The endless fascination of the night sky
I wonder if other people have favourite constellations. Mine is Orion. He comes back in March and signals the coming of summer and, when I look up from the brightest star on his shoulder, Betelgeuse, I find Gemini (my own birth sign). The mythology behind the stars is fascinating.
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. When he meets a young boy with a similar fascination, he is determined to learn more.
Dominic’s love of the night sky continues in A Long Walk With Fate, and the introspection this inspires results in a life-changing decision.
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 the way ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Mayans, used to read the stars and how the night sky influenced their lives. The more you read, the more astonished you become!
Are we rewarded and punished for what we do?
If ‘karma’ really does exist, I wish it were a little more obvious. It would be great to think good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds punished. Too often criminals get off scot-free and truly good people never get 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 all three of my novels, karma is clearly at work. In The Way Things Fall, it takes fifteen years to catch up with Rachel, the protagonist, and punish her for a cowardly decision she made when she was young. In my second novel, In Love With The Night, karma forces many characters to fight with their conscience and take surprising paths to put things right.
And in my most recent novel, A Long Walk With Fate, karma plays out against the backdrop of Ma’at and Isfet, the Ancient Egyptian concepts of justice and chaos, causing one guilty character, Gabi, to be both the architect of her own punishment and the catalyst for new relationships and cathartic experiences for the people she has wronged.
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 all three of my novels.
Here are two of my favourite quotes on the subject:
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
John Lennon
“You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”
Goldie Hawn
And here are 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).
“No one is ever lost. They are just on their way somewhere else.” (Lukas, a nine year old boy in A Long Walk With Fate)