Well matey. I've got some news on the piratin' front to pass along. To be specific-like, I be talkin' the JEZEBEL JOHNSTON series of pirate yarns that I've been writin' for yer readin' pleasure. So sit yerself down fer a bit and rest them weary bones, git yerself some grog and have a listen to a few tales about what-all be coming yer way...
Okay, now that I have that out of my system, here's what's going on with this popular series. First of all, JEZEBEL JOHNSTON #6, subtitled SISTERS OF VENGEANCE, just came out in audiobook format from RADIO ARCHIVES. Now this audiobook has 7 hours of listening pleasure involved, so even at the full price that is quite a bargain. But right now, you can get that half price. Imagine being able to sit back with earbuds in or headphones on and eyes closed, letting this book take you out to another place and time. You'll go off to where daring deeds and tropical climes have you alternately on land or sea, fighting to survive in a hostile environment. You'll be in places where enemies abound and danger is always around the next bend or coming at you with the tide. After the continuing insanity of the past year—which seems to have carried over into this one—couldn't you just use such a break? Think about it, because $6.99 for a 7 hour vacation from reality sounds like a bargain to me!
And yes, the paperback and Kindle versions are still available on Amazon. So you do have options. By the way, any of these books are available in PDF format for a reasonable $3 directly from the publisher Airship 27. Scroll down on the left and you will find a menu that takes you to the books you want to see. And look around while you're there, because there are a lot of really good books by other authors as well.
Well, now I've got news of the next book in line. I recently got the galley proof back for JEZEBEL JOHNSTON #7: MASTIFF. A galley is the book in a format set up to be printed. It's the author's last chance to do a final pass before it goes to print. I knocked that out in a couple of days by doing a line-by-line read through and leaving notes for the setup guy. My understanding is we're waiting for the cover art on this one, but the Rob Davis interior illustrations are all done and in place, and folks... they are gorgeous! I always love to see what Rob has for me. Rob has done a couple dynamite covers for me too—SISTERS OF VENGEANCE was one of his covers. I was told that the very talented Adam Shaw is doing the cover for this particular book, and I was thrilled to hear that. Always exciting to see your characters come to life via artwork. I'll let you know when the book comes out, I usually annouce them here as well as on my Facebook page and you can find me on Twitter.
So what's next for our pirate lass? Well I'm glad you asked! On the 5th of this month I began writing the 8th JEZEBEL JOHNSTON novel. This one doesn't have a subtitle yet, but it picks up where #7 MASTIFF left off in the first chapter. Now I have a habit of adding a short prologue to each book first, to kind of connect it in some way to the last one without doing a continual flashback scenes. Hopefully that helps readers who come in somewhere in the middle of the series to pick up what's going on and where we are. We were just about to engage with another ship in the final scene of the last chapter of #7, so that's where Chapter 1 starts in book #8. I'm already over 2200 words into it, and if I finish this blog post early enough today, I might add a few more.
This second group of four books in the series from #5 through #8 have taken place on the way to or in the East Indies, that area between the east coast of Africa to the far Orient. This was the early heydays of the East Indian trade, and while there were some pirates in the area, they were not as well established in this Age of Buccaneers (1650-1680) as they became during the Pirate Round (1690s) and into the Golden Age of the early 1700s. These books are historcal fiction and as close as I can make it to realistic, so there aren't any zombies, mermaids, or skeleton pirates meandering through them. We're in the time of the buccaneers in this series, but moving toward the end of it, before the more famous pirates sprung on the scene. People like Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, Black Sam Bellamy, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Charles Vane show up later, though Henry Morgan has been mentioned in passing, as he was on the early side. A lot of this part of the the JEZEBEL JOHNSTON series is based in the Indian Ocean or in India itself. I do plan on having Jez head back to the Carribean at the end of this one, because I have something important for her to do there. That set of adventures might fill another 4 books, which would give me 12. I don't think I'll be done writing about her after that though. Jez is still quite young yet and needs to make her way up the pirating ladder of success, and I'm just having waaaaay too much fun getting her in and out of trouble. Plus I've learned a lot along the way about things like ships and seafaring, colonization of the New World, politics and social conditions in Europe and the Asian Orient, and famous folks who lived in those times that you really never hear about. For instance, the the much revered Maratha Indian Warlord who became their Maharajah (king), Shivaji Bhonsle popped up in my study of this era in India, and he just happened to have an established navy as well as some amazing forts both on land and sea. Talk about serendipity! Shivaji was known for his guerilla raids on the Mughal overlords, his disdain for the foreign interference in their country, along with his respect for the faith of others and the intelligence of women—which are unsual characteristics for his time. Shivaji first appears in JJ#6 SISTERS OF VENGEANCE, continues to have a presence in JJ #7 MASTIFF, and we will be finishing with him in JJ #8. You never know what little gems of history you might stumble across when you research for books like these. It brings the world of the past back to life in my mind, and introduces me to people, places, and ideas that I'd never heard of before.
One of the things I have tried hard to walk a line with this series is between making it authentic sounding, but also accessible. I have kept the language for the most part English, though I will throw in a foreign phrase in dialogue or naming of things like ships here and there. I try hard to get that as close to properly translated as I can make it. I use some vernacular or dialect, but only in small batches. I'm sure all the spoken languages were far more different that how we speak today, but find the 'thees and thous' sort of speech tiresome, and so I figure readers will too. What's more important is getting the characters right. You'll see a smattering of pirate jargon and plenty of seafaring terms, but I try not to overdo that either. Like spices in a dish you are cooking, you want them to enhance the flavor without overpowering it. The bigger issue for me is a balance between the heavy action, intrigue, and adventure that a book about pirating needs contrasted with character growth and details about the locales we're in so that readers can envision what's going on as well as where it's happening and to whom. Plus I must keep in mind that to be affordable to readers and to allow the publisher a chance to make a profit (they can't afford to print these for free you know), the book has to meet a very defined wordcount range. After you've written enough of these sort of high action/adventure novels, you get a feeling for the pacing. Every word counts. Every sentence, paragraph, and chapter has to lead you forward and leave you wanting more. Hopefully I've managed that because I'm told this series is popular. I'm really glad too, because this is a labor of love for me as well as my chance to leave something tangible behind in the world when I'm no longer on this side of the veil of life. I'm going to be 64 in April so this is a late life career for me, and it's something that I can likely do no matter how old and creaky I get.
So if you enjoy these stories, please let me and/or my publisher know. Reviews are wonderful, and I have no problem with honest critiques. They just give me something to think over so that I can do better next time. I'm available through the comments section of this blog, I have an Amazon Author Page, and the aforementioned presence on Facebook and Twitter. Follow or Friend me, I make regular posts on both social sites about what I am writing and how it's going. If there's some other social site you'd like to see me post on, let me know. I don't want to spend all day online, because I need time to write as well as have a homelife and be with family, but I'll do whatever I can to connect with readers. You folks are the reason I'm doing this after all. It sure isn't to get rich! Maybe I should take up pirating for that...?
That's it for this week folks. Carry on and keep reading, and I will keep writing them!
~Nancy
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