The Manuscript Is In the Lifeboat

Short one today, Vortexers. I'm pulling one out of the drawer.

Cue girly-scream.

This novel was my close-call, my agented one, my attended-the-major-publishing-house-editorial-meeting one, my doesn't-fit-what-we-publish one. Three years does a lot for perspective. And experience. And voice. They were right. It wasn't quite ready. But it will be.

This news story stayed with me yesterday, not because Titanic is cycling on the movie channels or because it's yet another way for commercialism to find a foothold in tragedy, but because of the human element-as it has always been with the subject. For many, it will complete the journey their ancestors never did.

Other Titanic mentions at The Vortex 

Time Waits for No Hottie (and Other Ponderables)

Really? It's been that long? Huh. Wow, do we have some catching up to do...

Last month, Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design hit bookshelves. A follow-up to his 1998 release entitled A Brief History of Time, his latest embraces new theories about the creation of the universe. In A Brief History of Time, he wrote, "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we should know the mind of God." In somewhat of a reversal, his newest work indicates, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Many believe he is simply clearing up the nebulous entity he skirts around in his other works in favor of a more direct approach to what he's believed all along. Truly, does this surprise anyone? Makes for splashy headlines, though.

In other shocking?-not-so-much novel news, Louise Patten, writer and granddaughter of Charles Lightoller, the senior-most officer to have survived the Titanic tragedy, has revealed in an interview that coincides with the release of her new fiction novel, Good as Gold, that a steering error was to blame. According to Patten, her grandfather failed to disclose the error during inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic for fear it would mean financial ruin for the ship's owners and his fellow employees with the parent company, The White Star Line. Patten's version of the disaster plays an important role in the story of an ugly duckling conformist who uncovers secrets behind her family's bank and attempts to right the wrongs of her family's past.

Robert Zemeckis, the movie director who brought us Romancing the Stone and the Back to the Future franchise to name a few, is returning to the time travel genre in Timeless. Warner Brothers is keeping the log line under wraps for now. And speaking of Back to the Future, Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd has signed on to play a time traveling scientist in a 3D Imax documentary called Time: The Fourth Dimension.

Oh, and remember the Most Attractive Male Physicist's Vote we stumbled across last week? We now have pictures! And voting bubbles. Two days left to cast your vote. Democracy is such a beautiful thing.

The next two weeks I'll be traveling all over New England in search of moderate temperatures, non-cow scenery and history far beyond "Remember the Alamo!" I promise to return with tales of adventure and vacay pictures, ad nauseum, as they relate to all things Vortex.

Be well until then.

Titanic:Relative Fate

The 1912 Titanic disaster casts a long shadow throughout the contemporary thriller, Titanic:Relative Fate. Filled with murder, suspense and a hint of the supernatural, this newest release from Canadian author V.C. King has earned her a publisher's choice award and the attention of readers far beyond Titanic enthusiasts. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask her about her inspiration for the story and Titanic's enduring legacy.
(read blurb~previous post)

L.A:Your previous work includes erotica, psychological thrillers and horror, so the leap to supernatural is understandable. What gave you the idea to revisit Titanic in a modern context?

King: My erotic horror phase of writing was more of a diversion from my passion of creating novels, though last year, Writers Digest did honor one of the stories in my book Seven Sexy Tales of Terror, so I guess it wasn’t quite as bizarre as I originally thought.

Titanic: Relative Fate, on the other hand, was a story I’d wanted to write for many years. I don’t know why I’m fascinated by the story of Titanic’s loss, as so many people are. I wondered if it was all the what-if questions ... had just one thing been different, could the ship and her souls have been saved?

Perhaps it was what the senior surviving officer, Second Officer Lightoller, had said, “The disaster was just due to a combination of circumstances that never occurred before and can never occur again.”

I wanted to explore all these things … the idea of fate, tragedy, how ordinary people respond when faced with extraordinary events. But so much has happened since Titanic’s time—World Wars, terrorism, the threat of global warming …

… So, could it happen again?

I had to find out. It may sound crazy, but I had to get on board that ship. And the only way to do that was to build one, in my mind’s eye, from scratch.

L.A: The amount of research necessary for a novel of this magnitude, not only of the Titanic but of modern shipbuilding, must have been extraordinary. Take us through your process.

King: The first thing I studied (and studied) was the British Government’s 1912 report of their formal investigation into the loss of Titanic. This document is a detailed, technical accounting of the circumstances surrounding the disaster, remarking on the many incidents contributing to the tragic outcome, from missing binoculars, the unusual weather, to the design of the ship.

This kind of research is often very tedious for a creative writer, but it paid off. I now had a far better understanding of what the passengers faced, and I reread survivor accounts with renewed fascination.

But could this incredible story be related in a contemporary setting? Thanks to tours of shipyards up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, publications from the Royal Institute of Naval Architects in England and conversations with Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, I realized, yes, it was more than possible to write an intriguing, authentic tale about a modern-day Titanic.

No icebergs, though. Too cliché. But that, I discovered, was one of the notable differences between then and now. With a warmer North Atlantic, ice doesn’t cross Titanic’s path anymore.

L.A: When you began writing the novel, did you have an ending in mind? Did you feel restricted by the perceptions you knew readers would bring to the story through their historical knowledge? Through Hollywood's treatment of the event?

King: I didn’t have the exact ending in mind. That’s the great thing about writing. The imagination takes off once words start to flow. When the main character, Abram, went back on the ship in the end, I saw the tremendous parallelism between that and when he tried to save his friend trapped on the ship during her launch. It was Abram’s character, his internal conflict, which gave me the ending. I had no way of knowing that when I began.

Regarding the Titanic movie, that was a love story. There are romantic tensions in my book, and certainly Titanic: Relative Fate hopes to expose the many truths and myths about the ship. Just as important, however, Titanic: Relative Fate is a story about people, their struggles and their triumphs. But, in our time, not in the past. So, no, I did not feel restricted by Hollywood’s treatment in the least.

L.A: How did you come up with the title, Titanic: Relative Fate and how important was it from a marketing standpoint to have Titanic in the title?

King: Excellent question. The working title for Titanic: Relative Fate was Titan’s Sister, the name of the ship in my book. But titles are critical in terms of marketing. A lot of thought must go into them. In fact, well-known authors have told me that they’d prefer to have a great title and write a story around it, rather than the other way around.

L.A: What advice do you have for other authors considering self-publishing?

King: I’m an engineer by training, generally not someone considered to have great syntax skills. So before I started showing my novel to editors and agents, I wanted it professionally edited.

Subsequently, not only did Titanic: Relative Fate win an Editor’s Choice award through the publisher, but it also went on to achieve the Publisher’s Choice designation, an award endorsed by the bookseller Barnes and Noble, recognizing the novel’s editorial and design quality.

Therefore, my advice for any author starting out in the business, whether considering self-publishing or not, is to find a good editor. And trust that editor. They are the bridge between a good book and a great book that sells.

L.A: What's the greatest lesson from Titanic we've yet to learn?

King: In every disaster, we struggle to find the one thing that would’ve prevented it. But that’s an old way of looking at things. Tragedies of great magnitude can seldom be attributed to a single factor. Rather a number of causes come together at just the right and time and place, defying the checks and balances in place to prevent it. As Mr. Lightoller, Titanic’s senior surviving officer said, “Everything was against us.”

L.A: What is your view on fate?

King: I’m paraphrasing the Swiss philosopher, Carl Jung, when I say, “The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered mere coincidence.” If not coincidence, then what is it? Fate? Destiny?

Carl Jung would’ve been 36 years old at the time of Titanic’s sinking. I wonder what his thoughts were about the disaster. Certainly, if any of your readers have an idea, I’d be happy to hear from them.

*

To celebrate the first interview ever here on The Vortex (I know!) and to extend my heartfelt thanks to V.C. King for spending time with us, I'll be giving away an ebook, Adobe version of Titanic:Relative Fate to one lucky blog reader. Question or thought, Jung or otherwise, be sure to leave a comment before Monday, 12 am to be eligible.

R.M.S. First Novel

It could be that all historical photographs catch my eye because I'm so deeply entrenched in my novel's villain at this point, a man obsessed with being the first to capture the precise moment of death, but this time the pull is stronger.

Some of you know my history with all things Titanic. If you do, humor me. Aside from this little jaunt into wouldn't-it-be-cool-to-be-an-angsty-novelist, it was the topic that first peaked my interest enough to engage me into a full-length young adult novel eleven years ago. The fifth graders I was teaching at the time couldn't get enough facts, personal accounts and photographs. It became a safe way for their young minds to try on human tragedy, think beyond themselves and role play, and I became just as obsessed about feeding their curious appetites. Biographies, documentaries, navigation maps, I soon found them all and amassed a body of knowledge about the event, enough to think I could write a fictional account that would speak to young readers beyond the group assembled before me.

So it was through the story of a privileged girl and a steerage boy I tried on my novelist's boots. I own it enough now to admit it was ten chapters filled with the worst literary fouls ever committed to paper. But in the scope of the event, about which much is widely known, there is little room for a story to play out in any other way. Unlike period pieces or wartime dramas, the Titanic tragedy is a blip on history's radar, a few days confined to the parameters of a ship. Essentially, I'd written James Cameron's storyline before I even knew he'd spent a Hollywood fortune to dive down to the wreckage. I finished the novel the month before his movie was released and came out of the theater feeling like my dream had sunk right along with Jack. I knew the blockbuster would forever define the event, right or wrong, and my manuscript would always be the one that came after. The perfect, oh-so imperfect copycat.


This sepia photograph was taken on April 20th, 1912, six days after Titanic's tragedy, by a Czech sailor named Stephan Rehorek. En route from Bremerhaven to New York, the German ship Bremen diverted its course to assist with recovery. When the U.S. registered vessel Mackay-Bennett, chartered for the same purpose, arrived, Bremen continued its journey. Rehorek returned to New York and developed the photograph. He made two copies and mailed one to his parents and one to his brother in the form of a postcard with the following inscriptions on the back : Dear Mother and Father. This card is a view of the iceberg that collided with and sank the Titanic liner and Dear Josef. I am sending you, too, a postcard of the ship that sank. We were following about a thousand miles behind it. Next time you come home our parents will show you pictures of the icebergs which were photographed from our ship.

Friday, look for my interview with V.C. King, author of Titanic: Relative Fate, a fast-paced, suspenseful, contemporary tale with haunting echoes to the past. The premise is fantastic, the research exhaustive and accurate. The blurb:

Titan's Sister is about to set sail on her maiden voyage from a harbor in northern Florida. But just as the ship's brash young owner begins the sequence to launch, a sudden, unexplainable accident takes the life of one of the crew. Not long afterward, shipbuilder Abram Harwood watches in horror as the dock, on which the massive hull rests, catches fire, soon turning the area into a raging inferno. Against his own reasoning, Harwood slowly comes to the realization that a chain of unusual and dangerous events has begun that could launch his beautiful new ship straight into harm's way.

In Titanic: Relative Fate we meet Titan's Sister, the sister of the doomed Titanic. Built as a modernized replica of the legendary vessel, Titan's Sister is a wonder to behold. Yet Harwood begins to question whether there is more than just a physical resemblance between the two ships. Intrepid detective Melika Jones joins the ship's virgin voyage to investigate the strange accidents surrounding Titan's Sister.

Yet, instead of solving the mystery, Jones and Harwood are faced with a new nightmare once Titan's Sister is finally at sea, and they begin to wonder if she awaits the same fate as the Titanic.

Lastly, if you're interested in taking in the traveling, international museum exhibit, Titanic:The Artifact Exhibit, I have it on excellent authority that it's an incredibly moving, interactive experience you won't soon forget. I'm still plotting for a way to get to one. Anyone up for a road trip?