“I’m not a pirate. I’m an acquisitions agent and salvage specialist. The men with me are union laborers. The ship was burning when we found it. The rum was already gone.”

Arr, matey! Know ye that today be Talk Like a Pirate Day? (Didn’t know? Check out http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html but remember to come back here.)

As regular readers of this blog know, I have a fondness for men of the sea, one pirate in particular, so of course I can’t let this holiday pass without comment. I dislike clichés so I’ll spare you any more cheesy fake pirate talk. How about some truths instead?

When I was researching for Kiss From A Rogue, I found a great deal more info is available on pirates than smugglers. Much of what the public thinks about pirates today can be traced directly back to Robert Louis Stevenson, J.M. Barrie, and Hollywood.

Treasure Island, published in 1883, introduced treasure maps, buried plunder, parrots, wooden legs, eye patches, and “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.” In reality, pirates didn’t have treasure to bury because for the most part, they spent their loot on drink and feminine company as soon as they got to port. (One would hope they also sprang for fresh food and a bath, too.) Monkeys were more common souvenirs of trips to the tropics than parrots.

J.M. Barrie introduced a few more of what would become clichés with Peter Pan in 1904, especially tricorn hats adorned with skull and crossbones symbols.

Let’s salute Hollywood’s contribution of cliches. Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in The Black Pirate in 1926, was probably the first pirate to stick a knife in a sail and slide down to the deck on it. Orlando Bloom looked pretty good doing that in Dead Man’s Chest, too. Walking the plank? Real pirates were much more likely to subject prisoners to pistol target practice or other forms of torture.

But we can’t blame all the clichés on the aforementioned – novelists, poets and playwrights have been romanticizing these nautical thieves and killers with questionable hygiene practices since at least 1684, when writer Alexander Exquemelin conducted research by living and working with his subjects — taking part in pirate raids — and wrote Buccaneers of America, which became a runaway bestseller.

Piracy has existed since man first started going to sea in dugout canoes, but most of what comes to mind when we think of pirates is from the Golden Age of Piracy, which only lasted from 1690 to 1730. Most of the pirates the average person could name were active during just one decade, 1714-1724. And most people don’t think of female pirates, other than maybe Ann Bonny and Mary Read – they’ve likely never even heard of the Chinese female pirate captain Cheng I Sao. After her husband’s death in a gale in 1807, she took over his fleet of 400 ships and 70,000 sailors, and lived to age 60.

Fun pirate facts:
Gold hoop earrings. These served a dual purpose. Up until early Victorian days many people, including doctors, believed piercing the ear could improve one’s eyesight. Being able to see land and potential prey as soon as possible was a very good thing. Most sailors purposely did not know how to swim – they’d rather drown right away than be live food for sharks in the event of a disaster. If their body washed up on shore, the solid gold hoop earring was payment to assure they’d receive a decent burial.

Grog. British Admiral Edmond Vernon (1684-1757) wore a grogram cloak, giving rise to his nickname Old Grog. In 1740 he ordered his sailors’ twice-daily ration of rum to be diluted, supposedly after griping that most sailors had joined up mainly for the free rum. Sailors were generally issued two rations of alcohol and one pound of hardtack per day in addition to whatever the cook served up. (Remember that back then fresh, potable water was at a premium.) Some navies used whiskey while the British generally served rum.

Democracy. Those serving on board pirate ships lived in a true democratic society, possibly some of the earliest recorded. Everyone was entitled to a share of the plunder based on his rank and contribution. If the majority did not like the captain, he was likely to be, ahem, voted out of office.

Honor among thieves. Anyone who’s watched the Pirates of the Caribbean movies has heard a reference to the Pirate’s Code, a set of rules for conduct. Hollywood didn’t make this one up. Most pirate crews did indeed draw up a set of rules, and one of those surviving was written by Bartholomew Roberts. Many crews adapted his version rather than draft their own. The rules were mostly to avoid disputes over the division of plunder and the behavior expected of crew members, but they often included provisions for compensating those injured in battle. Losing a limb was worth “800 pieces of eight from the common stock,” according to Roberts.

I don’t know about the beads, braids, dreads and eyeliner, and the hat is questionable in the warm Carribean, but the scarf is very authentic. Headcovering was vital, especially in the tropics. (Btw, most of the pistols in the three Pirates movies are props or replicas, but Captain Jack’s barker, shown here, is the real deal. His was made in the 18th century and bought by Disney from an antiques dealer.)

One last thing, just for fun. Everyone does things to come up with pirate names (or your soap opera name, porn star name, etc.) but this was the first time I’d seen a way to come up with the name for your pirate ship. Scroll down the page a bit at http://www.talklikeapirate.com/bestofslappy.html#lovelorn
My ship is Capacious Hazard. What’s yours?

I was raised on a steady diet of musicals. West Side Story, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady…. well, you can see why I grew up to be a romance writer. My earliest memory of TV, in fact, was all the women in my family piling on to my grandmother’s sofa to watch Camelot on TV. (Boy, am I dating myself, because this was back when catching a movie in TV was a big deal, before dvd’s or even vhs.)

In our house, on May first, every year of my childhood, Mom would put the Camelot LP on the turn table, cue up The Lusty Month of May and we’d dance around the living room, singing along. At the time, I didn’t know it was about giving into your sexual urges. I just thought it was enjoying the nice spring weather. So as an adult, whenever the weather turns nice, I can’t help humming a few bars of the Lusty Month of May.

So, you’re probably wondering, what does that have to do with anything? It’s mid-September. Ah, but it’s mid-September in Texas.

I have a theory about fall in Texas. I imagine it’s like spring is in other, colder parts of the country. After the oppressive, seemingly endless heat of summer—during which you can’t leave the house without feeling miserable—fall hits. You wake up one morning and it’s 70 or even 65 outside. You throw open the windows, you dance around humming, you pack a picnic lunch and eat outside at the park, all the while thrilled to be blessed with such glorious weather.

The first glimmers of fall have come early to Central Texas this year. It’s courtesy of Ike and I know other parts of Texas are paying the price for our glorious weather. Still, I’ve been enjoying every moment. The house is cool, the breeze is fresh, the air seems filled with possibilities. I’m filled with energy and not just because I had an extra cup of coffee this morning.  And for the past three days, I’ve been humming “It’s May” … even though it’s really September.

For the last several years myself and three writer friends (Emily included) have been doing writing retreats. Usually 3 or 4 days where we sneak away from our regular daily lives and hole ourselves away to focus on nothing but writing. We’ve been fortunate that one of us had a lovely beach house we could use and it made our twice yearly trips (usually February and September) even more of a treat. Three years ago though I moved away from Texas and these trips became more difficult. When I would go to Texas it was to see family and there simply wasn’t time to carve out for those writing retreats. But this past November we decided it was time for another one so I flew into Austin and together we piled into the minivan (this time with a very pregnant Emily and a rather chatty toddler) and we hit the road for the five plus hour drive down to Bolivar peninsula. We had these traditions with these trips, we’d usually stop at Chili’s in Houston and then make our way to Galveston where we’d load onto the ferry that would take us over to the smaller strip of land that housed the beautiful Crystal Beach.

I suspect that most of you might not have heard of Crystal Beach or Bolivar peninsula until perhaps this past week when Ike came ashore. Now our little treasure trove is front in center in national news and clearly not in a good way. While we haven’t heard anything for certain since our friend doesn’t live down their full-time and hasn’t yet tried to make a trip to check, we feel positive that our lovely retreat was lost along with I’d guess 90% of the houses and businesses along the peninsula.

It wasn’t just writing retreats though that mark my memories of this blue house on stilts, it was a family vacation spot a few times, a place where I went with several friends for just a weekend away at the beach. And since Ike’s landfall and the first pictures started showing up on the news, I’ve simply been heartbroken. (before the storm, where you can see rows and rows of houses) Now I only lost a place where I have memories, I didn’t lose property or land or belongings or loved ones, and I can only imagine how those people will begin to put their lives back together. But I have mourned along with those gulf coasters this week, longing to see that blue house rising up out of the flood waters only to be crushed by picture after picture of nothing but rubble.

I’m one of those beach people. You know, how some people prefer the mountains – The Professor is one of those, but me, I’m all about the beach. The waves, the sand in my toes and the sun warming my face. I can sit there and watch that water for hours. Or walk along the shore and pick up shimmering pieces of sea glass. It is a refuge for me, the one place on earth that fills my soul more than any other.

I’m going to Texas again in a few weeks and we’re going on another writing retreat, one we’ve been planning for a while now. But this time we had to find a new place, somewhere with less memories and less familiarity. We’ll still have a great time, and we’ll be productive and still laugh ourselves silly, but I also know that there will be a bit of sadness with us this time too.

My heart goes out to the people in the gulf coast affected by this terrible storm.

Shortly after my first book (a chick lit) hit the shelves back in 2003, an acquaintance confided that she almost couldn’t finish reading it because she felt as if she were prying into my life. “It was just so… intimate!” she’d said.  “You know… all that sex.”  I was equal parts astonished that she actually thought it was autobiographical and flattered that she thought I lived (or once lived) such an exciting life. I mean, I love my life, but it’s vastly different from the fictional worlds I create for my heroines.

But after I thought about it, I could see where she might have drawn that conclusion. While I’m well past chick lit age, I imbued the heroine of that book with characteristics and features similar to my own; she was a journalist (as I was in a former life); and planted her in my home city. Still, she was not me. I wasn’t writing about myself as much as I was writing what I found interesting and what I knew.

That story, REINVENTING OLIVIA, was born one night when my husband and I were out to dinner at a trendy downtown restaurant. As we approached, I heard dance music wafting from the loft condos above the restaurant. When I looked up, I saw a hand holding a drink over the balcony rail. I thought, wow, if I were young and single that’s where I’d live… and the story took off on its own. So, while Olivia was most decidedly not me, she was definitely a child of my imagination, born out of what-ifs and shades of possibility.

I’ll confess that within the pages of my thirteen books I’ve drawn strongly on my own life experiences (because the first rule of writing is write what you know).  I’ve borrowed characteristics from real-life villains (uhh-hmm - bosses) and given them their comeuppance on the page, or rewritten an unsatisfying true-to-life experience so that it ended happily, but the majority of my plots and characters come from the most unexpected places.  That’s definitely the case with my book WITH VIOLETS (October 2008, Avon A trade paperback) – written under my historical nom de plume, Elizabeth Robards.

I’ve always been infatuated with the French Impressionists. So when my husband and I went to Paris, I was anticipating a daytrip to Giverny, Claude Monet’s home and famous gardens. Before we boarded a train at the Gare Saint-Lazare, to make our way to Giverny, we stopped at the Musée Marmottan to see Monet’s famous ‘Impression, Sunrise’ (Impression: Soleil Levant), the painting that launched the French Impressionist movement.

Little did I know, but I was about to meet painter Berthe Morisot on the second floor of the Musée Marmottan. Not literally, of course, because she died in 1895.  However, I saw her work for the first time and a photograph of her with her family. Something about the photo haunted me and urged me to research her life. In doing so, I discovered the tale of a deeply complex, richly talented woman who bucked nineteenth century convention to become one of the world’s greatest artists and the heroine of WITH VIOLETS.

The research and the story were labors of love. And while the Berthe Morisot I wrote is not really like me – well, except for her strong, independent streak and a great passion for what she loved – I think there’s a little bit of every woman in her.

So, when a fertile imagination has its way with an interesting subject… Well, that’s how stories are born. Whether or not the plot is autobiographical, a writer can’t help but infuse a little of herself into the story.

Have you ever related so to a fictional characters that she seemed real?  Who was it and what about her grabbed you?

One lucky poster will win one of my books… Can’t wait to hear from you!

Comment to win a book by Bella Andre!

Bella Andre, sexy author…I mean author of sexy romances, is with us today! And I have to admit that I’ve been quite taken by her recent covers. There is a certain striking resemblance to a porcupine sans quills in that locker room. Quite an impressive…locker…on that cover. I will demand later as to how you caught a picture of me! For now, I shall preen.

-Damn, I was hoping we could sneak this one by you, Mr. Jaunty!

Nothing gets by me, my precious! Bad Boys of Football…I’m a Bad Boy and game for anything to do with seduction. *saucy eye wink* With all of these bad boys running around in your tales…you’ve been watching me work, haven’t you? I shall investigate this matter later, I do promise you!

Unfortunately the ladies are pestering me to stop talking about myself. And our undying love. *grumbles* I do want to hear more about these strapping football players who have been immortalized (sans quills) on your covers.

Tell us about the books.

GAME FOR ANYTHING is about a star quarterback and the image consultant brought in to tame him. Only, they have a secret past! Ty Calhoun is one of the yummiest heroes I’ve ever written and I had so much fun watching the sparks fly between Ty and Julie Spencer, the girl he never forgot from high school. I’m thrilled that this book was picked as a Cosmo Red Hot Read this August. One of the biggest thrills of my life was buying a copy of the magazine and turning to the excerpt of my book!

GAME FOR SEDUCTION is Dominic DiMarco’s story, and unlike Ty Calhoun (who is a charismatic ladies man), Dominic is a tall, dark man of few words who doesn’t let anything stand in his way of getting what he wants….and he wants Melissa. Badly. Even though she’s his sport’s agent daughter. Even though she’s too young for him. Even though she seems so innocent.

What’s next?

I’m working on a romantic suspense series about wildland firefighters called HOTSHOTS: Men of Fire. In a nutshell these guys are the SEALS of firefighting – addiction to adrenaline, bound by the brotherhood. These elite firefighters fight the fires everyone else runs from. Here’s the back of book blurb for WILD HEAT, the first book in the series (coming May 2009):

HE’S A HOTSHOT FIREFIGHTER ADDICTED TO RISK.

SHE’S THE SULTRY BEAUTY HE NEVER SAW COMING.

Maya Jackson doesn’t sleep with strangers. Until the night grief sent her to the nearest bar and into the arms of the most explosive lover she’s ever had. Six months later, the dedicated arson investigator is coming face to face with him again. Gorgeous, grinning Logan Cain. Her biggest mistake. Now her number-one suspect in a string of deadly wildfires.

Risking his life on a daily basis is what gets Logan up in the morning. As leader of the elite Tahoe Pines Hotshot Crew, he won’t back down from a blaze-or from beautiful, lethal Maya Jackson. She may have seduced him with her tears and her passion, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before Logan lets down his guard again. Until Maya’s life is threatened. With his natural-born hero instincts kicking in, Logan vows to protect the woman sworn to bring him down. And as desire reignites, nothing-not the killer fire or the killer hot on their trail-can douse the flames…

Wow, that sounds…hot. Would you consider a hot and sexy porcupine romance?

Um, can I get back to you on that?

What about a hot and sexy porcupine romance that involves fiery porcupines engaging in daring deeds – and the women who love them?

Okay, now you’ve got me. I will call my agent right away and tell her all about it. Talk about a hook!

I knew I could convince you! You frequently include food and the pleasure found in divine cuisine in your novels, a topic near and dear to my heart. What is your favorite dish to cook? Anything with pine nuts?

Me? Cook? Oh no, you must be thinking about my partners in crime, Jami Alden and Monica McCarty. I wish. In fact I have all sorts of cookbooks and torn-out recipes to prove how strong my desire to cook really is! One day, I hope!

Cooking, desire and hope. I like it. Let’s talk dessert. What is your favorite doughnut?

Chocolate frosting. Which I promptly lick off before throwing the doughy part away. The doughnut is just the holder.

Licked frosting…wow. Just…wow. I think we must run away together…

Thanks for hosting me on your blog, Mr. J! It’s been a pleasure.

- And I’d be thrilled to give away a copy of one of my backlist to someone who comments.

Because I grew up in Florida, fall and the back-to-school season has always been associated with a sort of bonus vacation time…now everyone might not think hurricane season is a good thing but when you live in-land you get the days off and some nice weather.  You also get a chance to spend time at home with your family.  Everything gets canceled work, school, activities.  So there’s nothing to do.  No where to go.

Now I think my opinion would be different if I had to evacuate and live in a shelter for days on end, but that has never been my experience.

I also like how the focus of the news moves away from crime and all the things that are wrong with the world and shifts to what we can do to help the community.  A big storm like a hurricane brings everyone together as nothing else really can.   I like the fact that for a week or so we are all joined together in worrying about the upcoming storm and preparing for it.  You get to see neighbors that you don’t usually have time to talk to.

We go and volunteer at local shelters and get to hear stories from people who would never would have met otherwise.

I know that hurricanes are dangerous and bring destruction a lot of times but they always come, year after year and we have to accept them and find the good parts of them.

Is there anything like this for you?

Katherine

Well, it’s September, the week after Labor Day, so pretty much no matter where you’re reading this in the country, the kids have gone back to school.

If you’re a mom, you might be relieved to have the school-year schedule back again. On the other hand, maybe you enjoyed the summers because you didn’t have to enforce bedtime so stringently.

Or maybe your baby has gone off to Kindergarten for the first time. Letting go must be hard, but your sweetie is probably having a blast while you’re at home or work fretting.

I’m a teacher, and I don’t relish the beginning of school. It seriously cuts into my writing time! Usually I slip into my own routine, whereby I get teacher stuff and writing stuff accomplished pretty efficiently.

Not so much this year. I’ve been back at work for over a month, and I just haven’t found a routine that works for me. Last year I got up and worked in the morning, but this year I feel too tired. I’ve been working a bit in the afternoons, but—again—I’m usually kind of tired. I think the problem is that I just started a new book. It doesn’t have much momentum yet, and writing it feels more like swimming through molasses than speeding down the keyboard highway.

But eventually I’m going to have to crack down.

So what about you? Has the transition back to school been easy or hard? Or is it just an annoyance when you hit that 20 mph school zone?

When I’m not writing, or talking about writing or whining about writing, I do have other things in my life that I enjoy. Reading, movies, time with The Professor. And I have a hobby. A hobby that I love – scrapbooking – but I’ve had a hard time doing since I moved here to TN. Yes, I realize it’s been 3 years, but it’s just taken me a while to find my space. When I’ve scrapped here at the house before I’ve pulled all my junk out into the living room and made a holy mess that lived there for a week while I worked on a project. Well, a couple of weekends ago, I moved some furniture around in the guest room, did the same in the office and found me a spot to set up a permanent scrapping station.

Since then I’ve been working on my wedding album, something I’ve been wanting to do again since we moved here. It’s been a daunting project. For one, it’s the first album I’ve done for myself that’s the larger 12×12 size – before I’d only ever done the standard 8 1/2×11. So I was nervous about moving to the larger format, but I’m loving it.

I had to buy some new supplies, new embellishments for the project, and while I don’t love every page I’ve done, I think the album – as a whole – is coming out quite well. Ultimately I think the appeal of this hobby (the fastest growing in the country, by the way) is because it really gets back out roots from when we were little girls and we’d sit down with the construction paper and our crayons and the glue and scissors. It’s essentially nothing more than cutting and pasting. And it’s just the most fun ever.

I also enjoy this because I think it works different creative cogs and gears than my writing does. And it’s a creative endeavor I can do with my hands. After working for hours at a time on the computer, it’s nice to sit at my scrapping table with my pictures and all my beautiful papers and make something memorable for me and The Professor that we can enjoy forever.

So how about you? Are you a scrapper? Or do you have another hobby that you love to do?

I have a confession. I love audible.com.

Now, if you don’t know about audible, here’s the lowdown. It’s a website that sells downloadable audio books. Don’t get me wrong, I adore actually reading books. There’s nothing like curling up in bed or on the sofa with a great romance. It’s one of my favorite things in the world. But there are times when it’s better to listen to a book. While driving a car for example.

And, hey, I live out in the boondocks. I’m in the car a lot. Besides, I simply don’t have time to read all the books I’d like to read. So Audible is a big help on that front. This fall, Audible is helping me keep up with the election coverage too. I’ve downloaded (for free!) speeches from both of the political conventions. I already know how I want to vote, but it’s nice to feel informed.

I listen to a lot of non-fiction on Audible. Doug Fine’s smart and funny Farewell, My Subaru chronicled his adventures in green living. Harold Kushner’s Living a Life That Matters took an ethical and spiritual look how to make a difference in the world. Stumbling on Happiness was a scientific and  often hysterical exploration of why we’re not as happy as we think we should be.

But there’s great fiction out there too. I’ve listened to Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Material series on Audible as well as Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. I adore the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters and it’s narrator, Barbara Rosenblat brings so much to the stories, I can’t imagine reading them on my own.

Mostly, if I download something to listen to (as opposed to buying the book and reading it myself), it’s because I’m interested, but not sure if it’s really worth my time to read it myself. I have such little time to actually read these days, that when I do curl up with a book, it’s sacred time. I want it to be something I know I’m going to love. Something that will transport me to another world. In short, I want it to be a romance.

But since I’m just one acceptance speech away from finishing up the political conventions, I’ve got an opening on my ipod. Anybody have any recommendations for excellent books to listen to? 

I discovered that I love historical romances about five years ago. I came to the romance genre late, having been side-tracked by all the books that I thought I should be reading. In the 90s, I put myself on a steady diet of literary fiction with a particular emphasis on the classics.

Certainly many of those books were good, but often the author’s subliminal message seemed to be: I’m miserable. I’ve made my characters miserable. Now, my dear reader, it’s your turn. Eventually, after slogging through Anna Karenina, I vowed that I would never read another book by a dead Russian author without a bottle of Prozac and a court order.

I was primed and ready for something new. Imagine me, bleary-eyed from squinting at scores of footnotes, stumbling onto an entire category of books with historical settings that promised happy endings. The happy endings were, in fact, guaranteed. Sign me up! I thought and went on to enjoy a lot of them. Here’s my take on what I’ve read over the past few years…

Top Reasons to Admire the Heroine in a Historical Romance:

1. She manages to be cheerful in a time before plumbing moved indoors
2. She is poised in the face of plague, pestilence, and rude relatives
3. She keeps it together even when meeting the king, who frequently plans to toss her in a sanitarium or convent for being unnaturally capable at running her own life
4. She outsmarts people dozens of years her senior
5. She reforms rakes, rescues children, and brings powerful men who often look like Gerard Butler to their knees
6. And she does it all while trussed up in corsets and dragging around twenty-five pounds of fabric that should have been curtains but instead are her dress.

She may not wear Jimmy Choos, but she is indeed fabulous, and how could any woman not love her?

Warm Wishes,
Kimber
www.frostfiction.com

P.S. Alas, my book release in February is not a historical romance, but I can promise you two things. While Tammy Jo (my main character) is not quite Jane Austen in flip-flops and jeans, she can hold her own in the face of catastrophe and alpha males. And the author of Would-Be Witch (a.k.a. me) has a subliminal message for readers and it’s this: I’m happy, and you should be, too. Keep reading books about characters who earn and get their happy endings! It’s what we all deserve.