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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

LOVE CLOSURE DELAYED
Short of Love is a fiction novel by author Martin Knox, based on a true story of a couple’s romance, delayed by a series of obstacles. Tom meets Vicki at university, in the Beatles era and falls in love, but something happens that destroys trust and they are unable to connect on the same level. He tries to defer the relationship until later, when he satirically trades love in a commodity short. But his plan goes badly wrong. They remain friends and try again, but his emigration, career, brother, marriage and children get in the way. Will they get together? The epic story will keep you guessing until the last page.
Available on Amazon. Blog with reviews: martinknox.com

LOVE TRADED SHORT
Martin Knox’s novel Short of Love traces Tom’s and Patti’s relationship from a UK university in the Beatles era to recent times.
Tom’s priority is his career and when he meets Vicki he is distracted.
When a relationship with her would be too demanding, he places her in a holding relationship with his flat mate, until later when she should become available on better terms, like in a commodity short? It is a solution that reveals his nerdy philosophical imagination.
He goes to work as an engineer in Canada and waits for terms with her to improve. He achieves a top management position and strives to connect with her, despite several accidents which keep them apart.
This is a fictional rendition based on a true story which reveals how love can have conditions that create difficult choices and unexpected consequences, revealing controversial ethics in the international petroleum industry.
Available on Amazon. Reviews: mertinknox.com
CAN VULNERABILITY BE HEDGED?
The end of a relationship can bring uncertainty.
Individuals differ in how they respond to it.
Relief, worry about the future, even paralysis through fear of the unknown depends on their ‘tolerance’ for uncertainty.
A ‘vulnerability factor’ contributes most to anxiety disorders, according to Helen Thomson, ’The Agony of Waiting’, New Scientist, 19 October 2019, p43.
In the new satirical fiction novel “Short of Love” by Martin Knox, the central character Tom uses a commodity trading strategy ‘a straddle” to ‘hedge’ his vulnerability to love.
Will this ensure Tom’s tolerance for the uncertainty of love?