My Adventure Fantasy novel is now available FREE on Kindle today (26th May) and tomorrow. You can download your free copy of STRANGE METAMORPHOSIS from Kindle stores in Europe and US at:
http://tinyurl.com/ngbmos4 (US)
http://tinyurl.com/pyptlvs (UK)
http://tinyurl.com/op2nh5x (DE)
http://tinyurl.com/o58chzc (IT)
I’m th
rilled to announce that Strange Metamorphosis is now available on Amazon!
www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Metamorphosis
www.amazon.de/Strange-Metamorphosis
SLOW is a fascinating film by SASCHA SEIFERT produced by NICOLE ACKERMAN, Slow is beautiful, indeed beautiful is Slow. Enjoy!
Slow the film website.
It is capital, indeed absolutely vital that we ban toxic pesticides that are killing our number 1 pollinator. All you have to do is fill in your name and your short message. Here is the link >> http://www.avaaz.org/en/bye_bye_killers_uk/?cCVBseb
Well, here’s the cover design front and back. Just one more proof to read and Strange Metamorphosis will be published!
In Strange Metamorphosis Marcel Dassaud not only changes in appearance, but in doing 
so also becomes incredibly strong compared to his body weight.
Likewise, the rhinoceros beetle is a colossus in insect terms and is ranked as one of the mightiest animals on earth compared to its mass. You have probably heard that it can carry up to 850 times its own weight without even buckling at the knee segments, incredible!
That said, it’s worth mentioning that if an elephant were shrunk to the size of a bug its strength in relation to its weight would increase x-fold, and yet it would quite possibly be able to fly with its ears.
This is down to a phenomenon known as the scaling law originally recognized by Galileo. Click on the following link to read more about what prevents insects from growing bigger.
Hi everyone, thought I’d post the cover page illustration of my forthcoming novel. It’s not too late to make the odd change so I would really appreciate all your feedback. Thnx, Paul.
Click this way to find out about the story.
The adult male rhino beetle is a handsome creature in its shining armor with its 
curbed horn sprouting from its muzzle that gives it its evocative name. It uses the horn to fight other males for the right to honor the princess. Here we’ll speak about a few more rhino beetle facts.
There are many types of rhinoceros beetles, about 300, the largest measuring up to 6 inches or 15 cm in length. The one in Strange Metamorphosis is about 4cm long being of the European variety (Oryctes nasicornis).
I first came across a European rhinoceros beetle grub when chopping wood one day for the wood burner at Villeneuve, my wife’s deceased grandmother’s house. A great rambling country house that had seen better days, even the old wrought iron boiler had given up the ghost.
Throughout the winter I had produced a thick snug bed of sawdust and chippings where the wood was chain-sawed, chopped and stored. An ideal squat to feed and shelter for the rhinoceros beetle larva I unearthed along with several of its siblings. It had a dark brown head and a creamy white body about the length and breadth of my little finger.
But what use are rhinoceros beetles in nature?
I have listed 4 roles they occupy for the good of the environment. They are a decomposition agent, a tree feller, a food source and a bulldozer. Click here or go to the Useful Insects section to find out why.
Superstorm Sandy raised issues as to climatic change, but also to the threats a warmer 
climate may bring in the aftermath of great downpours. This time, thank goodness, the autumnal temperatures will leave mosquitoes mostly dormant, and humans cold but relatively safe from mosquito-borne disease.
It is the female that will annoyingly hum around your ears at night. It is the only song she knows and she does it so that males-who do not hum, just listen-can locate her. And of course it is the female that causes us to continually slap our own faces on warm summer evenings, especially when the air is muggy, ideally between 15°C (59°F) and 30°C (86°F). She needs to gorge herself with nutrients found in the blood of vertebrates (birds, amphibians, us and other mammals) to be able to bring her eggs to maturation.
To prevent the blood from clotting in the process she injects an anticoagulant substance via her saliva. It is this substance that causes an allergic reaction that leads to those ungracious itchy lumps on your forehead, arms and legs as well as other unmentionable places. And in this way she transmits disease.
So What Use Are Mosquitoes For?
I have listed 4 roles they occupy for the good of the environment. They are a regulator, a gamekeeper, a food source and a pollinator. Click here or go to the Useful Insects section to find out why, as well as what eats mosquitoes and what repels mosquitoes.
Paul C.R. Monk
Influenced by the works of French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre, I have been an enthusiast of entomology for many years. I am also a fiction writer, and have written scripts and storyworlds for videogames for near 10 years. My forthcoming novel is about a boy who undergoes a strange metamorphosis.
Visit the story section to find out about the storyworld.
In the storyworld of Strange Metamorphosis there is a host of bugs which include both good guys and 
villains. But in the real world, is it fair to say that there are some useful insects and all the others are just pests? Okay, capricorn beetles drill holes in house timber, mosquitoes transmit disease, and a bee can be deadly to someone with a sting allergy. There again, so do humans tear down timber and spread disease, and in fact they are the most destructive single living species on earth.
A section on this blog will be dedicated to insects featured in the storyworld of Strange Metamorphosis. I have decided to take the more positive approach of considering that bugs are no more harmful to people or to the environment than humans themselves. In fact, when you look more closely you will see that all species of bugs, everyone single one of them, participate in the design of Ma Nature.
I was already well into my twenties when I began reading the works of the great French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre. Though I had already met entomologists, this was like a revelation. Read on.
How many times in your life have you put this dilemma to the back of your mind with the 
intention of addressing it at a more convenient moment? Yet, you will probably agree that trying to keep it contained in a corner of your brain won’t give you any peace of mind at all. It will still push its way between thoughts bringing with it increasing doubt, self-reproach and even impacting on your confidence. But still we delay the confrontation. Why? Because we know deep down that the outcome could lead to a complete change of life, like some strange metamorphosis.
Change. It is something we become afraid of once we have snuggled down into a comfort zone. But you know sometimes change there must be. Keeping it pent up will only create revolutions in your stomach as you shed your youth and grow in bitterness for the lies you have been telling yourself. Not taking ownership of your life for the sake of doing what is expected of you will only lead to incomplete metamorphosis.
The good news is you can undergo that strange metamorphosis all throughout your lifetime, although the sooner the better as other factors in life make it harder to achieve. And one fine day maybe you will do what is right for the sake of bringing your body and your soul together. That little voice of your conscience will stop bothering you, until the next time you are unfaithful to yourself, of course. Once you become you, really you, your metamorphosis will be complete.
My dissension to working a life of long hours for nothing much in return started to manifest itself through my clothes first, then through to the roots of my hair. But though it was deep seated within me, I was the quiet one. Roy was the outgoing rebel. Roy would try anything once, drink anything in a bottle, date anything in fishnet stockings, smoke anything in cigarette paper. His teeth were already rotting, but, with his weird hair, the girls only had eyes for him.
‘No, you can’t come here with a three-tone hairdo, Roy!’ said our boss one morning following an eventful evening concocting colorful mixtures which left his hair bleach blond and black with streaks of ginger. ‘We’ve blimmin’ clients visiting the factory tomorrow, pick the color you like but make it one tone only, or don’t bother coming back!’ Roy went back to work the next day, his hair was the same color all over. Electric blue! Not very common in those days and the boss was not amused but it satisfied the rules, though Roy was made to wear a hat when the clients came round.
Roy’s metamorphosis was incomplete, though. He was still in discord with his job, but he did not leave it, he had moved into a flat with a girl, he had to pay the rent, he couldn’t stomach making a move. Yet he was gifted at drawing, he could have even made a name for himself, instead he refused to confront that dilemma. In time the system broke him in. When I saw him again some years later, he was the shadow of the rebel he was, incomplete, like a maimed dragonfly that hadn’t dared take that first flight on fragile wings. His frustration led to drugs, aggression and prison. But I am still hoping he will one day learn to fly.
I was the lucky one in the sense that I was mad about writing. To be able to throw your thoughts on paper is a lifesaving therapy, because you can actually see there are things that are not right in your life. I decided to take off and live without a safety net; I decided too not to be a part of a social class system given that I was at the wrong end of it. One day I bought a case for my guitar, a rucksack, and got out. I never turned back.
Of course there have been revolutions building up since, but that first step has enabled me to take others more easily. I was able to face the current economic contagion and sell my house without too much remorse and just get on with turning around my business, thanks to addressing that first dilemma.
Of all the gifts parents can give their children, encouraging them to fly on their own wings must rank among the most noble. That is what my forthcoming novel is about, spreading wings, although Marcel Dassaud has to do it alone. The book is called Strange Metamorphosis.
