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!

Fez, Morocco

A feast for the senses

A few years ago, my husband and I and two friends were lucky enough to travel through Morocco with the help of a wonderful guide, Brahim. We started in Marrakech, drove southeast across the desert to the amazing city of Ouarzazate (Morocco’s ‘Hollywood’) and on to Merzouga, where, after a long camel ride, we spent a night under the stars. From there, we drove north to Fez, a city that I fell in love with – an absolute feast for the senses – a multitude of colours, the scents of sandalwood, citrus and jasmine, the ubiquitous mint tea, the happy chaos of the street markets.

The scenery of the Sahara and the Atlas mountains appears in In Love with the Night and the Riad Capella was inspired by our stunning hotel in the beautiful walled medina of the magical city of Fez.

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.