WHAT DO WITCHES HAVE
TO DO WITH THE GREAT SCIENTISTS?
First, an excerpt from the first book in my AGES OF INVENTION SERIES, Entangled.
Sidekicks to my heroine, Dawn, are Naomi, a funky computer
hacker and time machine pilot, and Rasana, a young prodigy studying under
Dawn’s past-life-regression tutelage.
Dawn has been caught in 1717 and labeled a witch by the Scottish
townsfolk. In reality, her past life, Lily, is not a witch, but an alchemist
working for Sir Isaac Newton. Naomi and Rasana try to save Dawn from being
burned at the stake when they all meet up at Newton’s home.
Dawn wished Naomi had not done her
Naomi-thing, waylaying her from her intended target, the chapel’s root cellar,
even though she didn’t much like the idea of waiting in the dark for a witch
burning.
Not in Scotland
anymore?
“Ms. Jameson,” Rasana broke into
her thoughts. “It’s just too strange to imagine that a whole town could be so
angered at Lily. That it would do something so cruel to a girl just because she
takes an interest in science.”
“Yes, Rasana, it is. Back in the
early eighteenth century, many considered science to be alchemy, and alchemy,
in the hands of a poor woman like Lily, to be witchcraft.”
“If we stand out here much longer,
we’ll find out just how cruel a community of superstitious people can be,”
Naomi said. “These townsfolk may have already noticed the strange women
prowling around this English estate. We’ll be burned like Dawn’s witch—no
offence.”
“None taken,” Dawn said.
The girls hadn’t gone completely
daft. They’d brought large hooded capes to cover their unconventional clothing.
Naomi was right, though. Dawn could
imagine the reaction of the busybodies in whatever town this was when they saw
Naomi’s spiky hair, Rasana’s dark face, and their modern clothing. Double, double toil and trouble…That chant was from an earlier
era, but three witches just the same—Shakespeare’s Scottish play was already
etched into the group mind of the eighteenth century. “So where are we?”
“In Lincolnshire,” Rasana proudly
stated.
“Lincolnshire?”
Dawn’s feet sank into the spongy lawn. Lots of rain in this part of the British
Isles, she figured. In front of them was a beautifully maintained, two-story
gray manor house with a chimney at each end of a steep roof.
“Nope, it’s not Musselburgh.” The
teen stifled a smile, seeming eager to reveal their secret location.
“If I’m here, have either of you
given any thought to where Lily ends up?” Dawn was supposed to be Lily in this
century, but Lily was supposed to be in Reverend Stewart’s root cellar. “Did
you think this through, Naomi? What will the real Reverend Stewart think if
Lily’s disappeared from his cellar—poof—in a puff of smoke?”
“Let’s talk about something
cheerier,” Naomi said. “Like why I brought you here to Woolsthorpe Manor.” She placed
her finger to her lips, as she motioned for the three of them to tiptoe across
the mushy lawn to the building. “Shhh. He’ll be deep in research. He’s in the
basement. See the light?”
“He—He—He,”
Rasana whined. “What’s so important about men that so few women are known
historically for science? What happened to all the girls like me?”
As all three leaned against the
side of the building, Dawn gave Naomi a knowing look. She and her friend had
held this discussion on numerous occasions when male advisors or department
heads had talked down to them as if doubting their intelligence, just because
they were females.
***
So, now, the possible answer to how witchcraft has anything
to do with the great men of science. All scientists need to do experiments to test
their theories out. Who do you think worked in their labs? Women alchemists, of
course, many of whom were burned at the stake as witches for practicing their
science. It wasn’t until the mid eighteenth century in England that witch
burnings were banned.
Royal women convinced their husbands to fund the royal
scientific societies of England, Germany, and France. So women alchemists did
the required research for the “great” men, and royal women funded the research.
Now, there’s more to the story. In Entangled, we introduce Electress Sophia of the House of Hanover.
She was the almost queen of Ireland, England, and Scotland. George I, her son,
became king after her death. Even until today, all British royalty are from
Sophia’s line.
In this novel, Sophia was saved by an electronic quantum
computer, an original time machine developed by physicists at Dawn’s university
in a Boston, Massachusetts of the near future. With knowledge of the future,
and with the help of women alchemists, Electress Sophia, down an alternate
timeline, developed a crystal time machine run on lenses and light.
Entangled
Ages of Invention
Book One
S.B.K. Burns
Genre: PNR, Sci-Fi,
Time-Travel, Steampunk
Date of Publication: December 2016
ISBN: 1521172862
ASIN: B01N6EE13Q
Number of pages: 320
Word Count: 79290
Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde
Book Descriptions:
She’s Hume’n, a member of the lower class, with one chance to change her life…
In an alternate, twenty-first century Boston, Dawn Jamison is a hair’s breadth away from earning her doctorate degree—a degree that would allow her entrance into the upper class, to become the unemotional and self-disciplined Cartesian she is now only pretending to be. To reach her goal, all Dawn must do is overcome her forbidden attraction to the Olympic-class weightlifter Taylor Stephenson who’s just crashed her lectures on past life regression. She must also teach her group of misfit students how to travel back into their past lives—and, oh, of course, figure out how to save the great scientists of the early eighteenth century before they’re inextricably caught up in a time loop.
He’s Cartesian, a member of the upper class, and supposed to know better…
Coerced by his politically powerful, wheelchair-bound brother into spying on Dawn’s past-life regression classes, Taylor knows better than to give into his desire to claim Dawn as his own. But his past-life entity, eighteenth-century Colin, has no such inhibitions. When Taylor and Dawn meet up in Scotland in the 1700s, all the discipline he’s forced on his twenty-first-century self disintegrates in the past, leaving only his overwhelming lust for Dawn’s past-life double, Lily. Unable to escape their sexually obsessive past, Dawn and Taylor find themselves in a race against the clock at the epicenter of a world-altering time quake of their own making.
Excerpt
Entangled:
Before Dawn had
finished the second suggestive sentence of her self-regression, she was here in
the misty Lowlands of Scotland, not far outside Edinburgh. As on her previous
trips, she was literally in Lily’s body, experiencing all the woman’s senses
and emotions, but none of her thoughts. So frustrating.
Fly Like An Eagle
Ages of Invention Series
Book Two
S.B.K. Burns
Genre: PNR, Sci-Fi,
Time-Travel, Steampunk
Date of Publication: February 2017
ISBN: 1520680112
ASIN: B01MQT3PRN
Number of pages: 318
Word Count: 83,197
Book Description:
It’s 1824 Philadelphia at the opening of the Franklin Institute of Science, and one of its founders, Samantha’s father, wants her to marry his business partner, a much older man, to keep their war industry dealings secret.
Looking for a way out of the arranged marriage, tomboy Sam finds it in Eagle, the half Native American son of the man she is to marry.
Eagle brings Samantha into his spiritual world, his bimijiwan, in order that she might stop their father’s preparations for an ironclad Civil War at sea. To do this, Sam might have to convince Benjamin Franklin to abandon his kite experiment.
Excerpt
Fly Like An Eagle:
Samantha had
most probably escaped to the house. Migizi (Eagle) would return her shawl,
hoping by the time he caught up to her, she would have put on something a
little less fetching.
Her father had
been wrong about him. Leaving me alone with Ronaldson’s nubile daughter? Look
at her as a sister? He’d have more success taking flight by jumping off a cliff
and flapping his arms.
About the Author:
Both romance and science have been central to the life of S.B.K. Burns (Susan). As a teen, she wrote romantic musicals between quarterbacks and cheerleaders. After a career as both a science teacher and advanced degrees in science, she began a ten-year journey of paranormal romance novel writing. Her ten books include two series: LEGENDS OF THE GOLDENS (about psychic vampires that protect humans from the baddies, even when the humans are not too keen on getting saved) and AGES OF INVENTION (alternate science history/steampunk: where Electress Sophia of The House of Hanover (ancestor to today’s British royalty) runs a time machine where she helps our heroes and heroines save the great scientists of history.
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