Please fix it!

Emails like this are why I love my editor:

The sunrise/moonset early scene near Santa Barbara. I checked and had actually noted it in my Spring comments; since it was not repaired, I assume that maybe I was ambiguous or at least not forceful enough. So let me be clear: you will lose the confidence of some readers if you leave this impossible situation in. Please fix it!

And in case it’s not clear what I mean: when the sun is rising in the East, if the moon is setting in the west, it will be fully illuminated by the sun. That is, if the moon is setting at sunrise, it’s a full moon. It can’t be a crescent.

So you can make it a full moon.

OR, if you want the crescent, since the scene starts before sunrise, you can have the sliver of the moon in the EAST. In that case, the “horns” will point up and to the right, the bow pointing at the sun, fading as the dawn progresses. (Then, since the moon travels eastward relative to the sun, we’re seeing a “waning crescent.” It will be thinner, and closer to the sun, the next day. Eventually, it will pass the sun (“new moon”), after which point it will be visible as a crescent just after sunset, and it becomes a “waxing crescent.”)

There was another one more thing, but I now forget what it was! Not as vital, at any rate.

Eliot Peper is the author of nine novels, including Cumulus, Bandwidth, and, most recently, Veil. He publishes a blog, sends a monthly newsletter, and tweets more than he probably should.