Where are the Mer?

Bigstock

“O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, to drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears.” --William Shakespeare, A Comedy of Errors

I have a fondness for mermaids.  I've written a couple of mermaid stories and I would love to do a series of epic fantasies set in a fabulous underwater kingdom. (The Dark Mer series.)  Everyone I know is telling me not to do it.  (The smart money right now is on Gargoyles being the next big paranormal "creature" and that's fine. I think there are a lot of possibilities in gargoyles. And also, if it means an end to the endless procession of "shifter" stories, I'm there. But mermaids...There need to be more mermaid stories. Chinese filmmaker Stephen Chow (whose hilarious The God of Cookery is must-viewing for any foodie) wrote and directed made half a billion dollars with his movie The Mermaid. there's also a lovely movie about a mermaid and France's Sun King that's stuck in development hell. I read it for a film market a few years ago and there was even a star attached, but it seems to have fallen off the grid. Maybe it's time to reboot Splash!