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dr_pretentiousWhile I was finishing the first draft of Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply, I kept a 2005 astrological calendar open over my knee. If I was unsure how the timing of the characters' antics ought to play out, all I had to do was see when the new and full moons and the eight big holidays fell. I didn't want to bog the story down with more than two big holidays, so the plot had to resolve at least a week before Samhain, and the climactic scene required particular light conditions at sea.
I had it easy, though. It was the spring of 2005, and I was writing a story set a few months into my future, in the autumn of 2005. A current astrological calendar was easy to find.
Now that I'm writing a story set a year before Atlantis Cranks, with the obsessive-compulsive astrologer comic relief woman for my viewpoint character, I'm really in a pickle. For years I've bought astrological calendars just to have something with the lunar phase for scheduling my own coven's circles, and every January I've pitched the old calendar into the recycling.
Does anyone out there happen to have a 2004 astrological calendar still lying around, preferably from Llewellyn? (Ria believes everything Llewellyn has ever published, unless it's about vampires.) I've found a source that covers the lunar phases, but Ria will care about when Mercury is quincunx Saturn and when Mars trines Jupiter. I found a free downloadable ephemeris online and discovered that I don't have the astrological moxie to absorb much from that way of presenting the data.
Stories always work better when the fussy details are correct.
I had it easy, though. It was the spring of 2005, and I was writing a story set a few months into my future, in the autumn of 2005. A current astrological calendar was easy to find.
Now that I'm writing a story set a year before Atlantis Cranks, with the obsessive-compulsive astrologer comic relief woman for my viewpoint character, I'm really in a pickle. For years I've bought astrological calendars just to have something with the lunar phase for scheduling my own coven's circles, and every January I've pitched the old calendar into the recycling.
Does anyone out there happen to have a 2004 astrological calendar still lying around, preferably from Llewellyn? (Ria believes everything Llewellyn has ever published, unless it's about vampires.) I've found a source that covers the lunar phases, but Ria will care about when Mercury is quincunx Saturn and when Mars trines Jupiter. I found a free downloadable ephemeris online and discovered that I don't have the astrological moxie to absorb much from that way of presenting the data.
Stories always work better when the fussy details are correct.
