The great unplanned ‘something’…

THE X FACTOR- And it’s never a what… it’s always a who: A great unplanned SOMEONE

As John Cleese in ‘The life of Brian’ admonishes the woman in an unruly mob who throws the first stone: “It only takes one.”

And speaking of one… serendipity is one loaded word. A word loaded with luck. One might say it’s even a mite overloaded. It’s a rare bird of a word. It’s best not to carry this spicy word on your sleeve; it’s tempting fate. But if you feel immune to superstitious mythos, write it on a slip of paper with invisible ink and keep it hidden in a pocket.

That said… A SOUPCON OF RADIOACTIVE SERENDIPITY IS WORTH A THOUSAND REALLY SUPER-DUPER WORDS

If serendipity lands on your doorstop, welcome it inside with open arms and order a crate of champagne.

Definition: AGENT > a strategic plan, catalyst, or event that influences an outcome; an action or response that triggers change; a human mediator who acts as an instrument of change; a driving force, capable of producing a certain effect; an active and efficient intervention that causes or transforms an existing neutral state.

And in the case of a bestseller, it’s also a reader who spontaneously instigates a word-of-mouth phenomenon.

Serendipity is like the amazing archaeological finds at Sutton Hoo. One day a metal detectorist tramps across a silent field. A short time later, a different metal detectorist waves his magic wand over the same damp ground and hits noisy Saxon gold. We may be sure the surrounding fields were consequently earmarked for further treasure and mined to within an inch. But to no avail.
TREASURE IS A MOVING TARGET

Write as if serendipity doesn’t exist; as if Amazon stars don’t exist. More importantly, do not go gentle into that great expectation believing serendipity has your name at the top of its list. Its better not to set yourself up for disappointment.

allow serendipity be an unexpected surprise

We authors often try too hard to be the lightning rod for fame’s parallel strike. Fame doesn’t mega-strike twice in the same genre. Super-viral success is a bolt of lightning that may never strike once, even if you tempt serendipity by standing on the topmost rung of a metal stepladder during a thunderstorm, atop the only hill in a prairie landscape, wearing tap shoes while holding the world’s longest tuning fork over your head.

Here’s the paradox:HOLDING HANDS WITH KISMET REQUIRES LETTING GO

LITERARY SERENDIPITY IS A GHOST, akin to the definition in ‘Ghostbusters’ – [a free-floating full-torso vaporous apparition that blows books off shelves from twenty feet away, capable of scaring the socks a librarian.]

But if you desire to live in this kind of library, you must be invited.

There are no ‘busters’ to call, no site to manipulate, and no perfect treatise on writing to follow because the SERENDIPITY HOTLINE has an unlisted number?

So, authors rejoice. There is one less thing to worry about. The X factor is out of your control.

Chances are GREAT, that your number one ‘agent’ is happenstance with a beating human heart– the perfect event-horizon-reader who will champion your future.

PARANORMAL – IS TOO STRONG A WORD

[image error] BECAUSE LIFE IS ONE BIG X-FILE

UFO = Unidentified Fictional Objectivity

Paranormal has become a four-letter word for those of us who write in its general vicinity. But softer words may be used to describe a ‘stranger than fiction’ story without horror and fright or to see dead people in a good way?

There IS a softer side to paranormal fiction where the curious reader is invited to innocently flirt with time.

Flow with impossible dreams. Indulge in a playful fling with the unreal and romance the sweetly surreal. Take a flight of fancy to the afterlife and dance the endless loops of reincarnation, lucid dreaming, quantum leaps of time-slipping, and venture into zones with more relaxed outer limits in novels where a reader can wander through the doors of perception and peek behind the looking glass without having to sleep with a light on afterwards.

Delight that the fictional afterlife is a country of your own making where you can die outside the box and reincarnate at will.

THE KEY WORD in paranormal fiction is ‘FICTION’ (translation: a story that exceeds the constraints of normal of lying)

It’s a heads-up promise that ‘SOMETHING UNUSUAL THIS WAY COMES’…

That something you’re about to read will not creep you out or give you nightmares for a month of Sundays. That said, it may even delight you or cause you to reflect outside the laws of physics for a change, and indulge freely inside the flexible laws of metaphysics.

The word FICTION notifies a reader that something or everything in a story is untrue; the word PARANORMAL informs a reader that a story operates within the flexible realms of metaphysics.

Language goes one better and adds prefixes to nice calm words in order to jazz up the tension: un, in, other, super, extra, and para (which means above). These beget: unexplained, unidentified, unreal, unbelievable, uncanny, untoward, unearthly, otherworldly, supernatural, unlikely, unknown, insubstantial, unidentifiable, inexplicable, psychic, intuitive, extraordinary, unknowable, and the para-deadly… ‘paranormal’. The words: enigmatic, mystical, visionary, ethereal, ghostly, mysterious, fantasy, fanciful, make-believe, magical, prescient, quixotic, brooding, telepathic, clairvoyant, occult, surreal, arcane, premonition, esoteric, and imaginative are roses made of icing on a deeply layered cake.

Sadly, Quixotic-Fiction is not an acceptable genre, but wouldn’t it be nice if it was!

WE WANT TO BELIEVE… if only for a few hours

We want to believe in the lighter side of the unexplained, defy gravity with flying objects, and dabble in the less arcane art of what-if. 
Here are some of my favorite works of Surreal-Fiction:

BOOKS (also MADE INTO FILMS): ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’, ‘The Lovely Bones’, and the ‘Harry Potter’ series. 

MOVIES: ‘The Lake House’, ‘What Dreams May Come’, ‘Somewhere in Time’, ‘Field of Dreams’, ‘Groundhog Day’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘Close Encounters’, ‘Jurassic Park’, and ‘Ghostbusters’ (one)

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITES?

SO… I WALKED INTO THIS MUSEUM…

[image error] … and I came out with a story. Or, to be more precise, it followed me home and shadowed me for three years.

And now it’s coming up to the first anniversary, of self-publishing ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’, appropriately, the traditional ‘paper anniversary’, and the 105th anniversary of the morning when the museum shoes and their young owner perished in the North Atlantic on April 15th, 1912.

Titanic sank with many immigrant children aboard – young passengers trapped in the doomed steerage section on the ship. One of whom, likely wore these shoes, permanently on exhibit in the Maritime Museum of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In an homage to the unknown child, I created Finn Cleary, a wild Irish boy who lost two pairs of shoes in the icy waters that fateful night.

It was unthinkable for Finn to face his mother who’d declared:
“I’ll skin you alive, so I will, if you so much as scuff your new shoes before we get to America.”

LOSING THE SECOND PAIR WAS EVEN MORE UNTHINKABLE

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‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ is an extraordinary love story between two children onboard the Titanic, destined to marry, who struggle to stay together even after death separates them. Finding Finn’s shoes is their only chance.

New shoes don’t grow on trees, but sadly, printed books, do rely on them. To win a paperback copy of ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’, please answer the following question: Was it an iceberg or greed that sank the Titanic? Give your reasons. The answer that dazzles me, wins. Please use the contact page to send your reply with the words Titanic book contest in your email heading. I look forward to hearing from you.

www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Shoes-Save-Our-Souls/dp/0993738036

JUST ANOTHER TRICK IN THE WALL

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HADRIAN’S WALL – Great Britain

Sometimes a wall is meant to defend and protect.
Sometimes a wall draws a line in the sand.
Sometimes a line in the sand marks a point of no return.
Often, if you’re lucky, the point of no return is an invitation to enter the liminal space between two realities.

In the ‘BEDE SERIES’ for middle-grade to young adult readers, Hadrian’s wall is a great divide.

But sometimes the common ground of a great divide is a non-local destination of great joining – the perfect space for uniting the natural and the supernatural to experience the mysteries of warm rain, red snow, and footsteps that end in silence.

‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ – book 2 of the BEDE SERIES is a time travel adventure to ancient Egypt through the time portals of a sentient stately home in Northumbria, built atop the successive ruins of prehistoric Britain.

Kit, a boy-scientist who decries all things supernatural must confront his worst nightmares after moving to Bede Hall, his grandmother’s crumbling estate. The Hall, steeped in local mythology, buzzes with unearthly energy and encounters with ghostly phenomena.

When Kit’s twin sister, Bash, wholeheartedly embraces the very energies that Kit denounces, they’re pitted against each other. Their natural telepathic bond remains a flimsy connection that connects the real and paranormal worlds.

But to prevent a global disaster and several personal ones, Kit must overcome his fear of the unknown, face erasure by time traveling through the dangerous portals of Bede Hall, and change the future by creating a new past.

‘DOWNTON ABBEY THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS’
What if Downton Abbey had a mind of its own?

Bede Hall is a sentient family estate, fallen on desperate times, crumbling in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland. It has survived in countless reincarnations, hovering on the liminal boundaries of the Isle of Lindisfarne – the sheltered threshold between mythology and a hard place, in a world that’s positively ancestral.

When local developers target the abandoned Hall for demolition, it refuses to surrender without a fight.

With its ‘back against the wall’, the stately home is forced to recall its reluctant matriarch and her twin grandchildren, Bathsheba (Bash) and Christopher (Kit) – teenagers with their own challenges.

And since time refuses to turn back permanently, the Hall’s time portals can only play a risky game of hide and seek with its young champions.

Bede Hall must overcome its pride in order to fulfill its destiny. It has an ancient curse to defuse, a future catastrophe to avert, and a young ghost to set free while the twins face the consequences of playing chess with time itself.

BEDE HALL IS ALIVE BUT ALL IS NOT WELL

Three years have passed since the twins arrived to live in Bede Hall.

Turning sixteen isn’t going to be easy.

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Book 1 of the ‘Bede series’ ‘TWINTER – THE FIRST PORTAL’ is presently available in print and e-book versions. The estimated publication date for book 2, ‘TIME FALLS LIKE SNOW’ is May 2017.

https://www.amazon.com/author/veronicaknox

WHERE WERE YOU?

[image error]If meditation is time travel, then I have been there with Leonardo and Sandro and Lisa. I brushed against their cloaks of country-rough sackcloth or city-thick velvet trimmed in fur, and run my fingers over the heavy embroidered stuff of their Sunday best.

I’ve worn a wedding gown of stiff pearl-encrusted silk.

I’ve paced out the length and breadth of the Piazza della Signoria with Il Marzocco (the heraldic lion of Florence) and his wife – the back-to-back lions of yesterday and tomorrow. We skirted the deserted arena, a savannah of sun-baked paving stones, hugging the walls, keeping to the shadows – circling the square, squaring the circle, roaring at its empty coliseum of African dreams, ignoring the pigeons and an escaped wishing-pig. We were careful to sidestep Savonarola’s fire-blackened martyr-stone marking the center of vanity, the very heart of art.

I’ve set aside many a nosegay against the blast of renaissance filth. But then I’ve also been gifted the scent of flowers blooming free of diesel fumes and pesticides that leave our bleached versions of fruit and vegetables and pale-scented roses in the dust.

I’ve shadowed fifteenth-century Florentines unawares, light and casual in my T-shirt and tenderized stone-washed jeans, shuffling through their littered streets in sensible shoes, vaccinated and well-supplied with bottled water.

As a time-traveler, I’ve explored their natures the way discoverers of the New World embraced the shores of a Utopian mirage. I invited them inside my head, to share one mood, one pair of eyes, and allowed their DNA to mature – to percolate in quiet moments and prosper under my skin.

As their host, I gave them breath and a voice. As an author, I continue to shout their praises in pixels and electrons, and gift them paper and air.

 

SO… WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

Were you a fly on the wall? Or inside someone’s head? Or did you settle-in under an historical character’s skin?

Meet me for an espresso in the marketa of Florence beside the wishing pig.

See you there.

BON VOYAGE!

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‘I WAS THERE’ – V. Knox

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993738087

*the e-book version will be available at the end of January, 2017