This week: Vernal Equinox Edited by: NaNoNette More Newsletters By This Editor
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Dear readers and writers of mysteries, I am NaNoNette and I will be your host for today's issue. |
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Vernal Equinox
The Vernal Equinox is the day when daytime and nighttime are the same length and mark the beginning of spring. This year, this happens on March 20 at 9:37 a.m. London time. The Old Farmer's Almanac wants to split hairs and says the day and the night aren't exactly the same length because Earth's atmosphere bends the sun's rays, leading to 10 more minutes of daylight. Hey, it's the beginning of spring. A few extra minutes of sun are a good thing.
Each seasonal change offers writers a treasure trove of writing material. The mystery writer is not excluded, and when it comes to things revolving around anything called Equinox, mystery writers rule. There are so many questions. There are so many possible, wondrous answers. Some of them will hold truth, some of them will be full-on fantastical. Either way, the annual Vernal Equinox should give mystery writers plenty of material.
Send your mystery heroine exploring ancient ruins. (Okay, that one's kind of obvious.)
Let a group of kids hang out in the forest and witness a procession of people with musical instruments. Who are they? What are they doing? Where are they going? Should the kids follow or stay safely away?
Make your hero discover a fresh flower bud growing out of solid rock and have him solve the mystery of its origin.
Try out writing the annual return of people visiting a certain place from the point of view of a rock, a tree, or a waterfall. Writing from an inanimate object's point of view can be weird, but it can free you from the worries of scene setting and allows you to observe the people or animals.
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Replies to my last Mystery newsletter "Stonehenge Not Set In Stone" . Who moved Stonehenge and why?
Dragonfly wrote: My Mom, she was infamous for "rearranging" and "moving things around". I would guess she saw these sitting in a straight line and decided, "hum, I think I'll move them into a circle!"
Now she would have done this by herself as she was one realllly strong woman unable to delegate. Also, I'm guessing it's also not finished because she probably got distracted the same way she did when she worked on Avebury.
s wrote: Stonehenge was, in fact, built under the auspices of a cabal of hyper-intelligent squirrels (native British squirrels not invasive American ones) who needed a landing platform for the spaceships of the broccoli people. Unfortunately, being in Wales, it rained all the time, and when you combine water with broccoli, eventually you get a soggy mess, so they had to up and move sticks. How could they do that, considering the human vassals they tended to use were inherently stupid (they hadn't yet been raised to greatness by the alien technology supplied to human beings through a combination of psychometric drugs and ergot poisoning, which was why they built the pyramids, but that's a different story again, because the pyramids were first build in Australia and then transported to Egypt on the backs of a lot of angry crocodiles who only got paid in gold and not the dead chickens they'd been promised)? Well, it was simple, really: the squirrels invented anti-gravity boots. While this meant they could float up high, it didn't actually help move Stonehenge, but it did scare the moronic humans into worshipping these squirrel gods that could magically fly, and they did it so as to not incur their wrath. And to this day, people still insist flying squirrels have flaps of skin between their arms and legs, and ignore the cute little anti-gravity boots they insist on wearing. And that's why I eat my broccoli with gravy.
Dad wrote: Cats. It's so obvious that cats are to blame. They also prove that the world is not flat. Otherwise they'd've knocked everything off.
Little Lily wrote: My mother because she thought it was an eye sore.
Paul wrote: I’m sorry, I did. I was training for a Strong Man competition and I needed to lift heavy stuff. It wasn’t enough though, I lost.
jolanh wrote: You see people didn't have cool stuff like the internet and video games. War was fun, as long as people were on the winning side. One day a group of chiefs got together and said. "We can't keep fighting, and need a make work project."
Another chief said, "We'll have them move rocks to a nebulous place, that will baffle everyone in the future."
Everyone agreed it was a totally rad idea. So the people took a break from fighting and moved rocks only to fight over how the rocks were placed, and then over what they were supposed to do.
anna banana wrote: Margana looked around and saw Stonehenge was gone. She thought for a moment of where she was last night. Then she realized, she moved it. She frantically looked around the pub and realized that everyone was looking at her. She stood and went outside to think.
Balen came out and stood by her. "I know what you did Margana. You moved the Stonehenge last night, didn't you?"
"Oh my God, they are going to be so mad at me. My father will denounce me as a God and I will be given to some fuddy-duddy looking man to marry, like you. I just know it. What should I do?"
Balen looked at her and put his hand on her shoulder. "It's going to be okay Margana. You got this, just go tell your dad that you were showing me a magic trick and you moved Stonehenge. How bad can it be if you can correct it?
She looked at Balen and smiled. "Okay, I'm going straight to my father and tell him what I did. It can't be that bad, right?"
"No, I don't think so. Besides, I moved it three times before you and I got a few whiplashes, one toe removed and my fingernails on the left hand all taken off and I'm fine."
"What?"
"Yes, that was it I believe."
Margana sat down and started writing her note to her dad. "Dear Dad, I am so sorry for moving Stonehenge and I'm giving you this letter so I don't have to be whipped, my toes or fingernails removed and I will marry anyone you want me to. I am apologizing for my moving Stonehenge."
She read it to Balen and he said it was good and she ran to her dad and gave it to him.
He read the note and looked at Margana. "You aren't going to get in trouble. I told Balen to move the Stonehenge back when I found out you were...playing with your magic. It's fine and by the way, Balen asked for your hand in marriage. I guess I will have to give it to him. Smart guy!"
tj-turkey-jobble-jobble-hard-J wrote: Stonehenge was moved? Did it get sold off like the London bridge or did someone just do it as a gag?
DRSmith wrote: I don't who originated it, but feel sorry for the dudes who have to move every stone back for daylight savings. Ugh!
elephantsealer wrote: Stonehenge was moved? Must be a fake news! Stonehenge stays where it is since it was apparently placed there hundreds of years ago. However, if people get the itch to move it, it probably would just break up into dust!
Cym Wayne wrote: I've visited the site several times, 5,000 years its been there and still they've not finished the roof!
TheBusmanPoet wrote: It's part of the history of Stonehenge. If the ones who erected them, wished to move them, that was a decision made centuries ago. Why they did it=Because they could. That's my take on this and I'm sticking to it.
Christopher Roy Denton wrote: The alignment of the heavens 4,000 years ago isn't exactly the same as today, so the stones didn't need to be moved and replaced in the wrong position for the match to be imperfect. Of course, we'll never know why the stones were moved from the Welsh site to Wiltshire, but we may draw analogies from other events. For example, the King of Scotland is traditionally crowned on a stone called the Stone of Destiny. That stone was stolen from Scotland by the King of England and built into the throne used for crowning ceremonies in Westminster (London) so that the King of England would be simultaneously crowned king of both kingdoms, in theory. It is possible that the stones in Wales had a similarly high cultural value to the people living in that area of Wales. If they migrated to Wiltshire, they would have wanted to bring the stones with them. If they were defeated in a war, the winners may have wanted to appropriate their magical value for their own kingdom. Alternatively, the stones may have been the Blarney Stones of their time.
Quick-Quill wrote: Does Ice Blocks count? My new book Beneath the Ice is about body parts found in ice blocks cut from a lake.
Look up St. Mary's Stonehenge in Washington state. Exact replica
Paul wrote: It’s difficult to imagine enough people to have built it in the first place let alone to have built it then decided to move it for a better view. Where’s the evidence of the people it would have taken to do that? It’s not the pyramids, but those are very big rocks and they were hauled quite a distance.
Just remember, we wouldn’t have things like the pyramids and Stonehenge if it weren’t for engineers. Engineers make ideas a reality. |
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