Novel Time

Even in the make-believe world of fiction, time matters. In my Regency novellas, time plays a prominent role.

In Lady of the Stars, my time travel, when the heroine, Caroline, suspects she's traveled into the past, she asks Richard, the hero, what the day is. He answers the day is Wednesday, July 9, 1817. I checked. July 9, 1817 was a Wednesday. Here's the calendar for 1817.

I selected that date on purpose. Astronomy is a prominent part of Lady of the Stars. Caroline and Richard fall in love as they observe the stars. Bright moonlight washes out the stars, so part of the storyline had to occur when there was no moon to interfere.

From Lady of the Stars: "The clouds thinned that very day, and the next five nights were clear and moonless, perfect for observation."

These five nights occurred on days 4-9 of Caroline's sojourn in the past, July 12-16. According to the calendar, the new moon occurred on July 14. The new moon rises at sunrise and sets at sunset, so was not in the sky to interfere with their observations.

Romantic Times Book Reviews gave Lady of the Stars a 4 star review (contains spoilers). From the review: "a quick read and a delightful short romance." Thank you, Romantic Times. Lady of the Stars was also a finalist in the 2010 EPIC EBook Competition in Science Fiction Romance.

Pumpkinnapper, my Halloween comedy, also makes use of the moon's phases. The story starts on September 28, 1816, at the moon's first quarter. Here's the 1816 calendar.

The times for Pumpkinnapper were more complicated because most of the action occurs in the dark after moonset. I found the times for moonrise/moonset using the US Naval Observatory website. The times are valid only with the correct latitude and longitude, which I found at the NGA GEOnet Names Server (GNS) .

At first quarter, the sun rises about noon and sets around midnight. Corrected for the latitude and longitude of Lindsell, Essex, England, using the above sites, moonset on September 28, 1816, occurred around 10PM.

Each day, the moon rises and sets about an hour later. The Pumpkinnapper climax occurs on the night before full moon, the night of October 4-5, when the moon sets after 3AM.

Here, Hank, the hero, waits until he can go to Emily's, the heroine's, house to try and catch the pumpkinnapper: "Hank glanced at the clock on the mantle above the fire. Only midnight. Moonset was at three, so he couldn't leave for at least another hour."

Why did I pick the dark after moonset? All kinds of things happen in the dark.

Pumpkinnapper is a finalist in the 2011 EPIC EBook Competition in Historical Romance.

In Mistletoe Everywhere, my Christmas novella, the climax occurs on Christmas Eve, 1814: "The almost full moon’s light glinted off the snow to bathe the area in a silvery glow." December 24, 1814 was two nights before the full moon. 1814 calendar here.

And in my upcoming Gifts Gone Astray, the climax occurs on the night of July 2-3, 1817: "The waning moon, a little past full, sailed high in the now-clear sky." The full moon occurred on June 28.

Do you like this level of detail in your stories?

Thank you all,
Linda
Welcome to My World of Historical Hilarity!
http://www.lindabanche.com

Regency Astronomer Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) was a German/British astronomer and the sister of Sir William Herschel, telescope maker and discoverer of Uranus.

She was born in Hanover, Germany, the principality George I ruled before Parliament declared him king of England. One of six children, she contracted typhus when she was ten. The disease stunted her growth and she never grew taller than four foot three. Her father, although he encouraged all his children to improve themselves, advised her she would never marry. She became her parents' unpaid house servant until her father died and her older brother, William, invited her to live with him in England.

George II had united the crowns of England and Hanover, so Caroline and William were also English citizens. William had emigrated to Britain to pursue a musical career, but his astronomy hobby soon overshadowed his interest in music. He built many large and powerful telescopes and his fame grew. In 1782 he became King's Astronomer. George III awarded him a pension and William quit his job as chorus director to spend all his time on astronomy.

At first, William employed Caroline as an unpaid housekeeper, but soon he trained her in mathematics and used her as an assistant in his telescope-making. Eventually, Caroline became his apprentice in astronomy. In 1787 George III granted her an annual salary of 50 pounds per year for her work as William's assistant.

Comet hunting was a popular pastime in the late eighteenth century and Caroline spent her evenings observing the sky through her brother’s telescopes. Between 1786 and 1797, she discovered eight comets. One was a co-discovery, and one, comet Encke, a rediscovery. Six of them bear her name. A list of her comets are here. She also made an independent discovery of M110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda galaxy.

Besides discovering comets, she reorganized the data and corrected the discrepancies in the difficult-to-use, two-volume star catalog of John Flamsteed (1646-1719), the first Astronomer Royal, and also added new observations. The Royal Society published this Catalogue of Stars in 1798.

She and William continued their astronomical observations until his death in 1822. She then returned to Hanover to live with her brother, Dietrich, and cataloged all her and William's work.

This publication earned her honorary membership in the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1828, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her their Gold Medal, which no other woman would receive until 1996. Prussia also honored her achievements with the Gold Medal for Science in 1846. She died at the age of 98, one of the world's eminent astronomers.

I named Caroline, the astronomer-heroine of Lady of the Stars, my Regency time travel, for Caroline Herschel.

Thank you all,
Linda

Telescopes

Astronomy has always interested me. When I was a kid, I would take my little Golden Guide to the Stars and my flashlight to the back yard and gaze up at the constellations. Winter or summer, and winter in New England is pretty cold, on most clear nights I would go outside and look at the stars. Back then, I didn’t have a telescope, or even binoculars. When I was in college I received a small telescope as a gift. I still have it buried in the basement, but I haven't used it in years.

Maybe my childhood interest in the stars had something to do with the astronomy theme in Lady of the Stars, my Regency time travel novella (buy link here). I'm still not sure how the idea came about. Anyway, the telescope the hero, Richard, owns is a real one. I looked up antique telescopes on the web and found this Pallant: http://www.antiquetelescopes.org/19thc.html

This telescope is ideal for my story. It's a real, 19th century English telescope, perfect for Richard to own. The telescope is also small, less than a foot long, so Richard or Caroline, the heroine, could easily carry it to an observation position. It figures in Caroline’s and Richard’s courtship, as well as providing a link between past and present.

I rarely look at the stars now. Too many lights and too many trees obscure my view. I still remember most of the constellations’ names, and I always stay up and watch any lunar eclipses that are visible in my area. But, as Lady of the Stars shows, I haven’t completely forgotten my childhood interest. Maybe art does imitate life.

Thank you all,
Linda