This St Patrick’s Day marks one year for my author website and this blog. Henceforth, in honor of this Other Worldly and Luna Moth Woman anniversary, let’s talk time.
There’s an interwoven Celtic/Gaelic-themed thread in my novels, and a recurring subject of time passage, including Earth’s lunar cycle. Also, the passage of time known as human aging, because Rowan Layne is not exactly a typical spring chicken protagonist. But the Other Worldly series also discusses the marking of time via solstices and equinoxes.
In Being Alien, released last year around the fall equinox, the plot takes place predominantly in England and Scotland (with apologies to Ireland, though I do mention leprechauns).
Protagonist Rowan Layne has a particularly intriguing discussion—and steamy tryst with a super alien being at Stonehenge—in which she learns more about the purpose of this mysterious stone circle as the summer solstice approaches:
“Why did the Anasazi, or ancient indigenous peoples of North America, build round stone dwellings? At Chaco Canyon in what is now New Mexico, for instance? Buildings precisely aligned with cyclical positions of the sun and moon during pivotal times of solstice, equinox, or lunar standstills. Gathering places to share traditions, ceremonies, and knowledge.”
Rowan responds, “And petroglyphs are there too! Spirals bisected by shafts of sunlight passing between slabs of rock in front of the spirals on the days of each solstice or equinox.” She notes that there are places all over Earth—like Chaco Canyon—that have structures placed in exact alignment with the star cluster known as Pleiades, all built by people of different cultures and ethnic origins.
Her alien lover explains, “Solstices are extreme points as Earth’s axis tilts toward or away from its sun, commemorating natural turning points in Earth’s cycle. Stonehenge measures time, the four markers of the seasons, the light being the tipping point for everything.”
This alien who has been around for more than a century notes that circles contain energy so that cycles of growth can exist within them, and that even though time is depicted via a clock with mechanical hands moving in a circular motion, allowing humans to feel there is a sense of beginning and end to each day, time never really actually begins or ends.
Time just keeps moving, and not in a linear fashion. There are no straight lines naturally occurring in space, Rowan learns.
Leading her to ponder, given how the massive sarsen stones of Stonehenge were placed in a very distinctive pattern relating to this cyclical change of seasons, why were some folks still claiming it was merely a prehistoric burial ground? Rowan notes that there’s a Stonehenge model depicting its calendarlike purpose in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Why that particular museum if it was just a burial ground, Rowan asks? What did Stonehenge have to do with air and space travel?
Alien Sensation, fifth book in the series currently in progress, involves an actual space voyage for Rowan and her friends, and delves further into the passage of time on other planets, based on their cyclical rotation.
Venus, for instance, known as Lacerta by those originating from there, is unique in that it rotates in the opposite direction of Earth, and does so very slowly. Whereas Mercury, otherwise known as Cinereus by actual Cinereans Rowan will meet up with, is the fasting moving planet around our sun in Earth’s solar system.
In Alien Sensation, Rowan also visits a distant exoplanet where time passes so quickly one doesn’t realize they’ve been engaging in pleasurable pursuits for days…
As the spring equinox rapidly approaches in a few days’ time, I’d hoped my next novel would launch early in the new season.
Alas, due to delays, including the realization that one neither controls time nor the crashing of laptops while one is rearranging their entire existence to prepare for a new residence, Alien Sensation will likely arrive just in time for the summer solstice.
Which, I suppose isn’t terrible timing, because even though the interplanetary adventure begins at the time of the spring equinox in Salem, Massachusetts, an important interplanetary event takes place on the summer solstice, albeit not on Earth.
Even if Rowan herself hasn’t exactly determined what her own future will entail, summer itself, or actual summer weather, arrives faster in Vegas no matter what the calendar says.
And those getting inundated with snow this week in more northern locales might beg to differ that spring is just around the corner –or just around the light beaming through sarsen stones of Stonehenge—but Earth will keep on rotating, even if silly humans think they can save daylight by maniacally manipulating clocks.
Top of the morning—or afternoon—to you, wherever the sun might be casting its light, on this planet…or beyond.