Accidental Pirates - and more

 

The Court of Peers

Chris and Kenny step through a crack in a cave wall and come out somewhere else entirely — a place where a man named Court Barnes is fighting for his life against a knife-wielding attacker.

The boys help him bandage the wound, and Court leads them back to his hidden camp: a lean-to cave stocked with pistols, a sword, and a warning that this isn't the Caribbean they'd recognize from any map.

It's the moment the book stops being an ordinary cave hike and becomes something else — and Court becomes the closest thing the boys have to a trustworthy adult in a very dangerous place.

Accidental Pirates is on sale this month

The sale ends by the end of the month. 

Speaking of Accidental Pirates, the sequel, Accidental Wizard comes out next month. I don't know if I'm allowed to give any tidbits to whet your appetite for this rip-roaring sequel, but I'm going to do so. I'm doing final edits. I would love to see some renderings of the scene surrounding this sentence:

All three of us were down, struggling in the pale moonlight on the bloody ground against the survivors of the blood pack.--From Chapter 12 of Accidental Wizard.

I'm dying to tell you more about it, but I'll have to restrain myself. I can say that the story is pure adventure from chapter one to chapter 31. The boys find themselves in a hostile environment where even those who profess to be their allies treat them terribly. Magic is in the air and it has a bite.

Grab Accidental Pirates now and be ready to snatch Accidental Wizard next month.

I'm also more than half done writing book three. 

Fun Fact:

The Mamelukes of Egypt replenished their numbers by buying boys from the Caucasus who were eight to ten years old and training them up to be warriors. They formed the nobility and learned nothing but the art of war. The Beys and their 10,000 warriors lived in relative luxury off the beaten down populace of Egypt. They kept the appointed Pasha, the nominal ruler, confined in the Citadel in Cairo. Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey ruled at the time Napoleon and his troops landed near Alexandria.

Bonaparte divided his infantry into five divisions under Desaix, Kleber, d'Hilliers (replaced by Menou), Reynier, and Bon. General Donmartin commanded the artillery. General Caffarelli supervised the engineers and the scientific expedition. General Alexandre Dumas commanded the cavalry. Naturally, Berthier was Bonaparte's chief of staff. During the landing, 19 men drowned. 

After landing, Bonaparte ordered 3 divisions, those of Kleber, Menou, and Bon, to march on Alexandria. (I note with interest that his first objective in Egypt was Alexandria. In 1800, he would move on Alessandria in Italy. Desaix would be killed in battle near Marengo and Kleber would be slain by an assassin in Egypt on the same day). There was no road to Alexandria and neither water nor food. The French troops would have to take the city to find water, as they had not been provided with canteens.

Bonaparte, Caffarelli (with one wooden leg), Donmartin, and Dumas all led the way--on foot. By eight in the morning, they came near the outer fortifications of Alexandria. Bonaparte ordered his troops to attack.

--The above is condensed from Herold J. Christopher's Bonaparte in Egypt. 

 

 

Box of Disappointment

 

The refit of Xanadu continues without help from Rush, Olivia, ELO, or Coleridge. A box of disappointment arrived today. I ordered it last week. I should've known better than to order through P. Andora Co. How did I come to request this delivery of dismay?

It's not a long story, but it goes back to before we closed on the new digs. When male offspring came to have a look at the place, we happened to look at the furnace filter. It looked like a bad and fatal case of black lung. Fortunately, there was a new filter sitting by the unit and we swapped in the clean one. After closing and move in, I thought it would be prudent to acquire an additional filter for change in the future. I noted the size on the old filter and went to the local hardware store to procure the ready replacement. 

I thought it would also be prudent to make sure the standby filter fit properly. <Morgan Freeman voice begin> It did not fit. <Morgan Freeman voice end> I compared the sizes as printed on the filters. They were the same. However, small print indicated the new filter was several millimeters bigger in the troublesome dimension. The local store gladly took the return of the filter, and I went online to find filters that matched down to the millimeter. Not-the-Nile store made the order easy and the delivery arrived within an entirely acceptable time frame. It's a box of six, because the filters are much cheaper by the half-dozen.

Once again, I decided to check the fit. It did not fit.

What?! The measurements all corresponded precisely--I had ordered the same exact size--but the fit was off by more than an inch, not mere millimeters. I had a big box of regret, failure in a six-pack.

There was a mystery here. A little investigation and a tape measure provided the clues I needed. Both the original black lung filter and the handy spare had been cut down from the size printed on them to remove a couple inches, and then reassembled, still bearing the now-false printed size. I suppose that if the previous owner could resize the filters, so can I. However, I would have preferred to have ordered the correct size and avoided the manual resizing.

By the way, I know where you can get a good deal on some furnace filters. 

I've saved the best for last.

There is good news. Out of the blue--even though I had been hoping for a response for many weeks--came a thunderbolt of fortuity. Raconteur Press has informed me that my sequel to Accidental Pirates has been accepted for publication. Of course, there will be rounds of editing and cover creation and all the tedious stuff in between the conditional acceptance and the final product, but I've already heard words of joy from happy readers who have fallen in love with Chris and Kenny and their adventures. Get Accidental Pirates here.

Wait! There's more! I was on the Blasters & Blades podcast with JR Handley and Jana Brown this week. I don't know how long before it goes live, but I'll post a link when it does.

Books for Boys

I've got Accidental Pirates on my mind because I dropped in on Les Freres Corses this week. They're not bookworms by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think they've ever even read a chapter book from beginning to end. Accidental Pirates has changed that. When I stopped in for a short visit. Chris, the brother upon whom the character telling the story in the book is based, immediately grabbed the book and showed me that he was reading it, pointing out that he only had one chapter to go. "They should make this into a movie!" he exclaimed.

That response makes all the time I spent writing Accidental Pirates a complete success. Getting even one boy to read is a victory. Most of the boys I know--arguably, not that many--don't read much at all. Many boys do read, but young male readership has dropped off steadily over the last decade or two. In fact, some report (by which I mean the standard search engine) that reading for pleasure among 11-16 year old boys has dropped steeply in the last 20 years. Only 12% of Gen Z boys read books. Why? 

I suppose there is no single reason. Casting around for suspects, I know that video games provide immediate feedback for less effort invested than reading. Video games require less imagination and often channel non-stop excitement--a steady stream of mind crack that rapidly addicts the player to the immediate rush feedback. The digital rush leaves the mind in a state of decay with nothing to show for the time spent. I liked video games as kid, but I couldn't play them continuously. I had to go to the arcade and the quarters or nickels soon came to an end. Video games were a rare delight. Now many players spend fewer hours at a full-time job that they do with their eyes glued to the gaming screen. I still like video games, but they can't hold my interest like they did when I was a kid. At any rate, getting boys to read faces direct competition from video games.

Suspect number two is the short video. Boys can watch an endless scroll of short videos on youtube and other sites. Watching short videos requires even less effort than playing video games. There's a lot to be learned on these videos, but mostly they absorb time and brain cells with little long-term benefit. Don't ask me how I know.

We should look at another suspect in this crime against boys: Publishers. Who runs the publishing companies and decides what books get published? It's not men. Women and girls read more than men and boys, so it's natural to expect that more books directed to women and girls would be published--but boys suffer for it. It's a truism that most girls will read books with boys as the main characters. The opposite is not true. Boys rarely read and enjoy books with girls as the main characters. Boys want action and adventure. They want to be able to imagine themselves as the heroes who save the day, solve the crime, and vanquish the foe. Tea parties, frilly dresses, girls engaged in long conversations, and even tomboys doing fun and weird things (I'm talking about you, Pippi) don't hold much appeal for boys. Put a girl with red pigtails on the cover and you turn away 90% of boys who would be interested if a boy were featured. Maybe boys are sexist. Maybe I'm sexist. I don't think I am, but I do know that I can usually tell after reading a paragraph or a page whether a man or a woman wrote the story. Most women tell stories with a different tone and emphasize different aspects that do men. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I came to recognize the difference at an early age and realized that I usually preferred the male tone, even though I continue to enjoy stories written by talented women.

I'm happy to report that Raconteur Press has taken up arms against this sea of suspects. Raconteur Press continues to publish adventure books for boys to promote the dreams that come by exploring the undiscovered country of an exciting tale. RP has already published several great adventures for boys in a variety of genres:

Dreams of Fire and Gold by Fred Philips

Meteor Men by Scott Schad

Boy's Own Starship by Christopher Nuttal

I've Got This by Frederick Key

Fossil Force by Graham Bradley

Accidental Pirates by Stanley Wheeler 

I've probably missed a couple titles, but if you have a boy who reads, or who would read if he had the books before him, you can't go wrong with any of these titles. 

 

 

 

 

Hard Time in Kharput

 

The sequel to Accidental Pirates has been sent to the publisher for consideration. Chris and Kenny are thrown into a kingdom in turmoil facing treachery within and enemies without. Chris has been drafted to replace the blood mage - and he finds the job has a serious downside. Kenny wields enchanted steel against a host of enemies. Together they are the kingdom's only hope against a new evil.

I've been doing a lot of reading about Enoch - Genesis 6, Moses 7 & 8, as well as The Book of Enoch, a long with A Brief History of Time and an Alan Dean Foster novel. I may post about these at some point, but at I haven't yet finished any of the books, so I'll post a fun fact from something I did finish - or at least I think I did. This is condensed from chapter 11 of Crusaders by Dan Jones:

Fun Fact:

During an expedition to Egypt, King Baldwin I died after eating a breakfast of fresh fish. His body was salted, spiced, and transported back to Jerusalem to be buried beside his brother Godrey at The Holy Sepulchre. Baldwin of Bourcq raced to Jerusalem, beating the other contenders, to be anointed king and was later crowned in Bethlehem. Nearly sixty, he had been Count of Edessa for almost twenty years. Frankish power and Crusader confidence had been dealt a severe blow at the Field of Blood. The fate of the Crusader kingdoms depended on European help.

Ilghazi, the victor of the Field of Blood, died in 1122--his death probably wasn't from the fish--and the Franks looked to Aleppo again with greedy eyes. September 13, 1122, Joscelin, Count of Edessa, was captured by Balak, Ilghazi's nephew who had stepped in to fill his uncle's slippers. After being transported, sew inside a camel skin, Joscelin was locked up in the fortress of Kharput. Then Baldwin himself was also captured and locked up with Joscelin. The Crusader fortunes seemed fated never to recover from the defeat at the Field of Blood.

A year later, Ilghazi's son Timurtash succeeded Balak after the latter's death in May 1124. Baldwin arranged to pay Timurtash a ransom for his release. However, Baldwin had built up some ill will about his capture; he failed to pay the ransom as agreed, preparing to attack Timurtash instead. The other good news for the Crusaders was the capture of Tyre.

Baldwin II arrived at the walls of Aleppo in October with his Timurtash tax in the form of an army at his back. Additionally, he had among his forces the troops of a Muslim ally, Dubays Ibn Sadaqa, whom he had promised to install as the commander of Aleppo in place of Timurtash. Baldwin laid siege to the city until January 1125, when Muslim forces began raiding Antiochene territory. Baldwin returned to Jerusalem. A stalemate between the Franks and the Muslims had developed and could only be broken by an influx of new warriors from the west or a uniting of Islamic forces.

 

Next week I'm scheduled for a podcast interview. I'll post a link when it's available. 

 

 

Ardneh's Sword

I finished reading Fred Saberhagen's Ardneh's Sword a few days ago. As with the earlier work in the series, Empire of the East, I stopped about 75 percent of the way through to read another book. I needed the palate cleansed before I could go on, because the pacing was off for me. The slow build to the conclusion was a steady diet of the same bland questions. I did give it 4 stars because it began and ended well--sort of. The story takes place a thousand years after the events of EotE. Chance, Rolf's heir is off with an expedition to find the titular item. Under the direction of a scholar, he cares for an owl that may have the capacity for speech, but the speech is a dialect of gibberish. The owl is wounded mysteriously while bringing Chance Ardneh's Key; this item comes and goes from around Chance's neck at will. Chance meets a young, redheaded boy and as well as a girl, the boy's twin, and a grandmotherly figure. Turns out that these three are the same entity, a djinn named Zalmoxis, or is it the mighty demon Avenarius? That question persists until near the end of the book.

Meanwhile, the scholarly wagon train is threatened by bandits and attempts to take refuge at a sanctuary of healers--although what they're doing way out there in the blasted lands, or whatever the desolation is call, I never quite understood. There, Chance meets Abigail, who has some magic sense and takes the items left by the dead sorceress who was part of the scholarly wagon train to the treasure. The healers do take them to a cave. The bandits attack; there's some magic; Draffut returns to route the bandits for a time.The Beast Lord then goes off on some other errand--like Reverend Tim Tom--taking part of the caravan with him while Chance, Abigail, Zalmoxis, and others take another way looking for Ardneh's workshop.

As you might expect, the bandits follow with an eye toward the prize. The prize at last becomes revealed. Ardneh's sword isn't one item, but many--spandex suits that turn the wearers into pagan gods with no recollection of their former life. One of these dispatches Avenarius. The many gods go their ways. Abigail and Chance elect not to don this armor of the gods and go make marriage plans. The end.

I was most disappointed by the fact that the big battle at the end of EoftE promised a better and different world. However, a thousand years later, the world appeared to be pretty much the same as before, albeit with fewer demons. The owl's role never amounted to much. Avenarius as an antagonist turned out to be a dud; his demise wasn't attributable to any heroics by Chance. The matter of who was spying for the bandits, and the suspicious activity of one of the minor characters was never resolved, as near as I can remember. I'm not a fan of the resolution, but donning the armor of the gods was a completely unexpected twist that was intriguing. One must wonder whether the humans were worse off with the demons or the new gods that were Ardneh's cure for that affliction. I would have enjoyed the book more if it had been shorter. Again, I gave it 4 stars, so my criticisms should be considered in that light.

The sequel to Accidental Pirates has been written and received a round of editing. I'll make one more complete read/edit pass and send it in for consideration for publication. I'll be the first to admit that Accidental Pirates has a slower start than I prefer. The sequel, on the other hand, hits the afterburners at the end of the first short chapter. Although it does gear down for the curves, it never hits the brakes. The last several chapters are a white hot burn to the finish with no shortage of casualties along the way as the boys face danger from the blood pack, turncoats, magical beasts, treachery, and the Dragon Queen herself. It's a glorious charge into peril to help good prevail against evil.