Category Archives: Short of Love
WHY I WROTE SEVEN NOVELS
TURKEYS NOT BEES
I wrote this during the pandemic, because I was concerned about government overreach, within a spectacle of profit and votes from health, sport, food, employment and education. My purpose was to expose the bullying and racketeering.
ANIMAL FARM 2
I have updated Orwell’s 1945 political satire, with a sequel in which descendents of the farm animals suffer more totalitarianism, as the World reverberates from events controlled by Russia and the superpowers. My purpose was to reveal bullying and science fakery.
TIME IS GOLD
I wanted to celebrate human success using science, at the frontiers of athletic endurance, with the story of a marathon runner who in the future is able to use Einstein’s Special Relativity in her neural performances and break the World record.
SHORT OF LOVE
The story was conceived as a satirical love story which riffs on the usual conventions of commitment and monogamy, against his career as a high-powered executive, when her activism converges on the same ethical space. It is partly autobiographical.
PRESUMED DEAD
I wanted to celebrate the honesty of most public servants. An iconic politician confronts a self-seeking government and she mysteriously disappears. A novel transparent forensic investigation strategy is used to find her, exposing and arraigning the culprits.
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS BROWNER
This is speculative fiction, curious about Australia 250 years in the future, during dark times when the outlook for the people seems compromised by exigencies of population growth, energy supply, world trade, climate change, immigration, religion and political conflict. The epic story tells how indigenous national leaders deal with these creatively.
BRISBANE RIVER ANTI-MEMOIR
Coming. I investigate effectiveness of management river flooding.
Available from Amazon. Excerpts and reviews at martinknox.com
WILL HIS LOVE BE UNREQUITED?
Short of Love is a novel by Martin Knox. Tom has set his heart on Vicki but she won’t commit to him at university. He figures she will want him when he has less competition and delays his pitch until he graduates and has a job. In the meantime, he goes with stop-gap Barbara. Is his plan feasible, when he frames it as a commodity short with a friend? Tom’s plan satirizes conventional arrangements between couples with amusement, including exchanges of vows and monetary obligations. Will Vicki accept him when he makes his move? The couple have met in the Beatles era. Tom is like Paul in wanting casual relationships, expecting Vicki and Jane to accept this. Tom has a glittering career engineering in Canada and waits for Vicki, but eventually marries and has children. When they grow up and leave home, he and his wife separate. Will he finally get together with Vicki? This is an exciting and action-packed story, set in the UK, Canada and Africa, portraying Tom’s career as CEO of an international oil company. His morals are held to account by activist Vicki.
Short of Love is a satire about a love relationship informed by an engineer’s economics.
The book is available on Amazon.
For reviews see martinknox.com
SOCIAL CLASS DIFFICULT TO MATCH
Vicki’s class is a cut above Tom’s. He is besotted and wants a relationship. They are in Britain, where social class is determined by breeding, old money and privileged education. Tom tries to raise his class, drops his regional accent and adopts BBC English. Will his lower class breeding, lack of old money and his redbrick university, thwart their love?
When Vicki plays hard to get at university with him, Tom moves her on to a back burner, so he can concentrate on getting a first class degree. He frames his interest in her as a short transaction in the commodity love, with delivery delayed until after graduation. Vicki won’t be compromised, making out with his flat mate and breaking Tom’s deal with him. Rebuffed, Tom has another girl, until he goes to a job in Canada.
Tom returns to the UK on visits, staying in touch with Vicki and trying to rekindle their love. When she continues to reject him, he marries another girl and has children. He still wants Vicki but is faithful to his family.
This is a story about personal ambition trying to displace social classes and family loyalties, dishonouring love. Tom rises to be CEO of an international oil company and tries to act morally and ethically against corporate greed. If he succeeds, will Vicki finally accept him?
Eventually his marriage fails and he plans to return to the UK to be with Vicki who is single. Should he have realised that her different class would inevitably come between them? Should he have looked for a girl friend from his own class? Will Vicki want him, after all this time?
Short of Love is fast-paced biographical fiction, a true love story, interwoven between the stylised lives of an ambitious engineer and an idealistic activist.
Available on Amazon. For reviews see martinknox.com
BOOKS WITH NOVEL IDEAS
Martin Knox has written six novels available on Amazon.
TURKEYS NOT BEES
This novel is a dramatic love story with a dilemma of individual versus collective conformance during a pandemic. Will Chance and Megan’s campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to mandatory vaccination succeed? The author portrays a nanny state in Australia with government overreach and other philosophies which could change humanity’s future.
ANIMAL FARM 2
It is a novel sequel to Orwell’s 1945 classic Animal Farm. It updates to the present the satirical tale in which farm animals overthrow their farmer, but then are exploited by totalitarian pigs. The story is updated paralleling Cold War events and superpower leadership up to recent times.
Will there be a revolution to oust the pigs?
TIME IS GOLD
In this story, Maxi Fleet is an elite marathon runner whose training is advised by a team of experts in psychology, physiology, neuroscience and Zen, led by her partner physicist Jack Cram. She adopts a running technique ‘extreme flow’ based on scientific principles. Can neurological time dilation enable her to improve enough to win Olympic Gold?
PRESUMED DEAD
When a city council is hung between a duopoly of partisan interests, the vote of feisty Jane Kenwood, an independent councillor, could resolve the impasse. When she disappears, political skulduggery is suspected. Her partner Phillip Keane conducts an exacting forensic reconstruction to find her with police help. Will she be found in time to thwart their enemies and reform the political system?
SHORT OF LOVE
Tom is an engineer who wants his love affair with Vicki to run as exchange of a commodity, transacted smoothly with delivery at a definite future time. Without empathy, communication and trust, their relationship is stymied. How will Vicki react? Will they reach closure?
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS BROWNER
This is speculative fiction set in Australia 250 years in the future. When fossil fuels are reviled for their climate changing emissions, production is stopped, air transport ceases and sail-powered freight movement commences. The nation is vulnerable to cultural hegemony of other nations, with invasion possible, to exploit its vast resources. Can Indigenous Prime Minister Abajoe lead Australia peaceably by scientific government?
REVIEWS see martinknox.com
