When You Absolutely, Positively Have To Know What Nights The Moon Was Full In 2004

[dr_pretentious]

While 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.

Comments

[xlana.livejournal.com]

surprisingly, i have the Llewellyn's 2004 Witches' Spell-A-Day Almanac that has symbols like "moon v/c 3:36 pm" and "1st [Taurus symbol]" would this help?

[lindalee.livejournal.com]

I have the Old Farmer's Almanac going back to 1992, with the exception of 2002. Let me know if you need the 2004 one, or some photocopied pages, or whatnot.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

I keep all my old Pocket Astrologers... but they're not all in one place, they're scattered in boxes. I'd never be able to find it in any timely fashion.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Stories always work better when the fussy details are correct.

I'm afraid I don't have any advice on calendars, I just wanted to applaud this sentiment. Many otherwise good stories have failed in annoying ways because the author didn't bother to get the details correct. If you'll excuse my ranting, I also think that it is important to avoid continuity errors when writing multiple stories in a single reality. I find it hard to suspend my disbelief and get really into a story when the geography, characters, and basic physics of a world appear to change between stories. Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was in many ways an astonishingly good author, was a flop in this area. It really detracted from the Darkover stories. In my opinion. Ok, rant over. When does Atlantic Cranks come out?

[criada.livejournal.com]

I've got the 2003 Llewellyn's magical almanac.

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

I've got nothing, except occasionally emitting excited squeals that you are writing a Ria story.

[oaktavia.livejournal.com]

I have the Llewellyn's astrological calendar (I'm sure you're not surprised *wink*), it's buried in my files, but I know what file it's in. Let me know if you need me to dig it out
:-D

fussy details.... yup, that would be me *snicker*

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Perfect! Yes, please. Could you photocopy May through August and snailmail them to me?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It looks like I've got a perfect match a little further down the comment thread, but thank you for the kind offer.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I asked my father, who practices family law in Maryland, how I'd done with the legal stuff for my protagonist who practices personal injury law in New Jersey in Closing Arguments. He said, "You did about as well as television screenwriters usually do." Which is both good (I didn't do worse than established pros in terms of accuracy) and bad (the established pros could do a lot better). I'd consider talking to my editor about tidying up the legal details in the story for the print volume, but some of them have become so deeply embedded in crucial plot points, it would require a major rewrite. Since it's already released, I'm probably just going to live with knowing the details could have been closer.

Atlantis Cranks will probably be out in late October. We're aiming to have an ARC ready in September and get it to a Big Name Author who's offered to take a look at it for possible blurbing in early October.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer, but oaktavia's got it covered.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

This protagonist is much more a Llewellyn type than a Farmer's Almanac type. Thank you, though.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The symbols this character thinks in are even funkier than that (though she does worry about when the moon goes into different signs and when it goes void of course in Closing Arguments). She's worried about the glyph soup, the sequences of planetary symbols joined by symbols for conjunctions, oppositions, trines, etc.

In any case, it looks like the pages I need will be on the way soon. Thank you for looking.

[oaktavia.livejournal.com]

hey send me your snail mail addy off list?
(forgot to save return address on envelop! duh!)

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, you did far better than the average TV screenwriter on the medical stuff. Since that's a really low bar, I'll go further and say you did the medical stuff well.