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Full of Scorpions Is My Mind by Dianna Sinovic

December 13, 2025 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as Bethlehem Writers Group LLC, Dianna Sinovic, Macbeth, Something wicked this way comes, weird sisters

My long relationship with “the Scottish Play” dates back to grade school, when I was assigned the role of one of the Weird Sisters (was the teacher trying to tell me something?). Two other girls and I paraded around a faux cauldron to intone those famous lines:

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

I’m pretty sure my class did not stage the entire five acts of Macbeth, which seems too macabre for that age group. But I suppose that early exposure to the witches/weyward ones led me to my writing path of paranormal and horror.

Seeing the play again recently reminded me how powerful it is, and how it still speaks to the human condition and the ability of power to corrupt. It is, according to Meghan Winch writing in the Lantern Theater’s program, “about an unfit and unaccountable ruler seizing power from the rightful sovereign” and illustrates that “the people below suffer most when there is instability at the top.” Stuff right out of today’s news feeds.

The play is also full of evocative phrases that live on even today, more than 400 years later: “when the battle’s lost and won”; “what’s done cannot be undone”; “I bear a charméd life,” and “the milk of human kindness,” among others. One particular phrase, in a line delivered by Macbeth, had special relevance to me as a mystery writer: malice domestic. These days it’s the name of an annual crime fiction fan convention.

The Lantern Theater in Philadelphia is an intimate space, a theater in the round; the onstage sparring with spears and swords took place only a few feet from the theatergoers. The aisle one seat to my right was a key passageway during the production: Macbeth and his Lady ran up that aisle, to murder Duncan, the king, and Macduff used it to discover the dead body. Settled in a front-row corner, I was so close to the action that I was probably the only audience member who could see the apparitions in Act IV, as they stood “hidden” behind a scrim to speak their lines.

And speaking of lines, a play (Shakespearean or not) embodies the oft-repeated “rule” in writing fiction: show, don’t tell. On the stage, dialogue and action are everything; there is no room for exposition. We understand the story via the words the characters speak and how others on stage react.

Regarding those infamous weird sisters, they seem to be more than mere witches. The lines they speak weave an incantation via the rhyme, the alliteration, and the strangeness of the words themselves. “Weird” from Shakespeare’s time did not mean “strange.” It stemmed from “wayward,” which referred to “destiny” or “fate.” As such, did the sisters make Macbeth commit the murderous crime? Or did that tendency lie within him all along?

That’s for you to decide.

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Dianna’s Books

THE DARKEN DOORSTEP

AN ELEMENT OF MYSTERTY: SWEET, FUNNY, AND STRANGE TALES OF INTRIGUE

UNTIL DAWN: A Supernatural Anthology

FUR, FEATHERS AND SCALES: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Animal Tales

UNTETHERED: SWEET, FUNNY, AND STRANGE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL

SEASON’S READINGS: More Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales

Scream of the Silent Sun

BWG’s Books

AN ELEMENT OF MYSTERTY: SWEET, FUNNY, AND STRANGE TALES OF INTRIGUE

FUR, FEATHERS AND SCALES: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Animal Tales

OFF THE RAILS: A Collection of Weird, Wicked, & Wacky Stories

ONCE UPON A TIME: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales for All Ages

A CHRISTMAS SAMPLER: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales

LET IT SNOW

UNTETHERED: SWEET, FUNNY, AND STRANGE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL

ONCE AROUND THE SUN: Sweet, Funny, and Stranges Tales for All Seasons

A READABLE FEAST: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales for Every Taste

SEASON’S READINGS: More Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales

FIFTEEN KEYS

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Giving Tragic Characters a Happy-Ever-After

December 28, 2020 by Alina K. Field in category Quarter Days by Alina K. Field tagged as #NewRelease, Fated Hearts, Macbeth, Regency romance, Tragic Characters in Classic Lit Series

The Tragic Characters in Literature Project

Greetings for the holiday season! This is the time for gift-giving, and I’m devoting this Quarter Days’ post to a unique gift-giving project I’m taking part in with a group of Regency Romance authors.

We’re taking some of those dark, down-on-their luck characters from literary fiction and giving them the Regency Romance treatment!

Officially:

With complete artistic license, and an abundance of hubris, a group of Regency romance authors are retelling some of the great stories of literature, setting them in Georgian England, and giving these tragic heroes and heroines a happily-ever-after.

I am not super well-read in tragic fiction, so I settled on a story I do know: Macbeth. The real Macbeth was a relatively successful (though bloody) ruler of Scotland for about ten years in the eleventh century. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and his lady–well, you probably know their story. They die!

What’s a Romance Author to do? I decided to follow Shakespeare’s example of adding and discarding facts and characters as required. As I plunged into planning, I quickly decided that the action would begin twenty years after Macbeth and his lady’s quest for title and power and their “demises”.

In my version, a failed lawsuit, allegations of unfaithfulness and a disastrous divorce sent Macbeth off to a bloody twenty-year war with France and his lady into a tailspin of depression. Older and wiser, they meet again in London in March 1815 during the worst of the Corn Riots, in a week that ends with the arrival of news that Bonaparte has escaped from Elba.

I’ve taken the liberty of reversing characterizations (after all, Foul is Fair, and Fair is Foul) and adding others to lighten the mood for our aging lovers. Writing this, I often had to wrest my hero back from the darkness of his story. Or, as my editor gently suggested, I had to “moderate his fatalism”.

Hah! It is 2020, isn’t it?

All-in-all, it was a fun story, requiring a deep dive into the Peninsular campaign, the Corn Riots, and best of all, Highland soldiers in kilts.

Release day for Fated Hearts is December 29, 2020, and it’s available for 99 cent preorder. It won’t be at that price for long, so if you’re interested, pick up your copy ASAP.

Here’s a bit about the story and the other books in the Tragic Characters in Classic Lit series.

Fated Hearts, A Love After All Retelling of the Scottish Play

Plagued by hellish memories and rattling visions of battle to come, a Scottish Baron returning from two decades at war meets the daughter he denied was his, and the wife he divorced, and learns that everything he’d believed to be true was a lie. What he can’t deny is that she’s the only woman he’s ever loved. They’re not the young lovers they once were, but when passion flares, it burns more hotly than ever it did in their youth.

They soon discover, it wasn’t fate that drove them apart, but a jealous enemy, who played on his youthful arrogance and her vulnerability. Now that old enemy has resurfaced, more treacherous than ever. When his lady falls into a trap, can he reach her in time to rescue this love that never died?

Indigo

Angus & Robertson

Other Books in this Series:

The Monster Within, The Monster Without

by Lindsay Downs (Frankenstein)

When bodies start turning up in Whitechapel, Miss Steen returns to London with Lord Cartwright and the Countess of Harlow as her chaperone to solve the murders. Little does she realize she will be introduced to the last person she wants to meet — and hunting down the murderers proves a lot more difficult than they had anticipated.

I Shot the Sheriff

by Regina Jeffers (Robin Hood)

William de Wendenal, the notorious Sheriff of Nottingham, has come to London, finally having wormed his way back into the good graces of the Royal family. Yet, not all of Society is prepared to forgive his former “supposed” transgressions, especially the Earl of Sherwood.

However, when de Wendenal is wounded in an attempt to protect Prince George from an assassin, he becomes caught up in a plot involving stolen artwork, kidnapping, murder, and seduction that brings him to Cheshire where he must willingly face a gun pointed directly at his chest and held by the one woman who stirs his soul, Miss Patience Busnick, the daughter of a man de Wendenal once escorted to prison.

The Colonel’s Spinster

by Audrey Harrison (Pride and Prejudice)

Colonel Fitzwilliam is a second son, often overshadowed by his titled, older brother and his cousin, Mr Darcy. Returning from Waterloo he knows it is time to find a wife with a healthy dowry, but he longs for a love match. Unfortunately for Fitzwilliam, love doesn’t put food on the table.

Miss Prudence Bamber has never known her mother’s family. A woman with her own mind and full life, she indulges her father’s wish to visit her long-lost relations. It turns out to be a trip she won’t forget in a hurry.

Two people looking for love, but challenged by pride, secrets and prejudice. Will they be able to overcome the odds to find their own happy ever after? Or, are they destined to remain separated by the constraints of society?

The Redemption of Heathcliff

by Alanna Lucas (Wuthering Heights)

Her wild ways tamed, Catherine Earnshaw has launched into London society. Only none of her marriage-mart suitors excite her because her heart still lies with another; whatever happened to Heathcliff, her childhood soulmate?

Markus Bell left Yorkshire to find his true identity and turn a fortune. Now the talk of the ton, he has Catherine in his sights, not to woo her but to seek revenge; he can’t forgive how she spurned him.

Catherine is puzzled where the gossip dogging her through the season comes from. Until she meets Markus, who’s as dark and devilishly handsome as her Heathcliff, and her world is turned upside down.