did Shakespeare ever get writer's block?

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and maybe more, if scholars are right about his authorships of plays like Edward III and Thomas More.  That's a lot, and I find myself wondering how he would have fared in today's fast-paced publishing world. It used to be that only writers like Stephen King published a novel (or more) a year, but nowadays it seems like everyone from Amanda Hocking to the novelist next door is writing at a blistering pace. that doesn't apply to stageplays of course, unless you're talking about a community playhouse where the players are creating new material for each season, but still. Could Will have kept up?  I suspect the answer is yes. 
True, not every Shakespeare play is a Hamlet (seriously, does anyone ever go see King John except out of curiosity?) but if your other work includes Richard III and Romeo & Juliet, and Othello, you really don't have to write Hamlet every time.

Everything old is new again--Shakespeare and the supernatural

Every so often I think about how lucky we are that we have the wisdom of the ages at our fingertips. when I was a kid, my parents bought us a set of encyclopedias one volume at a time from the supermarket. These days, I have almost two thousand books in my kindle, and access to a bazillion more at the click of a mouse. And of course, there's Wikipedia. that day Wikipedia went dark in protest of possible changes to the Internet, I ... did not fare well.

If I were writing a term paper on any facet of Shakespeare now, I'd never have to leave my bedroom. Books that I would have had to request through inter-library collections are available just for the asking, many of them free and many of them the kinds of books that would have been housed in the rare books collection of any college library back in the day. For example, there's T. F. Thiselton Dyer's Folk-lore of Shakespeare, which was published in 1883 is available to download for less than $5 and if you type in various queries, the specific answer will, more often than not, show up in Google Books. The answer may not be the exact answer you want--i queried "mermaids in Shakespeare" and got a quote about Shakespeare and fishing, which made me think of my own story," Wild-Caught."

Preview of A Taste for Strange

I published the first book in my Lark Riordan/Max Siwek mystery series in March (Whipping Boy) and I'm closing in on the final draft of the sequel A Taste for Strange. (The third book in the series is called Raw Dog.) I offered this is the intro to the book, which is told from Max's point of view this time out. He's an LAPD homicide detective and his stepsister, Lark Riordan, is a forensic tech. She's also his lover. It's ... complicated.  

A TASTE FOR STRANGE

They found her hanging from a hook in the ceiling, twirling like a broken piñata. Her body was so bruised and boneless it had lost its shape, but her killer had not touched her face, which was flawless except for some cuts in the corner of her mouth where her perfect lips hung open.

Max felt a cloud of depression descend on him. The victim was young, so very young. And so very beautiful.

Shakespeare portrait by Heather Galler

I've been cruising Etsy of late, looking for swag to buy in advance of the October book fair in Sedona where Dark Valentine Press will have a table. And is my wont, I was looking around to see if there was anything new in the Shakespeare section. I found this very cool portrait by Heather Galler and I'm about to go snap it up. Because I deserve a little more art in my life.

BuzzFeed's Take on Films Inspired By Shakespeare

Ledger & Stiles

Some of their picks are pretty obvious, like the Heath Ledger/Julia Stiles rom-com !0 Things I Hate About You, which began life as The Taming of the Shrew. But there are other movie-bard connections that are a little more subtle, incluing Deliver Us From Eva (another Taming of the Shrew) and My Own Private Idaho, which traces its literary lineage back to Henry IV and Henry V.  (Keanu Reeves' street hustler is the Prince Hal character.) Check out the entire list.

Shakespeare on Pinterest

If you're engaged by Pinterest, as I am, you know that there are a lot of topics that seem to engaged Pinners.  They really, really, really like baby elephants. They really like puppies and kitties )who doesn't?) and they like pretty pictures of beautiful places and luscious photos of yummy food. But they also are interesting in Shakespeare's plays. One of my most popular boards is my Shakespeare board, and I'm hooked up to half a dozen others. There are lots of Shakespeare quotes pinned up on various boards. It's all about the words, but on Pinterest, it's about the pictures too.

Monday was a bad day for Juliet

CAPULET

 Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed.

Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love,

And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next—

But, soft! What day is this?

PARIS

Monday, my lord.

CAPULET

Monday! Ha, ha. Well, Wednesday is too soon,

O' Thursday let it be.—O' Thursday, tell her,

She shall be married to this noble earl.—

Will you be ready?

 

Ellen Geer as Lear

Photo of Melora Marshall & Ellen Geer by Ian Flanders

The ultimate play about fatherhood-Shakespeare's -King Lear--gets a sex change in this year's production from the Theatricum Botanicum. Ellen Geer, daughter of the theater's founder, Will Geer, plays the monarch wko has decided to divide her realm into thirds and hand them off to her sons. Geer also directs, along with Melora Marshall, who plays Fool, and the reviewer over at Shakespeare in L.A. gave both raves. (Marshall  is also part of the Geer clan, being Theatricum Botanicum artistic director Ellen Geer's younger sister.)   The play runs through September. For more information on it and the theater's other offerings, go to their site. And don't forget, their summer slate includes A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is always a wonderful experience in the outdoor setting.

Miranda and Theo

Photo: NejroN/Bigstock

 The photographer NejroN has 155 pages of images uploaded to Bigstock. He also posts on Shutter Stock and Fotolia and Dreamstime, among others, but I stumbled across his work on Bigstock. His website has just the basics--a very short bio, a portfolio of images and three ways to contact him. His work is fantastic--people, places, landscapes, up close shots of leaves and bugs. Concept shots. Models in costumes that don't look cheesy.  I'm using one of his shots on the cover of my upcoming novella Bride of the Midnight King and as I've mentioned, it was a particular photograph of two of his favorite models that has inspired me to create a whole new series. Last night I spent a few hours on the site looking through all 155 pages of images seeing what I could find. (I once found the PERFECT models for several characters in a book and didn't snap up alternate photos of them. And now I can't find them.) I will not do that with the characters I'm calling Miranda and Theo. They are vampires and like all the best vampires, they're incredibly stylish. (Think The Hunger meets Only Lovers Left Alive.)

It's funny, the photographer has paired his male model with a couple of different women, one a lovely redhead, but I am so wed to my vision of these people as Miranda and Theo that looking at those other pictures makes me feel like Theo is cheating on Miranda. Of course that could happen, in a relationship that's gone on as long as theirs has.

I cannot wait to start writing this series and I have to wait because my work is expanding to fill all the spaces of my life lately. But in the meantime, I have my images of Miranda and Theo and I have NejroN to thank. 

Snakes, Sunrises, and Shakespeare

Over at Cafe Otherworld today I'm blogging about superstition and in the course of researching that post, I ran across this book by evolutionary biolgoist gordon H. Orions, published by the University of Chicago press last April. Just leafing through the first chapter (I love the "inside look" feature on Amaon) was enough to convince me to buy the book, which is subtitled "How Evolution Shapes Our Loves and Fears."  Here's a link to more information about the book.

Shakespeare's names--and you thought "Apple" was bad

I come from a family where given names have been recycled for generations. My sister's name was Mary and we had two great aunts named Mary (who both thought she was named for them). My brother is the third Robert in a row, I am one of several generations of Katherine going back to the 19th century. My cousin's name is Helen, one of my mother's sisters was named Helen and I had a dear great-aunt named Helen.   in my family, and not much imagination either. And you know, I'm okay with that.I have freinds whose parents got just a little too carried away while leafing through baby name books and the results weren't pretty.
Turns out there's a site that lists all of Shakespeare's names should you be inclined to bestow a bardic sort of name on your child.  The girls' names aren't bad, if a little old fashioned--Viola and Beatrice and Katherine and Portia, but God help the boys.  For every Marcus (Brutus) and Michael (Cassio) there's a Petruchio or an Iago or a Mercutio.  Check out the list here.

Shakespeare Calavera

Jose Pulido

Look what I found on Etsy!  This very cool Day of the Dead Shakespeare. The artist is Jose Pulido and his shop is MisNopalesArt.  Check out his Flickr page to see his latest work. Like him on Facebook.

Shakespeare Quote of the Day

O.J. Simpson is not Othello

It's been 20 years since Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered in Los Angeles. Nicole's ex-husband, football star-turned actor/pitchman O.J. Simpson was accused of the crime and the ensuing eight month trial became a media circus that, among other things, first brought the name 'kardashian" to public awareness. (The now-deceased K clan patriarch, Robert, was Simpson's good friend and attorney.)

Shakespeare Noir Mi Corazon

  MI CORAZON

 

By Katherine Tomlinson

 

 

You’re with Raimundo on K-ESE Los Angeles and it’s time for the news.

 

A clash between Montagues and Capulets left five dead as gang violence spilled over in Verona this afternoon. Responding to pressure from residents of the small suburb of East Los Angeles, the Verona police chief announced a new zero tolerance policy that would implement the death penalty for any gang member caught breaking the law.

 

Bigstock Images

The first time Romeo Montague saw Julieta Capulet he forgot all about Rosa, the Capulet cousin he’d been boning in order to get intel on the Capulet gang. Rosa had invited Romeo to her cousin’s quinceanera on a dare and to her surprise, Romeo and his compadre Mer-Q had shown up.

Romeo was chowing down on home-made tamales when Julieta appeared on the dance floor wearing a turquoise dress he wanted to rip off like wrapping paper. Some little nerd of a Capulet cousin was dancing with Julieta when Romeo stepped up to claim her, right there in front of her father and everyone else. “I don’t know you,” Julieta had said as he danced her backwards around the room.

“You have always known me,” Romeo said in Spanish so that it wouldn’t sound cheesy. “My name is Romeo Montague.”

Shakespeare in 144 characters

Photo courtesy of Bigstock

I think if Shakespeare were alive, he'd have embraced social media. "All the world's a stage," he wrote and isn't it thrilling to contemplate what he would have done with a global stage like the Internet? It's already amazing enough that his work remains potent nearly half a millennium after he was born.  And when we reach the stars, somewhere we will take Shakespeare with us. Because he is alive and well on social media.

There is a Facebook group devoted to Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who many believe was the "real Shakespeare." There is a group devoted to Kill Shakespeare, a comic book in which Shakespeare's greatest heroes are pitted against his most menacing villains (more on that later in the summer.) Goodreads has a Shakespeare Fans group that has more than a thousand members. There are study groups and reading clubs and appreciation circles all over the place, including the Michigan-based Oberon's Shakespeare Study Group, which is particularly interested in the authorship question.

Shakespeare is vibrantly alive on Twitter.

I follow a lot of Tweeps who tweet Shakespeare. Here in L.A. there are a number of Shakespeare-centric drama groups and theater companies that I keep up with (like Theatricum Botanicum) and it's a way of making sure I don't miss their special events. There's @ShakespearePost who has more than 32,000 followers and is following nearly 27K.  Not quite George Takei numbers, but if it were really Bill S posting, I bet he would have gotten to 1 million followers at least as fast as Anderson Cooper. Mostly this account tweets quotes from the plays and sonnets but every once in a while, there's something else, like a link to an article about very unfortunate tattoos that was quite entertaining.

If you're on Twitter and want to find more Shakespeare-friendly folk, all you have to do is type the bard's  name in the search bar. There are a lot of us out there.

Coming Soon...Bride of the Midnight King

In my spare time I write for fun and profit. I use my own name for my crime fiction and horror, but I use my pseudonym, Kat Parrish for the fantasy stories. I've been writing more and more fantasy lately, and one of the results is a series of reimagined fairy tales I refer to as "Grimm Blood Tales" because they involve vampies.
Yes, I know. The world is full of vampire stories.
the world is also full of fairy tales and at some point, fairy tales and vampire stories just had to collide. (Probably already have, actually, I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the first to think of it.)
I found myself thinking of different ways fairy tales could be woven into vampire stories and the first result is this novella, a Cinderella story in which a mortal girl becomes the bride of a vampire king.
I'm already plotting the next story in the series, Midnight's Daughter, which is a Sleeping Beauty story.
The cover for Bride of the Midnight King was created by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services. The book will be out at the end of June.

Ryan Gosling and Shakespeare. You're welcome.

Shakespeare's Perfume...for the summer of Shakespeare reading list

I ran across this description for a book called Shakespeare's Perfume and was intrigued.

Drawing on theology, alchemy, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary criticism, Shakespeare's Perfume explores how the history of aesthetics and the history of sexuality are fundamentally connected.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for free

Tom Stoppard wrote the script for Shakespeare in Love and co-wrote the script for Brazil, but before he was famous for his screenwriting, he was a noted playwright whose plays were filled with witty wordplay and what Wikipedia calls "intellectual playfulness" with diverse and literate topics woven into his stories. I've seen most of his major plays but my favorite remains Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, his intriguing vision of Hamlet told from the point of view of two doomed minor characters. I discovered that the movie version, starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman and directed by Stoppard. is playing on YouTube. It's divvied up into 12 parts. so you'll need some patience, but if you've never seen it, it's well worth your time.

Shakespeare Noir...The Sister's Story

Painting of Ophelia  by John Everett Millais

the character of Ophelia in Hamlet has always annoyed me. Not because I think the character is unrealistic--sadly, I've known a few too many Ophelias in my life--but because she's such a ninny. She lets her father and brother boss her around; she lets Hamlet mistreat her and then she kills herself.  She'd have lasted about a day and a half n Westeros. But what if...Ophelia wasn't the pliant little maid we all know, weaving circlets of rosemary and singing nonsense songs? What if she were an altogether different person?

The Sister's Story

by Katherine Tomlnison

Prince Hamlet had been away at university for almost a year when his father died.

Ironically, he was on the road home to Elsinore when news of his father’s illness reached him.

It was far too late for him to send his companion away, so when the prince arrived to find the court in mourning, his friend was thrown into the midst of the maelstrom along with him.

It was a peculiar situation.

The old king had died of a stomach ailment and even though the prince was of age, the title had passed to the king’s brother, Claudius instead of him.

Odder still, the prince’s newly widowed mother had already married her former brother-in-law.

When Hamlet’s friend Horatio remarked upon the somewhat unseemly haste of the nuptials, Hamlet rebuked him saying that he admired the economy of the measure, which allowed the kitchen to serve the funeral’s baked meats sliced cold at the marriage feast.

In truth, Hamlet cared little for the crown itself—he was a scholar, not a fighter, and Prince Fortinbras of Norway had often been known to mock him as “the student prince.” Claudius was rooted from more martial stock, and eager to send the Norwegian prince threatening our borders back to his own kingdom without tribute or treasure.

King Hamlet had favored diplomacy in dealing with the Norse-men, a policy Claudius had openly disdained.

As soon as he was king, Claudius ordered the Danish army to prepare for war. My brother Laertes was ordered back from Paris to lead the troops that would protect the land between the border and Elsinore. If Hamlet felt the slight of his uncle’s favor passing him by, he did not show it.

In fact, if he had any feelings at all, he did not express them—not to me, not to Horatio, and certainly not to the two fools who were his best friends at court, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

I was surprised that Hamlet did not turn to me; surprised and somewhat hurt.

We had been lovers since I turned 15 and it was commonly assumed that one day we would marry. My brother opposed this idea, mostly because he did not like the prince (Rosencrantz once joked that Laertes opposed the match and I had overheard Rosencrantz say that his objections were not because he disliked the prince, but that he liked him a little too much. Guildenstern had countered this witticism with an observation of his own suggesting that perhaps Laertes wanted to keep me for himself.

Both gibes had enraged my brother and vastly amused the court, fueling speculation that was not kind to Laertes.

My father was giddy with the possibility of my marrying the prince, despite his public protestations to the contrary. My father was a noble by birth, but a minor noble and despite his title of “Lord Chamberlain,” his function at court was as only slightly more important than that of the king’s Master of Hounds. Being father-in-law to the future king was a prospect that thrilled him.

And there was no doubt that Claudius would name Hamlet his heir. The king had no children of his own and Queen Gertrude was well past child-bearing age.

I’d always assumed Hamlet’s parents found me…adequate…as a potential mate for their son. I am a pretty woman from a noble family and really, all the only thing they really required of a princess bride was a brood mare of sufficiently impressive bloodstock that the royal spawn would not be born with a crooked back or a cloudy eye.

Maya Angelou on Shakespeare

"Shakespeare must be a Black Girl."

--Maya Angelou

Illustration from William Shakespeare Things

I read that quote years ago and have never forgotten it. Over on the William Shakespeare Things blog, there's a clarification of what Angelou meant.  It seems appropriate to revisit the quote even as the memorial service for America's poet laureate is underway.

Shakespeare Quote of the Day

Darknight, Book 2 of the Witches of Cleopatra Hill by Christine Pope

Christine Pope’s new novel Darknight (the second in her Witches of Cleopatra Hill trilogy) takes up one page after Darkangel left off. Angela McAllister, newly minted prima of the McAllister witch clan is in the hands of a rival clan, and the only thing she knows for certain is that the consort she’s bonded with is the brother of her clan’s fiercest enemy.

It’s complicated.

For Angela, biology is destiny and she and Connor Wilcox are fated to be together despite decades of enmity between the McAllisters and the Wilcoxes, a feud that has affected every witch clan in Arizona. Connor is equally eager to let bygones be bygones, and as the yule season approaches, the bond between him and Angela deepens. But that doesn’t mean that their respective families are happy about it or ready to play Secret Santa with each other.

The plot thickens in this book and the danger and tension is ratcheted up several notches as a dire plot unfolds that could destroy the consort connection.  It’s not just witches that live in Cleopatra Hill and in this book we meet some shape-shifters and witches too. 

As always with Pope’s novels, the setting is just as important as the characters and if a reader ever visits Jerome, they could do worse than take the Darknight tour of local eateries (and wineries). With an engaging cast (both normal and paranormal), Darknight is a satisfying read and will whet your appetite for the concluding book in the trilogy. (And speaking of whetting your appetite, I defy you to read some of the chapters without your mouth watering from Pope’s vivid description.)

Pope has a number of giveaways scheduled for the book's launch. Here's a link to the contest running on GoodReads.

Shakespeare for Slackers

I was on the Library Thing site this afternoon, looking over the new list of books available for early review and spotted Shakespeare for Slackers: Romeo and Juliet. Turns out it's part of a series that also includes Macbeth.(And I would bet that the next book in the series will be Julius Caesar because those three plays are the ones most read in high school. (And if you ask me, having to read Julius Caesar is one of the things that turns students away from Shakespeare. But that's just me. I also think it's a bad idea to read Moby Dick in high school. I didn't read it until I was in college and I loved it but if I'd had to read it sooner, I probably would have hated it as much as everyone else.)

Guillermo del Toro's Book of Life

I am not a huge fan of animation. I grew up with Disney of course, and am a big fan of what Pixar is doing, although I was bored by Brave.  (Mostly I just kept thinking that the princess looked like a troll doll, but then, I'm several years past the demographic that movie was targeting. Frozen in on my "to be viewed" list, mostly because everyone tells me it's a great story about female empowerment but I'm having a hard time working up the enthusiasm. But today I saw the trailler for Guillermo del Toro's new movie, Book of Life, an animated, Day of the Dead story that looks...magical. If you haven't seen the trailer, you're in for a treat.

For the Shakespeare Summer reading list...Dark Lady of Hollywood

Diane Haithman's Dark Lady of Hollywood offers Shakespeare and snark. Could you ask for anything more? I was tipped to this book by Shakespeare in L.A. and it's already on my To Be Read Bookcase.  (The "to be read" pile long ago outgrew mere pile status.) The book is reviewed o the Shakespeare in L.A. site, and on Amazon the book has13 five- and four-star reviews so far. You can read the review here. I'll have my own review up later in the summer.

Free French Fiction!

Well, not quite, but close. Gastien, the cost of a dream, free on Kindle today. Part of a series. (And don't we all love series?) Eye-catching cover. I always like seeing the Eiffel Tower on a cover. And free offers on books with a lot of good reviews.  (History! Sex! Artistic dreams!)  Author Caddy Rowland is a painter herself, and I love the way she describes painting ("Making love to the color.")

Blogging Shakespeare--All Shakespeare, all the time

One of the things I love about the Internet is that even if your interests are really fringe, you can find your tribe. So if you're  a  shakespeare geek (which really isn't that weird) who wants to talk about different productions of a favorite play--say, The Tempest--you can always go online to find someone who has an opinion about the Ellis Rabb staging of the play in San Diego versus the Stratford festival version with Christopher Plummer as Prospero. And somewhere out there is someone else who saw the L.A. production of the play starring Anthony Hopkins, Stephanie Zembalist, and Ken Marshall, who was then hot thanks to a television miniseries on Marco Polo.

In 20111, the Education Portal has a great list of Top Ten Shakespeare blogs here. The list begins with Blogging Shakespeare (run by the people at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) and is rounded out by the Bard Box, a collection of online Shakespeare videos. Bard Box shuttered a couple of years ago but the site is still up and many of the links work. If nothing else, it's a great place to start looking for online videos. (Last year I stumbled across an online posting of a Hamlet production with a young, unknown Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Laertes. He was just coming into his prime when he died, the age of all Shakespeare's really great parts for middle-aged men.  And we'll never get to see him perform them, damn it. But I digress.

I'm just a Shakespeare geek wannabe compared to the bloggers who post all Shakespeare all the time. Check them out!  And while you're at Shakespeare geek, check out some of their t-shirts, like the one pictured, 'It's all fun and games until somebody captures Gloucester and puts his eyes out."

the Play Shakespeare Never Wrote

Shakespearean actor Geraint Wyn Davies as King Arthur

Or did he?
I always wondered why Shakespeare never wrote his version of the King Arthur legend. It has all the elements he loved--a tragic love, ambitious men (Mordred is Iago's ntural son!)m a flawed hero.
the Bard borrowed from all kinds of sources but never wrote his version of England's national myth. And that seems a shame.
But as it turns out, there is a significant community of scholars who think he DID tackle the subject. I found this interesting articleon Tyler Tichelaar's "Children of Arthur" blog  about a play called The Birth of Merlin that may very well be a "lost" play, one of almost 40 plays with disputed authorship.
Wikipedia calls the play "Jacobean" and attributes it to one William Rowley.  If you're saying, "Who?" you're not alone. I looked Rowley up and according (agani) to Wikipedia, Rowley was mostly known for plays he wrote in collaboration with other, more successful authors.
According to the synopsis, the play was full of magic, 17th century special effects (devils!!) and and was a fast-paced crowd pleaser.
It seems to me that the Arthurian story cries out for an epic play that is serious and important. I sometimes find myself impatient with the rough humor of Shakespeare's comedies (and I purely hate Falstaff), so the notion that The Birth of Merlin is kind of wacky is a bit disappointing.
If you're curious (I am), you can download the play's text here.

Coriolanus...Hiddleston versus Fiennes

Coriolanus is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and I didn't come to appreciate it until long after I was out of school.  (My introductory Shakespeare class was taught by a noted Shakespeare scholar who was hands down, the most boring teacher I ever had.) In a way, the title character, a Roman general who hates the plebian rabble, is a hero for the one percent. In one of the play's most famous lines, he compares the idea of plebians controlling patricians  as crows pecking on eagles. Caius Martius sees himself as an eagle and his inability to deal with the "crows," much less respect them leads to his downfall.

There is currently a very good versions of the play available on dvd. Tthe 2011 version directed by and starring Rafe Fiennes as the title character is terrific. It costars Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, one of the great middle-aged female characters in the Shakespeare canon and Gerard Butler as the enemy who becomes an unlikely ally. (He's good too.) Fiennes is terrific. I don't think he's been this good since Schindler's List. It's a ferociously masculine peformance and his rage at the rabble is mesmerizing.

there's also another version of the play currently making the rounds of the specialty movie circuit, a filmed play version from England's National Theatre starring Tom Hiddleston. I missed it when it played locally, and I can only hope that it'll be available for home viewing soon. I would have said Hiddleston was a bit too young to play the character, but as you can see from the trailer below, he inhabits the character like he was born to it. (Anyone who saw him in The Hollow Crown already knows what a strong Shakespearean actor he is, and his Coriolanus looks like a treat.) Cojpare the two trailers and you decide.

Return of Summer of the Shakespeare...

It's going to be an amazing summer for Shakespeare geeks and I have decided the way to celebrate it is to embark on the long-delayed stories I've wanted to write for my "Shakespeare Noir" collection. Over the course of the summer I'll publish the stories here and tie them together with various and sundry posts about what's going on in the Shakespeare-verse. Yes, it will be all Shakespeare, all the time. At least for the summer.  And you know Shakespeare is still relevant when he has his own "Hey Girl" posters.

A Picture Launches a Series!

Photographed by NejroN

I spend a lot of time looking at images. I'm a fan of Pinterest (which was a total surprise to me) and I also like to browse the stock photo banks like Dreamstime and Big Stock. Because I've got a couple of books coming out soon and they need covers, I activated a month's subscription over at Big Stock and have been happily downloading images for the past week. And that's how I cam across this image. It's one of maybe a dozen using the same models in a variety of poses and (in the woman's case) vintage dresses.
I took one look at those photos and I saw a series about stylish vampire lovers (Think The Thin Man meets The Hunger). His name is Theo. Hers is Miranda. Or maybe she is Thea and he is James. Perhaps she was Russian in a former life,.
Perhaps he was a Robber Baron.
They've been together ... a long time.
I could find out their real names, but that would feel like I was stalking them. To me they are Miranda/Thea and James/Theo and they have inspired me to write a new series of books.  Thank you!