Linda / Lyndi

Aquarius Girl, license from dreamstime.com

Aquarius, the Water Bearer, is one of my favorite signs. Maybe that’s because the love of my life was an Aquarian, but it’s also because Aquarius is compatible with my own sign of Aries. It’s also one of only two signs represented by a human: the water bearer.

That last part aside, Aquarius is an air sign, and people born under this sign are thinkers. The sign is ruled by Uranus, however, so don’t expect conventional wisdom from an Aquarian. They tend to be free thinkers, but since it’s also a fixed sign, Aquarians are caught between innovation and practicality. How this works out in the individual is represented by other aspects in the chart. For instance, Mercury in Capricorn or strong aspects from Saturn can keep the Aquarian down to earth while Mercury in Pisces or strong aspects from Neptune can send him soaring to the stars. Linda Goodman describes the typical Aquarian as “half Albert Schweitzer, half Mickey Mouse”.

Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory comes to mind. (Not that he’d ever believe in astrology.)

In any case, being a fixed air sign means Aquarians can be quite set in their ideas and impatient with others who disagree or fail to follow their rapid thought processes. They can also be quite outspoken. My husband’s favorite mantra was, “I never apologize for speaking the truth”. Of course, that was the truth as he saw it! 🙂

In the natal chart, the eleventh house represents friends and Aquarius is the eleventh sign, so many of them have an active social conscience. They know it’s really about us, not just me. That’s why the Age of Aquarius is supposed to usher in an era of peace. We’ve been waiting a long time for that, and I hope it actually happens one of these days.

Famous Aquarians include: Francis Bacon, Helen Gurley Brown, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Colette, Charles Darwin, Angela Davis, Thomas Edison, Betty Friedan, Galileo, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Lindbergh, Somerset Maughm, Mozart, Paul Newman, Yoko Ono, Leontyne Price, Ronald Reagan, Vanessa Redgrave, Norman Rockwell, Franklin Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Oprah Winfrey and Virginia Woolf. Quite an impressive list, I think.

For more on Aquarius, go to https://www.astrology.com/article/zodiac-signs-aquarius-sun-sign.html.

Any Aquarians out there?

Linda

This week’s prompt in the #MFRWAuthor 52-Week Blog Challenge is: How much of myself is in my writing?

Good question, but I’m not sure I have a good answer, certainly not an easy one. It varies by book.

For the first book I finished, Worth The Risk, by Lyn O’Farrell, a pseudonym for me and my friend Anne Farrell, we really stuck with what we knew. We set the book in Southern California where we live. Since we were both part-time librarians, we gave our heroine the same occupation. And I used what I knew from years of watching car races with my husband and suggested our hero be an ex-race car driver. I even drew on my experience of flying to Catalina Island in a small plane for one scene. We had fun with that book.

My second book, Rogue’s Hostage, was a lot more serious. For one thing, it’s a war story, set during the French and Indian War. It opens in Western Pennsylvania where I grew up outside Pittsburgh. I did a lot of research and spent three years writing the book. My mother died during the process, and when I’d finished it, I realized that my heroine, Mara, was, in so many ways, my mother. I dedicated the book to her memory, as well as that of my grandmother, who inspired my love of storytelling and history.

The books that followed were a little less personal, but reflect my interests in various historical periods. Lily and the Gambler is set in an area my husband and I explored together, the Gold Country of California.

I’ve always loved fairy tales, and that’s reflected in my Kingdoms and Legends series: Ilona’s Wolf and Tova’s Dragon. And Marooned, my steamy pirate romance, answers the question: Who do you want to be stranded with on a deserted island?

All writers put something of themselves into their books, but sometimes it’s so subtle, we’re not even aware of it. At least I’m not.

Use the linky list below to hop to other posts in the #MFRWAuthor 52-Week Blog Challenge.

Linda / Lyndi

Linda McLaughlin/Lyndi Lamont

Romance author

Author Archives: Linda / Lyndi

Happy Birthday, Aquarius! #astrology #zodiac

Not Just About Me #MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge