S is for . . .

Image source: Pieter Von Marion

Spiders.

Do you suffer from arachnophobia? Then you may be female, as 50% of women claim this fear, while only 16% of men will admit to it.

Spiders make me nervous if the creepy-crawly in question is big enough and surprises me. But I also know they eat other insects, so I don't like to squish them dead. I will catch them and put them out of the house instead. (Hey, I'm a poet and didn't know it.) Yet this altruistic bit on my part is not so helpful. Most spiders you find inside are adapted to living there. (Source)

Here's a few other tidbits you might not know about spiders:

1. There are 40,000 different types of known spiders. So how many are left to be discovered? Same number.

2. Tensile strength is the greatest stress a material can take before breaking. A spider's silk has a tensile strength greater than bone and half the strength of steel.

3. The bite of the Brazilian Wandering Spider can cause long and painful erections in guys. (Insert your own joke here.)

4. The Goliath Birdeater can weigh up to 6 ounces.

(Material adapted from Live Sciences's 10 Things You Didn't Know About Spiders

Image Source: Aiden

Have you seen any spider movies? I remember seeing Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo and Arachnophobia when I was a kid. Or is Charlotte's Web more to your liking?

And as an extra bonus, blogger and author Chrys Fey is releasing her first novel, Seismic Crimes!

An Internal Affairs Investigator was murdered and his brother, Donovan Goldwyn, was framed. Now Donovan is desperate to prove his innocence. And the one person who can do that is the woman who saved him from a deadly hurricane—Beth Kennedy. From the moment their fates intertwined, passion consumed him. He wants her in his arms. More, he wants her by his side in his darkest moments.

Beth Kennedy may not know everything about Donovan, but she can’t deny what she feels for him. It’s her love for him that pushes her to do whatever she has to do to help him get justice, including putting herself in a criminal’s crosshairs.

When a tip reveals the killer's location, they travel to California, but then an earthquake of catastrophic proportions separates them. As aftershocks roll the land, Beth and Donovan have to endure dangerous conditions while trying to find their way back to one another. Will they reunite and find the killer, or will they lose everything?

DIGITAL LINKS:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / KOBO / The Wild Rose Press

ALSO AVAILABLE IN PRINT!