HERE THERE BE PIRATES

Ahoy, me hearties!

September is pirate month here at the blog. For one thing, International Talk Like A Pirate Day falls on September 19 (so you'll want to brush up on your "Aarrrghs", "Ayes," and "avasts"). And in honor of this year' festivities, you, the Reading Public, have a chance to score some loot just the way we pirates like it—free!

A half dozen other swashbuckling authors have invited me to join them in a voyage of plunder—oops, I mean a Blog Hop and Book Giveaway with the catchy title, Here There Be Pirates. Each of the seven of us will be giving away a copy of one of our pirate novels to seven lucky winners. Free books—what's not to love?

Can Dress like a Pirate Day be far behind?

(I'll be giving away a rare, collectible copy (meaning (ahem) currently out of print) of my very first swashbuckler The Witch From the Sea, a book that's very dear to my heart. (Pirates! History! Romance! No zombies!) I love this book so much, I built it a website of its own!)

Here's a complete list of participating authors and their books:

J. M. Aucoin, Jake Hawking and the Bounty Hunters;  Christine Steendam, Heart Like an Ocean; Lisa Jensen, The Witch From the Sea; SK Keogh, The Alliance; Helen Hollick, Sea Witch; Dan Eldredge, Pirates of Alnari; Nick Smith, Gentlemen of Fortune.

The contest begins tomorrow, Monday, September 8, and runs through Friday, September 19 (Talk Like a Pirate Day).

To enter for a chance to win one of these fine free pirate books, just sign in on the link below. If you're extra techie, you can also earn multiple entries by seeking out the authors' Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts and "liking" them, which improves your chances of scoring, big-time.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(Full disclosure: I personally do not Tweet, but if you are so inclined to "like" my Alias Hook page on Facebook, that counts too.)

We bloggers will also take turns hosting Q&As of a piratical nature with each other for the duration of the Blog Hop. I will update the info here as each new Q&A post goes up.

So get ready to set sail for swashbuckling adventure! Here's your chance to win some genuine pirate loot with firing a single shot!

10 ROLLICKING YEARS WITH THE WITCH

Laurie King writes to say that "Pirates are the new Vampires" in pop culture. Does this mean I was 10 years ahead of my time?

This week, my pirate novel, The Witch From the Sea celebrates its tenth anniversary. Back in those pre-Captain Jack Sparrow days, pirate stories were considered strictly kid stuff, or else the province of capital-R Romance novels with brawny, half-naked rogues fondling their flintlocks splashed across the covers.

It must have seemed like a pretty radical idea, a grown-up historical adventure novel with pirates, told from a woman's perspective. My heroine, Tory Lightfoot, twice damned as a woman without family or prospects, and a runaway orphan of mixed white and Native American blood, joins a crew of pirates in 1823 to escape her constricted female life ashore. But I was fortunate enough to find an intrepid small publisher, Beagle Bay Books, who believed in my story and midwifed my novel into existence.

Speaking of covers, this was my original concept sketch for The Witch cover art. Pretty atmospheric, no? The full moon, the pirate vessel, a woman, um, evidently rising up out of the middle of the ocean like Esther Williams in one of those gigantic MGM aquatic musical numbers. Well, think of it as metaphor, just as the pirates in my book function as a metaphor for the freedom Tory craves.

I'm a little superstitious about rendering my character's faces; I don't want to interfere with the reader's imagination. But when I published a chapter out of The Witch as a short story in the pirate fanzine No Quarter Given, I drew this illustration to go with it.

It's a moment of psychological tension, wherein the pirates attempt to coerce information from the crew of a merchant vessel they've captured. That's Tory, on the left, looking apprehensive—until she (and the reader) realize what's really going on in this scene. (Oh, no, I'll never tell—you'll have to read the book!)

(Hmmm...looking at this image again, I wonder if it's too late to re-do The Witch as a graphic novel...)

But both of these images are vast improvements over my early attempt to collage together a cover, way back when my novel was titled Blesséd Providence (the name of the pirate ship in the tale). Talk about a bad case of TMI!

Notice how I tried to cram in every plot point: gold doubloons, pirate ship, Tarot cards (they figure in the plot and color Tory's view of the world), a map of the Indies, my protagonist's femaleness. Whew! I'm exhausted just looking at it now!

I'm too embarrassed to show you the very first cover I ever attempted, which also included a volume of Shakespeare and a Harlequin figure, in honor of my second protagonist, Jack, expatriate Englishman, acrobat, and failed Shakespearean actor-turned-pirate.

You can see how the Beagle Bay book cover turned out up there in the menu bar. The artist did a good job overall —I just love that burning ship! But I don't think he quite captured the spirit of Tory and Jack. Here's the detail:

Is it just me, or does Tory look about 12 years old in this image? (In the book, she's 18.) As for Jack, he must by the most neatly barbered buccaneer in the history of piracy. Just call him Metrosexual Jack, the Scourge of the Indies.