Where did Shakespeare learn about scorpions?

I'm researching scorpions for a client and I suddenly rememembered a quote from Macbeth:  

“O, full of scorpions is my mind!” 

And  I thought--how did Shakespeare know about scorptions? They don't HAVE scorpions in England. Do they? (Yes, I know, he would have known about scorpions from the constellation Scorpio, but work with me here.) Turns out they did have scorpions in England. This from Wikipedia:

Scorpions are found on all major land masses except Antarctica. Scorpions did not occur naturally in Great Britain, New Zealand and some of the islands in Oceania, but have now been accidentally introduced in some of these places by human trade and commerce.

Who knew?

 

 

Friends don't let friends use lame covers...

I showed the cover I created for "Death of a Fairy" to my friend Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services and instead of saying, "Wow, that is one fugly cover," she said, "You know, that palm tree isn't doing it for me. And promptly whipped up a new cover for me. And then she formatted the innards for me. And then she pointed out that since it was a story that fit into my Misbegotten world (collected in the L.A. Nocturne anthologies that I really needed to "stick to my brand" so she changed the byline from mmy 'sudo back to my real name.
I'm lucky in my friends.
So here it is--the new cover. The beautifully formatted insides and all.
Thank you Joy!

Find her at Indie Author Services.

And just to stay with the theme--Here's a Shakespeare quote about friendship courtesy of Shakespeare Online:

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.
(Hamlet 1.3.62-3), Polonius to Laertes

And p.s. thanks to John Donald Carlucci--artist, writer, and friend who  also offered to save me from my own misguided attempts at making a cover.  Thanks JDC.

Eight Shakespeare Phrases That Went Viral!

I found this silly infographic on My English Teacher, and I have to say, I applaud their playful approach to teaching Shakespeare. It's all about the words...and wordplay is playful and so many teachers teach Shakespeare as if their lives depend on them boring the hell outof their students.

Did Shakespeare know about penguins?

Live Science

I was reading an article from the Live Science blog about how global warming is threatening the Emperor Penguin. The story is illustrated with a photo of researcher holding an Emperor penguin chick of remarkable cuteness. (As you can see, they're substantial little birds, even as babies, about the size of a human toddler.) But I got to thinking...
Did people of Shakespeare's time know about Antarctica? Did they know about penguins? So I Googled "Shakespeare and penguin" and of course, got four bazillion hits directing me to Penguin Publishing's excellent Shakespeare editions that we all used in high school and college.
As far back as the 2nd century, people spoke of a vast land at the southern pole of the earth known as Terra Australis, but Antarctica was not discovered until the late 18th/early 19th century. (James Cook apparently passed close to it on one of his voyages.)
There is a reference to penguins in a letter dated 1578 (cited in a book on animal folklore in Shakespeare's time), which was some thirty years before the playwright died, so he would have known about them. 
How much do we love the Internet? And Wikipedia in particular?

Mermaid Sex

It was my turn to blog today at Cafe Otherworld and I wrote a post detailing my theories about why there are so few paranormal/urban fantasy books about mermaids when there are more wereolves and vampires than you ever want to read about. Turns out that for most of the people who have responded in the comments so far, it's an anatomy problem. How, exactly, do mermaids DO IT?  Maybe I have a dirty mind, but I always figured mermaids wer like cetaceans and did it while gliding together in perfect harmony.

I also know that some animal experts don't think it's a great idea for humans to swim with dolphins because it arouses the dolphins and ... unforseen situations can occur. (Apparently, male dolphins are pretty horny guys and have often been observed "humping" inanimate objects. Although I don't suppose that's dry-humping.

It's not that I want to write mermaid/human porn, but honestly, I don't see the problem. Mermaids have been part of human culture since the ancient Assyrians. Something about the myth of the mer has captured human imagination. So...why are there so few stories about mermaids?

The return of the summer of the middle-aged action hero

Movie stars are, for the most part, handsome men. Sometimes they're quirky handsome, sometimes they're offbeat handsome, sometimes their appeal is a strange alehemical mix of talent and personality, but all of them have IT. And IT does not fade with age.  Never mind that Shakespeare wrote:

And as with age his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers.
The Tempest (4.1.213-4)

This summer we'll get Denzel Washington in an updated version of The Equalizer, Bruce Willis (almost unrecognizable in The Prince, where he plays a bad guy in the Ben Kingsley mode), Liam Neeson in the provocatively titled A Walk Among the Tombstones, and in the fall we'll get Peirce Brosnan in a movie that looks an awful lot like a reboot of The Mechanic.  And somewhere this summer is going to be the latest chapter of The Expendables, with Harrison Ford and young'un Wesley Snipes (he's only 52) along for the ride.

"Death of a Fairy" new fiction from the Misbegotten universe

I have been writing "Misbegotten" stories for almost seven years now, urban fantasies set in the City of the Angels where paranormal creatures exist alongside normal citizens. (In L.A., it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.) I decided to test the waters of the short fiction marketplace by putting "Death of a Fairy" up for sale(under my pseudonym Kat Parrish) as a stand-alone story using their beta cover generator to put together a cover. It's an experiment. I'm curious to see how it'll turn out but in the meantime, I am pleased with the story, which begins when a homeless woman mistakes a dead fairy for a discarded Barbie doll in the alley she calls home.