It's in the stars

The endless fascination of the night sky

I wonder if other people have favourite constellations. Mine is Orion. I love the fact that he comes back in March and signals the coming of summer and, when you look up from the brightest star on his shoulder, Betelgeuse, you find Gemini (my own birth sign). And I love the mythology behind all the stars.

The character Karl, in The Way Things Fall, is an astronomer and Egyptologist. He does not distinguish between astronomy and astrology and he believes there is a tremendous power in the forces of the universe that we must respect. In In Love With The Night, Dominic, one of the French Moroccan brothers who own a hotel in Fez, is also fascinated by the stars, a love his mother passed on to him and, when he meets a young boy with a similar fascination, he is determined to learn more.

Unfortunately, astrological study has been ‘dumbed down’ and many people shake their heads and think you’re nuts if you express an interest in it. I find it endlessly intriguing, especially if you explore how ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Mayans, read the stars and how the night sky influenced their lives. The more you read, the more astonished you become!

Good and bad karma

Are we rewarded and punished for what we do?

If ‘karma’ really does exist, I wish it was a little more obvious. It would be great to think that good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds punished. Too often we see criminals getting off scot-free and truly good people never getting a break. But maybe karma is just not obvious to us. Maybe, at a deeper level (or in another life if you believe in this possibility) what we do will be repaid in ways we are not even aware of.

In both my novels, karma is clearly at work. In The Way Things Fall, it takes fifteen years to catch up with Rachel, the chief protagonist, and to punish her for a cowardly decision she made when she was young. In my second novel, In Love With The Night, there are several characters: Ahmed, a man accused of murder, Dominic, a Moroccan hotel owner, Amina, a young girl working at that hotel, Catherine, the daughter of a successful Canadian artist … and many more, all of whom go through a great deal of conflict, weighing their options, fighting with their conscience and often finding it very hard to make good decisions. In this story karma works in strange ways, taking unexpected and surprising paths to put things right.

It must be fate

Is our destiny predetermined?

The whole idea of fate has inspired novels, poems, songs, symphonies and many a legend over the years and you often hear people in ordinary, everyday life say: "It must be fate." I, for one, believe there's got to be something out there, some grand scheme of destiny, and this idea is at the heart of both my novels.

Here are some of my favourite quotes on the subject:

“You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.” Goldie Hawn

“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.” John Lennon

“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." Albert Einstein

And here are a couple of comments my own characters passed on to me:

“Destiny can be diverted, but it can never be cheated.” (Osman, an elderly Egyptian mystic in The Way Things Fall).

“You can’t keep knocking on the door of destiny, asking what it has in mind… stay quiet … everything will eventually become clear.” (The mother of Dominic, one of the central characters in In Love with the Night).