9 December: Anne Name Day

In Finland, today is the name day for people called Anne.

Anne is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'.

10 famous Annes:

1. Anne, Queen of Great Britain from 1665 to 1714. It’s also the name of the current Princess Royal daughter of Queen Elizabeth II.

2. Two of Henry VIII’s wives were called Anne: Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves.

3. Anne Frank: German-Dutch diarist and Holocaust victim.

4. Anne Hathaway: either the wife of William Shakespeare who inherited his second best bed, or an American actress who was in The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.

5. Anne Diamond: British journalist and broadcaster.

6. Saint Anne: Mother of the Virgin Mary.

7. Anne Brontë: British novelist and poet, who wrote Agnes Gray.

8. Anne McCaffrey: Science fiction and fantasy writer who wrote the Dragons of Pern novels.

9. Anne Rice: American author who wrote Interview With A Vampire.

10. Anne Morrow Lindbergh: American author and aviator.

Character birthday

Menagerie Master, aka Bernard Morris, a petty criminal. A small, weedy man, he often suffered from paranoia because many criminals were much bigger and tougher than him. Pursued by one of the three New York gangster families which he'd double-crossed, he arrived in Petterton having heard that a member of a rival family had taken up residence there. Morris hoped the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" adage would prove true.

The person he sought turned out to be the matriarch of the family, Carlotta Vendetta, who had joined forces with the Desperadoes. The Desperadoes weren't impressed with Morris at first, but he offered to help them steal a powerful artefact from an abandoned manor house.

Morris thought he would double-cross the Desperadoes and escape with the artefact, but they had second guessed him and posted Falconeer at his most likely escape route. Knowing Morris was attracted to her, she led him on with the promise of sex if he stayed, although she had no intention of ever sleeping with him.

None of them knew how to use the artefact, except that Morris, as the first person to handle it, would be the only one who could wield it.

Eventually he figured out that it summoned creatures from another dimension and that the creatures had various powers – including a flying dino-bird, a teleporting griffin, and a water-breathing dinosaur. However, it proved impossible to work out how to control which creature answered each summons, so it would be apparently random.

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

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