Veronica Knox's Blog, page 15

STARCROSSED CHILDREN

For a while Finn and Lacey were a pair of five-year-olds… then Lacey grew up.
Two children on the Titanic destined to marry are torn apart when Finn Cleary perishes on April 15, 1912. Now Finn must rekindle their star-crossed romance before he becomes trapped in a reincarnation attempt gone wrong.

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ by V. KNOX – a Titanic-inspired love story:

A WOMAN HELPS HER INVISIBLE CHILDHOOD COMPANION, THE GHOST OF A BOY FROM THE TITANIC DISASTER, TO FIND HIS LOST SHOES SO HE CAN REACH HEAVEN.

To be launched on or before April 15, 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. – GENRE: literary fiction / magical realism / paranormal romance

TITANIC’S SCOTLAND ROAD

“Ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye. But me and my true love will never meet again…”
These are the familiar lyrics of an old Scottish folk song – a lament of lovers separated by death. The story tells of a young man who perishes far from home. The low road represents his soul’s journey into the next world while his lost love awaits him on the ‘high road’ in the world of the living.

The broad, lower-deck service corridor on the port side of Titanic’s ‘E Deck’, that ran the length of the ship, was named ‘SCOTLAND ROAD’ by the crew. Officers referred to it, tongue in cheek, with the ritzier name of ‘PARK LANE.’

It was used by crew members and steerage passengers to quickly move between the ends of the ship. The term Scotland Road is now used to describe any straight corridor or passageway which allows easy access and an unrestricted flow of traffic through the length of a building.  

The forward end of Scotland Road filled with water quickly when Titanic nose-dived which would have made it a useless escape route for the passengers ‘below stairs’.

Ironically, Titanic’s ‘Scotland Road,’ one of the first corridors to fill with water and weigh down the forward bow, was on one of the lowest decks where the women and children steerage passengers were unthinkably segregated from the lifeboats and doomed to die.

Banned from the first-class promenade decks, Finn Cleary, the ghost protagonist of ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ ran up and down ‘Scotland Road’ to break in his new shoes, playing with the other third-class immigrant children on the ‘underground low road’ – a substitute walkway for steerage Decks E and F.

Finn, an Irish immigrant boy, and an unborn girl on Titanic, are destined to be together until five-year-old Finn, the ghost protagonist in ‘The Unthinkable Shoes’, loses his life and his future bride, hanging on to the submerged bars of a locked gate at the top end of ‘Scotland Road.’ But love finds an extraordinary way for Finn and his true love to meet again.

 

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ by V. KNOX – a Titanic-inspired love story:

FINN CLEARY IS IN A STATE OF SPIRITUAL SHOCK – an unsinkable soul, suddenly aware of his past lives. Five-years-old yet ageless, he struggles to accept his death on the Titanic and put his next life in order. It’s a lot for a lost boy to take on board. 

To be launched on or before April 15, 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. – GENRE: literary fiction / magical realism / paranormal romance

THE ART OF BEING THERE

The old adage of walking a mile in another person’s shoes in order to feel their truth is vital. Authors do this every day. But what if those shoes were on Titanic?
An author who writes about the Titanic must transport themselves to the Titanic during its final hours. I had to feel the terror as the truth dawned:

I’m on a sinking ship. I can’t swim. Below me is the dark freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Flares explode like gunfire. The night sky, filled with stars, bursts with shooting red S.O.S. comets that plummet and fizzle into the horizon. I huddle into a lifejacket wishing I’d brought my gloves. I stand, pushed aside on the boat deck with chaos erupting into fights over going and staying. For a while I’m a woman in first class clutching a jewelry box. I must say goodbye to my grown son. I’m the wife who won’t leave her beloved husband. I stand on deck – a wealthy millionaire stripped of power, consigned to die. I don’t want to die. It’s women and children first. I’m supposed to be stoic and fearless and heroic, but I don’t want to die. I’m going to die.

Most of the time I’m Finn Cleary, a five-year-old boy in steerage, about to drown, locked behind a metal gate guarded by crewmen following cruel orders. I’m angry and abandoned. Betrayed. I’ve been Finn’s mother and his father. I’ve been his brother and his baby sister. I’m the baby onboard he’s supposed to marry.

I feel nauseating panic. I feel the ship list. I fall against corridor walls, grab at slippery doorknobs and clutch stair railings. I watch Titanic from a lifeboat. I watch the lifeboats from the boat deck. I avoid the spillage of loose items cascading down ‘Scotland Road.’ I slide and stumble and climb, gravity challenged and frantic.

In other words, I wear the shoes of every man woman and child on board and experience the horrifying truths of gut-wrenching terror. I am traumatized. Sickened. Nothing is real. Everything is all too real. I’m compelled to write a story in a state of shock.

  MUSEUMS ARE TIME MACHINES; ARTIFACTS ARE GHOSTS; AUTHORS ARE TIME TRAVELERS

What is great about writing fiction is how quickly inspiration arrives when strolling through an art gallery or a museum. What’s sad about writing historical fiction is that the everyday human details of obscure individuals are unfairly eclipsed by the famous. Some identities are misappropriated, others are relegated to the historical background, but most are lost completely. That’s why I like to mind-travel to fifteenth-century Florence to track down missing art, and breathe life into unrecorded lives. Finding forgotten people often begins at the end – their gravesites and locations of buildings that no longer exist.

When I moved to Nova Scotia I did what I always do in a new place. I explored the local heritage. I visited the Titanic graves, moved by toys left in the rain for the unknown child. Some were wrapped in cellophane to keep them dry, and I thought, no, they should succumb to weather to make sense. I couldn’t help but connect the similarity, albeit climatically opposite, to the childhood toys of Tutankhamun left in his tomb for his afterlife pleasure.

Quite often the graves of heroic figures exist only in memory. Leonardo da Vinci’s remains were desecrated for building renovations after the French Revolution; Mozart was buried in a mass grave; and then there’s the opposite – the tributes to unknown soldiers and the monuments honoring entire clans on a battlefield. Beautiful architecture is often confiscated and turned into offices or worse, car parks. There’s often no place to pay one’s respects above a final resting place. Only a few privileged divers will ever gaze at Titanic from a submarine window.

Behind every museum artifact is the ghost of a love story. Behind every story of love there’s a hint of magic. Behind every lost soul there’s heartbreak and jealousy.

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ – a TITANIC-inspired novel by V. KNOX– a novel of Literary Fiction /Magical Realism to be released on or before April 15th 2016  – the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

TOYS ON MARS

The lens of an underwater camera on a mission scans a bleak ocean-bottom landscape. Earth no longer exists. This is another planet. It’s hunting. It’s on a quest, exploring unfamiliar territory in dangerous waters.
The brain requires bearings. Where am I? The ground is an endless beach – sand that reaches to or is it from a sunken ship? The horizon is where the searchlight ends and an endless sky of black water begins.

A white shape emerges from the dark. The illuminated contours of a forehead and the curve of a cheek. Impossible.  The brain is intrigued. Could it be? No. It’s not possible. Must investigate. Move position. Look again.

But a different vantage point reveals an astonishing feature… a pair of holes where eyes should be. High alert.

Wired to seek out all things human, the brain automatically searches and is rewarded with a nose and a mouth. Discovery. Recognition. Unmistakably human. Processing. A human face. It can’t be.

Is it a mask? How on earth? But this isn’t earth; it’s a ‘face’ on Mars.

Touchstones. Memories. Child’s laughter at the bottom of the sea. Small arms clutch a beloved dolly and a mother’s hand. Don’t let go. But dolly is left behind. No we can’t go back. It will be all right. Puzzle pieces fall into place. It’s a doll. Unbelievable. The china head of a doll looms into view. A little girl’s doll, so unmistakably human.

A little girl shivers in a lifeboat crying for her lost doll. She has no idea her father is gone forever, but her mother does. She clasps her daughter’s hand. Don’t let go. The doll comes to rest on the seabed. Its glass eyes search the dark like a camera looking for a lost child.

Excerpt from ‘The UNTHINKABLE SHOES’– a TITANIC-inspired novel by V. KNOX *spoken by Lacey Waters, on her fifth birthday.

[ Daisy Paisley is a baby doll but you’d never know it from her sticky-out eyelashes like the bristles of a toothbrush and her painted lips the color of birthday balloons. Her eyes are blue marbles that alarm me because they click when they open and close. Plastic windows clunk down and Daisy cries maaaa maaaah like a goat when I bend her backwards, something I know instinctively never to do with real babies.

I remember babies. Lots of them. My own babies from another place and another time in my dreams – my pretend children who live down the road inside my mind. I don’t remember exactly where, somewhere nearby, but I do remember that none of their eyelids clicked.

“Finish your milk,” Ma says. “You’ve a surprise waiting.” The word finish hits me like a wet    Monday. Fin – Fin…ish.

“What?” I call out, but I’m not talking about the surprise. “I’m Finn,” I say.

“You’ll have to wait and see. Unless you FIN-ish that milk.”

“My name’s Finn.” I repeat.

Ma laughs and wipes the syrup from my face and fingers. “Finish as in drink all your milk, not Finish as in Finland. Run along you silly girl. It’s in the sitting room.”

“My friend’s name is Finn. He says hello.”

“I’m Irish,” Finn says.

“He says hello and he’s Irish.”

“Well that’s very nice but don’t be letting your Pa hear such nonsense,” Ma says. She goes back to her stirring and humming –a little grey bee in a world of abstract busyness. ]

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ by V. KNOX will be launched on or before April 15, 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic – GENRE: Literary Fiction / Magical Realism. 

 

LOST BOYS

The movie ‘BIG’, the story of PETER PAN, and the novel ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ share a common theme – boys who become trapped in situations where their emotional age is incompatible with their physical bodies. After being disenchanted or traumatized with their lives, their consciousness shifts to ‘new worlds’ that pose even greater challenges.  A wish, a choice, or a promise triggers magical transformations that create situations of tension, conflict, and high stakes.

Paranormal energy is initiated when one boy makes a wish, another makes a choice, and yet another makes a promise.

The movie ‘Big’ featured Josh Baskin, a boy protagonist who becomes trapped in an adult body after making A WISH to grow up.

Peter Pan is a lost boy who stifles his growing-up by CHOOSING to remain in a Neverland fantasy.

Finn Cleary, in the ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ is a five-year-old victim of the Titanic disaster who is unable to grow-up in his next life. After Finn makes AN UNTIMELY PROMISE, reincarnation traps him in his spirit form as a perpetual boy who died age-five with a terrible challenge. Finn is pressured into become the invisible childhood friend to the girl he’d been destined to marry. He appears as a child five-years-old even though he has the advanced awareness of every person he’s ever been in his past lives.

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ –– a TITANIC-inspired novel by V. KNOX

 THE GHOST OF A BOY WHO DIED ON THE TITANIC MUST REMAIN EARTHBOUND AS A GIRL’S INVISIBLE CHILDHOOD COMPANION IN ORDER TO SALVAGE HIS LOST DESTINY AND REACH HEAVEN

– a novel of Literary Fiction /Magical Realism by V. KNOX to be released on or before April 15th 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

TITANIC – A SHIP SUNK BY FOOLS

An April sinking hastened by the ‘perfect storm’ of mistakes: ego, greed, snobbery, and mismanagement.

Where were the binoculars for the watch?

Who approved the number of lifeboats?

Who gave the orders to race to New York?

Who manned the locked gates to third class with such a lack of compassion?

 

 

 ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ –– a TITANIC-inspired novel by V. KNOX

 A LOST BOY FROM TITANIC STRUGGLES WITH JEALOUSY AND FATE.

– a novel of Literary Fiction /Magical Realism by V. KNOX to be released on or before April 15th 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

www.veronicaknox.com

Next post: themes of lost boys: Peter Pan, the movie ‘Big’ and Finn Cleary, the hero of ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’

 

 

TITANIC’S BROKEN ROSE

A plate from first class, recovered from the ocean bed, is the perfect metaphor for the lives of Titanic’s survivors who lived on within shattered families and broken dreams.

A coffee cup with one puzzle piece missing

What could have prevented Titanic from hitting the iceberg? Some say it was the lack of binoculars for the watch that night as they couldn’t be found. The naked eye of two watchmen failed to spot the berg with enough time to avoid collision.
Where were the binoculars?

 

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ – Two children on the Titanic, destined to marry, are torn apart when Finn Cleary perishes on April 15, 1912. Now, Finn must rekindle their star-crossed romance before he becomes permanently trapped in a reincarnation attempt gone wrong.

– a novel of Literary Fiction /Magical Realism by V. KNOX to be released on or before April 15th 2016, the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

 

A TITANIC INSPIRED LOVE STORY

“Yes, those are definitely my shoes, there in the museum case. Who would have thought I’d be famous for my shoes. And such a sad pair as that. I wore them the day I stepped onto the Titanic and the day I floated free of it, April 15, 1912.”

Thus begins the novel ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ – a story about the spirit of a boy who perished on the RMS Titanic and his subsequent journey to a new destination, a place he assumes is his right of passage to a better life. Instead, he finds himself a student in a school of shifting sands he never bargained for.

 

Finn Cleary is an excited five-year-old passenger heading for a new life on Titanic’s maiden voyage. But fate not only denies him his New York destination, it also separates him from the girl he was destined to marry, as yet, the unborn child of a woman passenger who befriends him.

Finn has tough shoes to fill, trying to compete with his older brother, but his death delivers a tougher quest. Bad timing and old jealousies threaten to trap his spirit in a permanent half-life and crush a star-crossed romance forever. 

To recover the threads of his lost future, Finn must heal an old wound and honor his mother’s strict orders to look after the only new pair of shoes he’s ever owned or she’ll skin him alive.

But a promise, made in haste complicates his next incarnation. Finding Finn’s lost shoes may be young love’s only chance to stay together.

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES‘ is a work of magical realism and literary fiction.

It’s LAUNCH DATE is APRIL 15, 2016 – the 104th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic.

TOUGH AS OLD BOOTS

 

Titanic shoes survive 104 years underwater. 
Or have they? At the very least, this boot staved off disintegration for 73 years. Titanic sank in 1912. Her wreck was discovered seventy-three years later in 1985.

Has this boot been left undisturbed for another 31 years? Or was it one of the selectively harvested items from the thousands of human belongings scattered over a debris field of fifteen square miles?

Undisturbed personal items found in-situ (where they came to rest) are the most poignant: the porcelain face of a child’s doll, a leather carryall, and a pair of wire-framed spectacles.

Many shoes lie scattered on the seabed – touching reminders of their owners who perished and came to rest at the bottom of the Atlantic.

The ‘Maritime Museum’ in Halifax, Nova Scotia displays a pair of baby shoes that were recovered from an unknown child in April, 1912.

I visited them in 2008. It has taken 8 years for them to tell me a story:

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ by V. KNOX – a boy loses his shoes between heaven and the deep blue sea.

Finn Cleary had tough shoes to fill, trying to compete with his older brother. But as a ghost child from the Titanic he has a tougher quest. He must recover the only new pair of shoes he’s ever owned.
     Finn searches for his lost shoes in order to placate his mother after taking two of her strict orders to heart: to never break a promise and to look after his shoes or she’ll skin him alive.
     But there are obstacles in his way and people to overcome when he chooses to keep a promise made in haste.

 ‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ – a unique love story, will be launched on April 15, 2016

– GENRE: literary fiction / magical realism  – 300 pages

 

THE AFTERMATH – APRIL 16, 1912

One month and one hundred and four years, today, the newspapers carried a terrible headline.
It was the evening after the terrible disaster when the RMS Titanic sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

 

‘THE UNTHINKABLE SHOES’ by V. KNOX

A ghost child from the Titanic searches for his lost shoes – a love story, will be launched on April 15, 2016

– GENRE: literary fiction / magical realism.  300 pages