The longest day of the year—the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere—is special to me beyond its symbolic, naturalistic, and astronomical significance. On top of this being the first major calendar point since publishing my full-length, 579-page historical fiction novel in its omnibus edition, the characters in New York 1609 place enormous value on this day for good reasons. The Turning of the Days is a time of change. The strawberries are ready for picking. Trading and raiding are in full swing. And the days now start their steady march toward fall and then winter. Time starts to compress from this day forward.