My writing—now with pirates!

Go get yourself some refreshments and a few snacks, and pull up a seat. This is going to take a while to read, because it's been a long road from idea to completion. This rather lengthy bit of navel (naval?) examining was brought to you by the recent publication of my first pirate novel, JEZEBEL JOHNSTON: DEVIL'S HANDMAID. So if you have any curiosity about how an author pursues writing, or you just want to know where book ideas come from, you're going to find this interesting.

If you've read this blog before, you know that I started out as a stay-at-home mom who never went back to the workday world, and that now I write almost daily. Well, I also read a lot too. Plus I enjoy a good movie or TV program with some kind of drama and excitement going on, and characters I can relate to. A little humor to spice it up always helps, like sugar or salt on food. I have my preferences. 

One of the things that will get me glued to the screen is a pirate flick. Even an old one, or a basically silly one, like the current Disney offerings. I admit I've seen all the Jack Sparrow movies to date, and yes; they're far from representative of the actual historical world of pirating. Yet it's fun to watch Johnny Depp swaggering around in a wig with beads and lots of eye liner, and all Keith Richards has to do is dress up and stand there mumbling, and he's convincing. I love my mythology and magic, so mermaids and cursed lost ships, skeletal buccaneers and monsters of the deep... how can you go wrong? They are fun romps, but sometimes you want something with a bit more meat to it.

I've seen a lot of the swashbuckling old movies too, with Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and Burt Lancaster, and I love those. Wallace Beery will always be Long John Silver in my mind. You all know I'm a Sinbad fan as well. But... what about a drama that is more contemporary in the making? Pirates—except for the Disney version—seem to have fallen out of favor, just like Westerns. 

Yes, I know about Black Sails, and that's on my must-see-someday list, but I don't have premium cable channels because it's not in the budget. There's a lot of things on premium cable I would watch, and probably get a whole lot less writing done too. At some point I will catch up with it.

There are certainly plenty of pirate novels out there, and they run the gamut from page turner, to stomach turner, to total turn off. Rafael Sabatini's CAPTAIN BLOOD is my hands down favorite so far. I've read a couple of contemporary authors' tales, but never felt quite satisfied with them. Something was always lacking. I just couldn't get involved with the characters, or I had no idea what was going on and where. In a few, the jargon was overwhelmingly hard to understand. Others were basically a romance novel that just happened to have a pirate in there ripping a bodice or three. There was sometimes more gratuitous gore than substance. In other instances, the plot was so thin you could see Jamaica from Hispaniola through it. I'm not one to trash another hard working writer's books, but I stopped looking at pirate novels for that reason. I was tired of spending money on things that disappointed me.

One story that didn't disappoint was a short piece by the amazing Josh Reynolds that ran in the oldest incarnations of the Pro Se Magazines, PECULIAR ADVENTURES, in which I was fumbling around as editor at the time. 'Razor Eater and the Rattle Bones' was a fantastic tale, and hard to get out of my mind. Not understanding at the time just how busy a writer Josh is, I implored the boss that Master Reynolds be chained to a desk to write more of those as a regular series, since his steel-toothed pirate was such a unforgettable character. 

Josh, if you're reading this, I'd be first in line to pick up a pirate novel with your name on the cover.

A year or so later, I did stumble across one other little tome that showed a lot of promise, had it been bigger and more developed. Barry Reese, who at the time was already (and still is) one of the premiere New Pulp writers, had penned an intriguing novella about a female pirate and her rather mystical adventures. This one didn't quite work out well for Barry, who is otherwise a fantastic talent, but the good bones of a story worth telling were there, and I hated to see it die out. For a while I considered asking to be allowed to revive it (and Barry, gracious as always, gave me the nod), but I changed my mind. It's not that it couldn't be done, because he had a fantastic premise in Gaun-Yin, but in the end, I wanted a story that was 100% my own creation.

So I sat on that idea for a few years while I was writing other stuff, and waited for it to hatch.

I used to tell people I write sword & sorcery and epic/heroic fantasy, but that's only one aspect of what I'm pushing out of the keyboard these days. My writing has branched out quite a bit, because I've tackled Private Eye tales, a western, contemporary and post apocalyptic dark fantasy, historical fiction, and even a bit of superhero stuff. What is consistent is the pacing, which draws a lot from the pulp tales of yore, so I now say I write action/adventure fiction of all genres. So adding a pirate yarn to that other stuff lurking in my writing resume seemed like a great idea for expanding my readership. The problem was, I didn't know diddly-squat about how to tell a seafaring tale.

That's where the magic of the internet comes into play...

I am a rabid researcher for just about any story I write. I always have Dictionary.com and Google up when I'm working, in case there's something I need to know or someone posted a picture that might help me envision what I'm trying to describe in a scene. I probably have a few hundred sites bookmarked in my writing files alone, and I have been known to go to Youtube and watch videos on anything from sword fights to hunting elephants and building emergency shelters in arctic conditions. 

Back when I was working on my Pulp Obscura story for Senorita Scorpion, based on the western character created by old school pulp author Les Savage, I had to do a ton of research just to understand what was being said in the original tales. I'd never even read a western before, and now I was writing one. Google was my closest friend throughout the entire project. Though I sweated blood and tears to make the deadline, and wondered often if I would be able to pull it off, the story eventually got told. After that hit print, I figured I was about ready for another challenge. Well, I got a bunch of them!

In the intervening years since my first short story was published by Pro Se Press, I had not only learned a lot about writing, but about myself too. For one thing, I love writing no matter how tough it gets, and I thoroughly dread packing and moving. But move I did; out of the rambling house where my kids and I grew up together, to a old, overgrown farm with a far smaller house built in 1770. I moved here in June of 2011 and lived all by myself initially, with just one little dog to keep me company. You'll see Ariel's picture over on the right. I got a ton of writing done before the menfolk moved in. I still did pretty good after their arrival, because men tend to get busy with other things when you're not paying much attention to them...

So in January of 2014, I decided that since I basically had an empty nest, was caught up on most of my writing deadline projects, and had plenty of unstructured time on my hands, it was a good opportunity to get going on that pirate novel. I knew I wanted a rather strong-willed and stubborn, unconventional, heroic, and canny female protagonist, because that has sort of become my trademark. It was right after the winter holidays when the name 'Jezebel Johnston' came to mind, and I began ruminating on what her life would be like.

Right away I decided she had to be at least mixed-race, because the Caribbean area was a perfect melting pot for that sort of liaison, and far too many of my primary characters have been Caucasian. No longer did I wonder if I could effectively create a story about a woman of color, because I've learned to trust my writing instincts. I'm not a flying horse, or an Elf, a monster hunter from the 1940s, or a gun-toting private eye who just happens to look like Errol Flynn; but I've written about them. If I couldn't pull this off too, I'd hang up my keyboard and go get a day job.

I also decided right away that this wasn't going to be a fantasy pirate adventure. Those sort of stories have their place, but I wanted something more on the lines of historical fiction, with a backdrop that reflected whichever part of the buccaneer era I settled on.

I had no idea what I was getting into of course.

I started the book on February 7th 2014, and barely made it past the prologue before I was up to my ears in doubt. I knew nothing at all about writing a seafaring tale, I had no idea what sort of mundane things happened aboard pirate ships, or what to call anything on any sailing vessel. The easy way out was just to say it's a boat and the ocean is wet and full of salt, fish, and dangerous things; and believe me, I've seen books like that. While I knew how to get good characters interacting, I had no idea how to get them off on a pirating adventure. I couldn't even imagine how to move the ship away from the dock. I was in trouble!

I was ready to call it quits and write something about dragons and wizards to make me feel all safe again. But I'm basically stubborn, and I don't like the sense of defeat I get when I abandon a project. Believe me, I have a science fiction story that has been sitting in a file since sometime in 2010 that is eating my soul a atom at a time. I have tiny little piercings all over my aura that you can see daylight through.

Since a bunch of buccaneers without a yarn to call home could do a lot more damage if neglected, I decided to at least tough it out. I could learn a few pirating things, along with some seafaring terms, and sprinkle them in like chocolate chips to at least give it an authentic feel. That's sort of disingenuous of me, but I was overwhelmed and intimidated by what I didn't know—which was an awful lot! It's one thing to make things up, as I do in my fantasy writing, because there the world is mine to build and set the rules for. You simply must have rules! Any tale worth telling has some parameters, any world it's set in has structure and laws. Otherwise the action is dull, because you've lost that gnawing tension when a character bumps her or his nose up against a brick wall. In fantasy, I just needed to invent stumbling-block rules that could be limiting, but when you're muddling around in a historical backdrop that a certain percentage of the population has some notion about, and a small portion know intimately, you have to know what you're talking about.

I was clueless. 

So I started reading anything about pirates and sailing ships that I could get my hands on. It took me into a whole other world of story-telling. If I got paid by the hour for the research I've done (and am still doing) for this series (oh yes, this is not just a standalone book, but the first of a series) I could retire in comfort. No one could afford to pay me what that time was worth. It was like cramming for a final exam after missing most of the classes for the past four years. I felt like I was reading something written in a foreign language by Martian anthropologists. I looked at a lot of pictures to try and unravel what the text was going on and on about. I wrote down terms to research, and many sites had links that led to others that were equally as involved. It was fascinating and maddening all at once.

There is an interesting early scene in the movie THE 13TH WARRIOR (which is based on the Michael Crichton book, EATERS OF THE DEAD) that I thought of often while I was learning the jargon of the seafarer. Antonio Banderas' Arab scribe character (Ahmad Ibn Fadlan) is traveling with Vikings and during the sea voyage, he gradually picks up their language. It was a plot point that many critics pooh-poohed as hokey, but it makes perfectly good sense to me now. The man was a court poet and presumably wrote often, so he dealt with language, perhaps even translations. A trained ear and willing mind can tend to pick things by rote learning. Which is what has been happening to me...

As I studied, eventually, bits and pieces of this seafaring lore of the days of sail started making sense, because I had come across some terms so often, I knew what they meant on sight. As I began to absorb the information, ideas were forming about how to use that knowledge in the story, and so I'd write something down about it. In dribs and drabs, the book began to take shape, both in my mind, and then on the page. And lo and behold, as it always happens, the characters not only came to life as their backdrop inked itself on the back of my brain, but they started talking to me. They began telling me their stories, and I feverishly banged them onto the screen.

Writing is about the only thing you can do in life where having voices in your head is actually helpful. 

There's a lot to learn with writing maritime tales. Those who go to sea for a living are practicing a trade that almost becomes a separate world away from our own. I had narrowed down the era by then to the middle 1600s, and the setting for the first novel primarily in the Caribbean Sea. I learned very quickly that there was a whole lot more than just memorizing the kind of ships that were commonly used and where the port towns were.                                

That area was a hotbed of competitive colonialism, and islands and even mainland areas were changing hands all the time between Spanish and Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch concerns. The ships themselves were incredibly specialized, and the equipment and rigging they carried that sailors aboard worked with all had specific names—from the biggest wooden features to the smallest bits of cordage. There were all sorts of very definitive terms for what you were doing with or to the ship, how it was moving, what masts and sails it carried under certain conditions, how to handle it in battles and storms... I went to bed at night with terms like careening, warping, ketch anchor, windward, lee side, and port vs larboard bouncing around in my dreams. And that's just the ships!

There was also the international backdrop. I found out quickly that it was vitally important to know what was going on in Europe at the time, because that had a direct influence on whether your colonies thrived or failed, or how people interacted and why they attacked one another. The indigenous native people of the Caribbean islands and many mainland areas had all but been wiped out by imported diseases brought in by their enslaving masters, most of who were Spanish.

And while it seems that I'm picking on the Spanish, I'm just reporting what I've learned. Their militaristic expansionism into the Americas made them a great target of enmity for a couple of centuries. They were particularly difficult to deal with in that richly endowed Caribbean area. It's not that the other countries with vested interests were far more tractable; because they weren't. Spain just had a huge presence there, and as a nation with a expansionist agenda, the government at home was determined to be the sole owner of most if not all of the prime real estate in the Caribbean area. That idea was backed up by a strong military presence, which didn't set well with the colonies of other nations. Spanish ships became everyone's preferred target, because if they weren't filled with easily salable goods and high-ranking people who could be ransomed, they were bristling with armaments and soldiers prepared to fight and drive off competitors. Or so it's said...

Spain was one of the richest European countries and also had some of the biggest debts, because she kept declaring war on someone else in a big way, and then robbing the coffers to pay for it. Her economy was wracked with inflation from all that gold and silver coming in but nothing too much being done domestically with it. Sound familiar my fellow Americans? Anyway, Spain was a pain because she had the Main, and made it plain that she disdained anyone else's claim to fame in the entire domain of the Caribbean colonies. (Say that 3 times fast). Spain was sometimes allied with this or that country and other times they fought, and sometimes treaties were violated within the colonies while there was peace at home. Whew, that's a lot to learn, and both boundaries and alliances were as fluid as any politician's promises.

So I learned about sailing ships and what made them work, I learned about the Caribbean area colonies and their mother countries, but that still didn't cover pirating. There's a lot of repetitive info about the most famous pirate captains and their more colorful companions, but very little about the everyday Jack Tars that made up the crew. Hollywood has been a big influence on how we picture those swashbuckling days, but it's not exactly a reliable source of historical fact. I doubt there were too many pirates that looked like dashing and handsome Errol Flynn, considering what we know of clothing, lifestyle, medical knowledge, and hygiene of the time. Still, as a fiction writer, you have to walk a line between what your research and instincts tell you, and what you know your readers expect. So as I was writing this book, I kept all that in mind.

I'd expect most pirates were dirty and ragged men with plenty of injuries and missing teeth, lice, fleas, venereal disease. pox scars, and a body odor that would make a skunk retch. I'd bet a certain small portion of them were women, in disguise or not, because there have always been gals who are daring enough to take on what's considered a man's position. Anne Bonney, Mary Read, Gráinne O'Malley and their ilk aside, there had to be some less famous wenches who willingly went 'on account' to live and die by the pirate code. Certainly the Celtic music I tend to listen to when I'm writing has been sprinkled with songs about ladies who went to war or to sea when their lover heeded the call to arms or the siren song of the waves. That these hoydens were so easily able to hide their obvious female charms and pass themselves off as men was the reason they got accepted in the first place. Their willingness to pitch in and do the same hard and dangerous work as the male sailors, to fight alongside their brethren in arms, or to drink and brawl like one of the fellas, was how they earned respect, and claimed their own niche in history.

That's the kind of stuff I live to write. It's also exactly what I had in mind for Jezebel Johnston from the outset. This was a slender and boyish-looking young mixed-race woman barely past girlhood, who had fallen head over heels in love with a man who happened to be a pirate. So when he left her to go back to his ship, she followed him and passed herself off as a lad. The rest... is in the book. And I won't spoil it for you.

Now while all this research and pirate writing was going on, I had other books and short stories to work on as well. Occasional short editing pleas came and went, and I'd been writing a monthly column for our town newsletter. I had a grandson born the fall before (he just turned 2) and wonder of wonders, my dear daughter-in-law announced sometime after the turn of the year that she was pregnant again with what turned out to be my first granddaughter (who will be 1 year old in November). Mommy was working the graveyard shift for the first few months, and with a baby at home and one in the processing unit, she wasn't getting a lot of rest. She got a chance to take a day shift job, but would need my help with babysitting. I said go for it, and by April of 2014, my empty-nest gained a little bird for several hours every weekday.
 

My writing time was halved, but my happy little grandboy was such a joy, I sucked it up and wrote around his schedule or whenever he napped. His snowbird grandparents were here for the good weather months, so we shared responsibilities, and I still had days here and there all to myself. Unless I had an appointment and needed to go out, on those days off I wrote all day long. 

Now weekends were already devoted to family and projects around the house, so only on rare occasions did I get to write on Saturdays and Sundays. The pirate novel was the most worrisome thing for me, because I had giddily pitched it as a series to publisher Ron Fortier of Airship 27, and he was incredibly enthusiastic about the entire project. As summer went on, the writing was going so slowly I was having a good day if I managed over 350 words. I had one day I recall where 93 words took me several hours because I was trying to find out what some obscure term meant. I was frustrated and depressed, because I was somewhere near the middle of the book, and it wasn't coming together. Good thing I'm as stubborn as I am, or I would have chucked it and pulled out some crochet hooks and yarn.

As fall drew on, and the girl baby's due date grew closer, I kept watching the calendar with concern. The snowbird grands eventually winged their way back home, and I was now the full time sitter. It seemed like the new baby and the book were in a dead heat for who was going to be born first. As it turned out, the book popped out about a week ahead of the granddaughter, but that was only because mom had to take maternity leave a bit early for health reasons. While she was home, she could watch the other little dude, and so I had free weekdays again. I finally finished the tale, gave it a week or so to marinate, and started my second pass.

It had been just five days short of 9 months to the day I started it back in February when I wrote those last two words, THE END. Oh what a relief that was! Still, it had been dragged out so long, I wasn't sure how well it would read. I was afraid it would be choppy and need a tremendous amount of rework, but I was pleasantly surprised once I began going through it. It wasn't half bad. In fact, it was a pretty decent read.

Every writer has a work style. If you're just starting out, you'll discover yours as you get more involved in the craft. Don't ever let anyone tell you that there's a right and wrong way to write. Do what works for you; what makes the words flow and the pages fill up. There are hints and tips you can pick up along the way, but the bottom line is be comfortable and you'll write often and much.

I am fidgety writer. I can't leave a scene along until I'm satisfied I've wrung the most I can get out of it. So rather that just write straight through from beginning to end on the first draft, I keep going over stuff from the last few sessions before moving forward. It's what works for me. By rereading what I previously wrote, I refresh my memory, and spot problem areas that need TLC. Sometimes I change a lot of what's there, as a new avenue opens up; other times I just tweak a few words, eliminate some typos, and keep moving on. When I'm done for the day, I set a bookmark to where I want to pick up again next session, take a word count, and save. Now and then, I'll leave myself a little note, or begin the next scene with a sentence or two. But I always try and quit with something new in mind. It's the carrot on the stick for me to work forward towards. 

That is exactly how this book got written, and it's the way I've worked for years. I'm not the fastest writer out there, but I'm far from he slowest either. The fact that I seldom experience what others call 'writer's block' tells me that what I'm doing works well. Sure—I have times when the words don't come easily or when I'm lost for where to go with a plot, but they're short and don't stop me from writing. Generally I just need a breather.

I write every chance I get, and I always look forward to writing. If I'm getting stuck and frustrated on a project, and it doesn't have a screaming deadline, I set it aside, and work on some other piece of fiction. If I'm really struggling and starting to feel aggravated because I'm making no headway, it's time to discuss the scene with someone else. Usually by the time I've laid it out via email or in a conversation, I've solved the problem myself. If it's just a sentence or three that aren't working, I read them aloud. You can usually hear the rough parts easier that way.

So that's why when I got to the second pass on the book, it went fairly smoothly. Oh, I found the usual sorts of typos, misspellings, bad punctuation, and orphan bits that got left behind when I moved text around. I know missed some too, because I'm human and I'd been staring at this thing for 9 friggin' months! But the second pass went by relatively fast, and I was satisfied. Time to turn it in.

My granddaughter was born the week of Thanksgiving, and I turned in the manuscript right around the same time. I was thrilled that it was over, and even more so that Ron Fortier loved it. I never take anything for granted in this business, because the publishers know what they can sell. So we were off to the races!
 

Basically the book goes into editing and then cover art and back cover copy gets done. Airship 27 does interior illustrations for their books as well, and so an artist had to be chosen for that. Rob Davis (AKA, 'He who never sleeps...') does their formatting, and he also provided 9 delicious interior illustrations. After all is said and done, it gets a final galley pass by the author, corrections are made if needed, and then... off to the printer, in this case, Amazon's CreateSpace.

By the way, half the credit for the title goes to Ron Fortier, because I hadn't gotten beyond Jezebel Johnston. It was Ron who suggested that we title each book with the ship Jez serves on. Devil's Handmaid just happened to be the first one, and it's almost a double-entendre. In the course of the story, she goes from being a somewhat innocent dreamer caught up in the romance of pirating to a bonafide freebooter who can shoot and swing a cutlass to do her share of the blood letting. It was a brilliant idea, and I thank Ron for his foresight on that one. I'll admit to doing some heavy thinking now about how the names of ships in future releases need to reflect on whatever lessons in life and piracy Jez will be learning at the time.

Those last few days before publication were like a whirlwind; but the previous months between turning it in and seeing it go up for sale moved pretty rapidly too. After I turned in JJ#1 last fall, I had other writing to catch up on, a new grandbaby to get to know, and we were smack-dab in the midst of the end-of-year holiday season. Mommy went back to work in mid-January, and I became an all day sitter, this time commuting to their house 4 days a week, since you don't want to force newborn infants and toddlers to go out in the cold winter air twice a day if you can avoid it. I love them too much for that.

Exactly one week later, we got a blizzard that dropped about 30 inches of snow on us, and the winter went downhill from there. Frequent snowstorms and sub-zero temps became the norm. My morning started at 5:30 AM for the first time in 10 years, so that I could be on site by 7:30 AM; and I dragged home sometime between 3:45 and 5:30 PM, depending on the work schedule. Everyone tried very hard to make things as easy as they could for me, but at 58 I am no spring chicken. I love them to pieces, but the kids wore me out, and I have a bad back and arthritis in most joints. Well, I lived through it. LOL!

I wasn't getting much writing done, but I kept picking away at it. I managed to turn in several pieces early in the year, including a novella-length Sinbad tale. By late March, I had started the sequel to the first Jezebel Johnston book, and kept trading off between than and an anthology for my Pro Se imprint. I was also planning a garden. About midsummer, my dear daughter-in-law changed shifts again, and so my hours were cut down significantly, from 2PM to 5:45 most days. She even finagled something on Wednesdays so that I would still have a day off. If my family didn't take my writing seriously, and all pitch in to help so that I have time to sit here and pound on the keyboard, I wouldn't have 1/3 of the work in print that I do. They have always come first to me, but it's wonderful not to be taken for granted. Love you guys!

Well, the garden didn't turn out too well but we've been eating out of it, the anthology rough draft is completed and awaiting its second pass, and as of today I am well over 45,000 words (at least 3/4 completed) with JEZEBEL; JOHNSTON: QUEEN OF ANARCHY. I still have a big learning curve to surmount when it comes to detailing a sailing life, and I'm regularly researching new things, but this book is coming far easier. I know the characters, I know where I want to go with it, it's just a matter of getting it fixed in my head and on the page in a way that makes sense, satisfies the historical period, and jives with things I introduced in the first book. I've continued reading all I can get my hands on that pertains to the age of sail and pirate history, and I still do a lot of fact checking. Overall... I'm glad I stuck with it. Looking at that cover online (my copy is on the way) gives me a great sense of satisfaction. 

Aye, I tole ya I'd be scribin' me a bold and bawdy book 'bout a band 'o buccaneer buckos some foin day; 'n now I done the deed! Indeed I done it, I tells ya! Now part with some coin, an' git yerself a copy, and we won't have to keelhaul ye. Arrrr...