Following the sun, or following the moon?

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If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that I’m fascinated by the wide variety of cultures that have based some or all of their time measurements on the moon.  Whilst some societies have imported these concepts from elsewhere (as the Romans probably based their first system on one or other of the earlier Greek calendars, who in turn were influenced by the Babylonians, for example), in many cases it appears to have been developed locally and independently.
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Writing on the Back of the Book

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Having got his pictures, Jason is weaving his magic to turn raw images into the cover picture, and I need to decide on the words for the back of the book.  You might have thought this would be straightforward – it’s writing, after all!  But it’s not easy, to give a flavour of a whole novel in around a hundred or so words; to say enough about the story to entice a reader to want to know more, without giving any spoilers; to use a style that is in keeping with that of the book, so that readers know what they are getting, and yet serves a totally different purpose.

So I’ve got three versions of the blurb for the back of the book, and I’m posting them all here on this blog, and inviting you to make any comments you feel are appropriate, either at the end of this post, or on my facebook page if you prefer.
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Trying to Understand the Moon

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It is a fundamental characteristic of human nature to try to make sense of the world and the phenomena we notice within it.  And yet, while watching the moon, in spite of my modern education, it’s not hard to strip away scientific explanations for the existence and movements of the objects I see, and to wonder at them with childlike awe.
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Judging a Book by its Cover

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Once I made the decision to work towards Kindle-publishing a book, it became clear that I would have to learn more about modern technology.  I investigated a number of blogs about writing and publishing, and found Catherine Ryan Howard’s both informative and entertaining (http://catherineryanhoward.com/), and so I bought her ebook, Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing, which is very helpful for someone like me, as it takes you step-by-step through each stage of, say, setting up a facebook page as an author, organising a website and blog, and so on.
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New Skills for Old Writers

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The trouble with deciding to self-publish a book is that it can load you up with a whole load of tasks that are not writing, and which are well outside my natural comfort zone.
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My Writing Life

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I’m certainly not one of those writers who always knew that this was the career for them, who had six novels in their desk drawer by the age of ten, who wrote for their infants’ school newspaper, or had winning stories in junior magazines.  Writing was something I did as and when necessary:  essays for my studies, reports and manuals for work, letters to absent family members and shopping lists were the limit of my not so creative writing endeavours.  So what changed?

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In Praise of Pantaloons

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Once upon a time, when life was perhaps less complicated, but certainly harder, troupes of travelling actors brought relief from the daily grind by performing plays in the courtyards of inns.  The hostelry would have been built around the yard, so that people could watch the play from the windows of rooms, or from the galleries or balconies, as well as from ground level in the yard.

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Babylon’s Ripple Effect

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A week or so ago, I talked about the Roman calendar, but they were by no means the only ones who used the cyclic nature of the moon’s phases to measure time.  In fact, as in many other fields of scientific endeavour, the Romans probably based their first calendar on one of the Greek ones.  The situation in Classical Greece wasn’t entirely straightforward:  several different calendars

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Maths Work Out 2 – Sisters and Sweets

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In this sort of puzzle, the author is trying to muddle you. So focus on one fact at a time, and see what you can work out!

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A Throwaway Attitude of Mind

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A long time ago, in the 1970s, my grandmother and I were chatting about kitchens.  My husband and I had just purchased our first home, a tiny terraced house that was cheap because no work had been done on it since it was built about eighty years before.  It had packed earth floors downstairs, no electricity, and the only water supply was a cold tap outside the back door.  Because of this, we had qualified for a government improvement grant, which covered half the cost of bringing the property up to modern standards.  This meant that our savings stretched further than we had anticipated, so we were trying to choose a kitchen that was within our budget:  hence the discussion with my grandmother.
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