Into the dark

 The bright day is done and we are for the dark

That quotation from Anthony and Cleopatra is always in my mind at this time of the year. I hate the months that end in 'er'., because they are the dark ones. Ironic, considering I write darker things into my romance. Now that the clocks have changed it is all down hill until the solstice in December. It is only physical darkness not death, which is what Cleopatra and her followers were facing - but I still don't like it. 

Tomorrow is Halloween  - celebrated with pumpkins, trick and treat and apple bobbing. We always bobbed for apples when I was growing up - usually tied from a string attached to the indoor washing line. I don't remember apples in a bath of water, but that would probably have been considered too messy. As a teenager there were parties and the chance to dress up as something spooky and witchy.

Traditionally Halloween is a liminal space, when the veil between the world of the dead and the world of the living is meant to be at its thinnest, one of the pause points in the Wheel of the Year. I've been researching that - because it interests me, but also because I want to include a folk lore element in the WIP. At the moment I'm working on Yule, which is around 21st December, as the village I am creating will be celebrating that and I want the book to culminate in another festival with pagan roots. Not Halloween as it is a bit too obvious. I've thought about Beltane on 1st May, but Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight, uses Beltane fires on the Isle of Skye to very creepy effect. It is an inspiration, but I think I need to find my own festival. The Summer Solstice would be a classic but at the moment I am opting for Lammas which is 1st August and the first stage in the celebration of the year's harvest. The end of the book is very much in outline only at present. I'm not sure that it will be creepy so much as the chance for confusion with a lot of plot strands coming together and crossing - or maybe that should be tangling? I'm looking forward to getting there, and finding out, but there is a lot that has to take place before then.