LADY OF THE STARS Release Day!

The new, rewritten and expanded LADY OF THE STARS, my Regency time travel romance, is here!

Available at Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo and Smashwords. Links below.

BLURB:

EPIC EBooks Award Finalist in Science Fiction Romance
The Romance Reviews Finalist for Best in Historical Fantasy/Paranormal
4 Stars from RT Book Reviews

Legends are fun, but not real. Or are they?

Facts rule twenty-first century astronomer Caroline’s life. And then she steps through that gazebo’s back doorway into Regency England, where she meets a man she knows she’ll never see again. But time travel, though improbable, is a scientific fact.

In mathematician Richard’s world, there’s no such thing as time travel.  Until a woman who claims she’s from the future demolishes his view of reality.

But legends certainly aren’t real. Richard can love Caroline, unconcerned by his family legend. Until the legend takes control of his life, and Caroline’s, too.

A mainstream Regency time travel romance with science fiction elements. 34,000 words. A new version of the previous work, expanded and completely rewritten.

EXCERPT:

Caroline followed her host into the kitchen.

He advanced to the banked fire.

Fire? Where were the stove and refrigerator? And all the chrome and stainless steel of the ultramodern kitchen where she had breakfasted this morning? This kitchen contained a scarred wood trestle table surrounded by several chairs. Pots and pans hung on wall racks, the shiny metal reflecting the dim firelight. A cupboard stood against the far wall, next to a sink with a pump.

A pump?

With shaking hands, she set the lantern on the table. Then she pulled out one of the chairs and sagged into the seat.

She was in trouble, very deep trouble.

His back to her, her host busied himself at the fireplace. He placed the candelabrum on the mantel above the hearth and then drew aside the fire screen. Dropping onto his haunches, he pulled several logs from the nearby basket and then arranged the wood into a neat pile on the smoldering embers. Almost at once, the flames blazed to full, roaring life.

Silhouetted before the light, he straightened and then replaced the screen. He removed his hat, and, with a flick of his wrist, tossed the headgear onto the table.

Her jaw dropped. Good heavens, the aggravating man was gorgeous. Tall and lean, his broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips and long legs. But where had he found that outlandish outfit? He wore a top hat, out here in the middle of nowhere. His shirt collar was turned up and held in place with a huge white tie. And his waist-length, double-breasted jacket had tails, like an orchestra conductor’s. Muddy black boots with the tops turned down came up to his knees. Skintight trousers, or were those breeches—of all things?—emphasized every well-formed muscle.

Now, if his face matched his form...

She shook herself. What was she thinking? She hadn’t felt anything for any man in a long while. Not since...

Finally, he turned, the candle and firelight for the first time revealing his face.

She gasped. Had she seen a ghost through the gazebo’s rear entry? “Richard?”

Puzzlement spread over those chiseled features she now saw only in her memories. “How do you know my name?”
 
Available at

Amazon: http://getbook.at/Lady1

Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/1RQXiKl

iBooks: http://bit.ly/1VCZvHo

Kobo: http://bit.ly/1Pl3FVG

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/607960
All formats are available on Smashwords.

Thank you, all,
Linda

Full Moon Names

In the time before artificial light, the full moon assumed a special place in the month. The presence of light at night allowed some important activities to continue past dark. In the spring, planting could go on after sunset, and in the autumn, farmers could harvest the crops essential for winter survival. Travel was safer under a full moon, and illicit activities declined when illuminated with moonlight.

To mark their importance, various cultures gave the full moons names to indicate the seasons in which they occur and the activities performed then.

In England, my Regency characters call the full moons by these names:
January-- Old Moon
February-- Wolf Moon
March-- Lenten Moon
April-- Egg Moon
May--Milk Moon
June--Flower Moon
July--Hay Moon
August--Grain Moon
September--Fruit Moon
October--Harvest Moon
November--Hunter's Moon
December--Oak Moon

In North America, the most widely used names are the ones the Native American Algonquin tribes, which lived from New England to Lake Superior, gave the full moons:
January--Wolf Moon
February--Snow Moon
March--Worm Moon
April--Pink Moon
May--Flower Moon
June--Strawberry Moon
July--Buck Moon
August--Sturgeon Moon
September--Corn Moon (might also be called the Harvest Moon)
October--Harvest Moon (might also be called the Hunter's Moon)
November--Beaver Moon
December--Cold Moon or Long Nights Moon

The full moon name that causes the most confusion is the Harvest Moon in North America. The Harvest Moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox. If that full moon occurs in September, the September full moon is the Harvest Moon, and the October full moon is the Hunter's Moon. If the October full moon falls closer to the equinox, the October full moon is the Harvest Moon and the September full moon is the Corn Moon.

In June, the full moon is the Strawberry Moon here in North America. My Regency characters would call it the Flower Moon.

Various sources disagree on some of these names. But if you want to read more about full moon names, here are some interesting links:

Names in Multiple Cultures:
http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonnames.htm
http://www.shamanscrystal.co.uk/page/moon-phases/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon

North America: http://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names/

Celtic: http://www.wicca.com/celtic/celtic/moonlore.htm

Thank you all,
Linda
Picture from Wikipedia

A GIFT FROM THE STARS is here!

My latest Regency romance, A Gift from the Stars, is now available.

A Gift from the Stars , Book 1 of The Regency Star Travelers, is a sweet, traditional Regency romance with science fiction elements, 71,000 words.

The Regency Star Travelers--Where the Regency and outer space meet with romance.

BLURB:

A gift from the stars can change your life.

Miss Elizabeth Ashby loves astronomy. She especially enjoys her once-in-a-lifetime chance to observe the Great Comet of 1811. However, her excitement vanishes the night an odd-looking meteor proves to be a sky craft which lands nearby. The man who emerges from the vehicle doesn’t see her, but as he reenters his craft to fly away, he drops a small red stone.

The stone from the stars glows and sends waves of warmth and something else through Elizabeth. Her incipient cold disappears, her illness-prone mother shakes off her maladies, and everyone else who comes near the stone, which Elizabeth wears as a pendant, feels in the pink of health.

Including Mr. Jonathan Markham, who also saw the strange meteor but was too far away to determine what the object was. Gored by a bull, Jon has been slow to mend until he meets the enchanting Elizabeth. Does his sudden speedy recovery emanate from his fascination with the desirable lady? Or something else?

A sweet, traditional Regency romance novel with science fiction elements. 71,000 words. A clean read.

EXCERPT:

Lower and lower the shooting star descended, much too slowly to Elizabeth’s way of thinking. From the angle and rate of its motion, the object would likely strike the earth close by. If she could distinguish some landmarks by its glow, perhaps she could find the stone.

She craned her neck back as the meteor soared across the firmament. The unearthly rock blazed with the colors of the rainbow from friction with the air. 

Coldness pricked her spine. A meteor that enormous should race through the heavens, shrieking in outrage as its surface pounded through the atmosphere. This one was silent. And the stone—or was it a stone?—sloped down in a leisurely, graceful curve, as gently as a feather floating in a light breeze.

With eerie stillness, the object continued its glide across the ebony sky, looming ever immense as its bulk neared the ground.

She could even make out features. In her experience, meteors were dark, pitted lumps of rock or metal. This one was white, its pointed nose flaring out behind to form a stretched-out triangle, almost like a bird with unfurled wings.

And its size! Her heart in her throat, she jumped up. The thing was larger than a mail coach. And it would fall onto Sentinel Moor beside her house!

Continually slowing, the peculiar entity descended. The object slipped below the level of the high Sentinel Oak across the field, and then behind the top of the six-foot hawthorn hedge separating her garden from the meadow.

Elizabeth took a step to run around the tall shrub. Blinding whiteness exploded on the moor. She threw up her hands to shield her eyes and then tumbled to the ground.

Available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble , Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, and Apple. Note, all formats are available on Smashwords.

Thank you all,

Linda

The Orrery

An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system.

Although orreries date from the time of the Greeks, British clock makers George Graham and Thomas Tompion built the first modern orrery in 1704. The Fourth Earl of Orrery commissioned a copy of the original instrument for his own use, thereby lending his name to the device.

An orrery is essentially a clock. When set in motion, the orrery shows the relative periods of the sun, the earth and its moon, and the planets in relation to each other. They are not usually built to scale, and may not contain all the planets and their satellites. A grand orrery contains all the planets known at the time of its construction. One method of dating a grand orrery is to note the planets and moons the instrument contains.

The devices were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. King George II owned an orrery (1750 copy of his orrery at left), as did Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson's orrery here). John Winthrop taught astronomy at Harvard using an orrery (picture at right) that instrument maker Benjamin Martin built in London in 1767.

An orrery figures in my Regency comedy romance, Gifts Gone Astray. Since the latest planet discovered by 1817, the time of the story, was Uranus (then called George's Star after George III), my fictional grand orrery has Uranus as the last planet. In the upper left of the cover of Gifts Gone Astray (click on the image to enlarge it), you can see part of the orrery.

Gifts Gone Astray, blurb and excerpt on my "My Books" page, available from The Wild Rose Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, All Romance Ebooks and other places where ebooks are sold. See sidebar.

Thank you all,
Linda

Pictures from Wikipedia.

The Dog Days of Summer

The Dog Days of Summer are the hottest, most sweltering days of the year. Depending on your location, they run for about a month between early July to the beginning of September in the northern hemisphere, and from January to March in the southern hemisphere.

The term "Dog Days" refers to the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises with the sun.

The ancient Egyptians associated Horus, the dog-headed god, with Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (The Greater Dog), and the brightest star in the night sky. During this time, Sirius rose at dawn during the most blistering part of summer. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans believed the bright Sirius, so close to the sun, added its radiation to the sun's, increasing the season's already fierce heat.

To the ancients, these sultry days, when rainfall was at its lowest and temperature its highest, was an evil time, causing suffering and disease in man and beast. Food spoiled, dogs went mad and all creatures languished in the stifling atmosphere.

Due to the precession of the equinoxes (the slow, gradual, circular change in the orientation of the earth's rotational axis resulting in the westward motion of the equinoxes along the ecliptic), Sirius no longer rises at daybreak on the same dates as it did for the ancient Mediterranean civilizations. In the Roman era, the Dog Days ran from July 24 through August 24. Today, the Dog Days run from July 3 to August 11, according to The Old Farmers' Almanac, although many European cultures adhere to the original dates.

So, if you're awake before dawn during the peak of summer, take a look at the eastern sky. That bright star near the horizon is Sirius, heralding the Dog Days of Summer.

Thank you all,
Linda

The picture, from Wikipedia, is of Canis Major. Sirius marks the dog's nose.

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 immigrated 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 is here: http://gchbryant.tripod.com/Articles/Caroline0597.htm. 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, 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, producing a catalog of nebulae.

In 1828, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her their Gold Medal for this work. No other woman would receive this honor until 1996. The Royal Astronomical Society also elected her to honorary membership, and the Royal Irish Academy granted her membership. Prussia also lauded her achievements with the Gold Medal for Science in 1846. She died at the age of 98, one of the world's eminent astronomers then as now.

In Lady of the Stars, my Regency time travel, I named the twenty-first century astronomer heroine “Caroline” after Caroline Herschel.

Thank you all,
Linda