Today is Samhain.
Although, as I was reminded while writing a post for my Taylen Carver pen name this week, technically Samhain began at sunset last night.
The old Celtic feast days began at sunset on the evening before—which is why we still have All Hallows’ Eve, even though most of us no longer stop to think about what the “eve” means.
But Samhain has another association that has survived remarkably well into the modern world. This is the time when the boundaries grow thin. When things that are normally separated might, just possibly, cross. Which is exactly why I called one of my time travel romances Samhain Crossing.
A Story About Crossing Boundaries
I chose the title quite deliberately, because “crossing” happens in the story in more than one way.
Daria is a modern archeologist working in Carn Euny, an ancient settlement in Cornwall, when she finds a small box hidden beneath a stone.
Inside is a note. She answers it. And eventually discovers that the man writing back to her isn’t another tourist playing an elaborate joke. His name is Cadfan. And he is living in the same place roughly two thousand years earlier.
That is a fairly substantial boundary to overcome.
They cannot simply meet for coffee. They can’t arrange to be in the same place at the same time, because they already are in the same place. Time itself stands between them. Yet somehow, through this little box, they can communicate.
And the opportunities to do so come with the Celtic feast days. Beltane. Lughnasadh. Samhain. Days that mark transitions.
Crossings.
We Love the Places In Between
There is something about thresholds that fascinates us. Midnight. New Year’s Eve. Solstices and equinoxes, doorways and bridges. Shorelines, where land stops being land and becomes sea.
We give special significance to the moment when one thing becomes another. And storytellers have been taking advantage of that fascination forever.
Walk through the wardrobe. Step through the looking glass. Follow the rabbit down the hole. Cross the bridge. Open the mysterious door. Enter the fairy ring.
The threshold matters because once you’ve crossed it, the ordinary rules may no longer apply. Time travel stories are built almost entirely around that idea. There is an absolute boundary between yesterday and today, between this century and another one.
Until suddenly there isn’t.
Why Samhain?
Samhain is an especially rich threshold. It falls at the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, poised between abundance and scarcity, warmth and cold, light and darkness. And over the centuries it became associated with another boundary: the one between this world and the Otherworld.
For a storyteller, that’s irresistible. What if there really were moments when the boundaries weren’t quite as solid as we think? What if something could slip through? Or someone? Or simply a message?
That last possibility was the one that caught me.
Because Samhain Crossing isn’t really about the mechanics of time travel. The box doesn’t come with a manual. Daria and Cadfan don’t understand why it works any more than the reader does. What matters is that, against all reason, they have found a way to reach each other.
And that creates a much bigger problem.
Finding Someone You Cannot Reach
There is another crossing buried in the title, too, and it’s the one that really makes the story a romance. Daria and Cadfan begin as strangers. Then correspondents. Then friends. And eventually they become something much more dangerous.
Two people falling in love when nearly two thousand years make a conventional happy ending somewhat difficult.
That’s the part of time travel romance I’ve always found fascinating. Finding the right person is supposed to solve the problem. But what if you find the right person in the wrong century?
Suddenly the impossible boundary isn’t merely an interesting speculative idea. It’s personal. It hurts. And sooner or later, somebody is going to have to find a way to cross it.
Samhain Crossing
So yes, Samhain Crossing is a particularly appropriate book to talk about today. Not simply because Samhain eventually gave us many of the traditions and ideas we now associate with Halloween, but because Samhain is a threshold.
And Samhain Crossing is a story about thresholds of almost every kind: between past and present, one season and another, strangers and lovers, the possible and the impossible.
Perhaps that’s why the old idea of Samhain still has such power. For one night, we get to imagine that the barriers we normally accept as absolute might not be quite so absolute after all.
And if you’re a storyteller, that’s a very dangerous idea to leave lying around.
For pre-order:
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Latest releases:
Scandalous Sirens Omnibus
Camlann
Even More Time Kissed Moments