Pirates
a vocab word that’s also a book launch announcement.
Also, yeargh. Mateys.
Way way back in the mid 1990s, I had a weird dream.
In the dream, I was a runaway indentured servant or maybe slave, and I was literally running across a big front lawn, away from a big white-pillared mansion of a house, to the banks of a very swampy river. I was holding a beautiful rust-and-russet dress in heavy velvet Renaissance style, draped over my arm, and in the dream I knew I’d stolen it from that house. I saw my good friend Mara swimming a little ways out, going toward a huge galleon-looking ship looming in the distance, half-shrouded by mist. I saw a shadowy figure, like a humanoid shape made out of smoke, that wavered in the air and beckoned to me. Then, behind me, a steward of the big house (he looked like one of my college acting profs, Joel) came running out of the house, yelling at me to stop. I plunged into the muddy river and swam toward Mara and the smoky ghost, the dress still clamped under my arm. Then I woke up.
I never usually remember my dreams, even weird or bad ones, and so when I woke up, I made sure to write this dream down. It sat in a random notebook (I was a daily journaler at the time) and stayed there as a dream record until a couple years later, in the late ‘90s. I picked up the dream and, fascinated, decided to continue; to see what would happen next. I decided that the misty ship was a pirate vessel, and as I continued, it became a long story about someone named Gemmanalia (Gem instead of Jenn, get it?) who would discover her lost past and become a powerful pirate captain.
That story, along with all the gloriously delightful piratical research I got to do for it, was so fricking fun that I added a sequel, this time centered around a gentleman thief, an archetype I’ve long been in love with. To round it out and tie up loose ends, as well as to give a collection of riddles I’d acquired* a world in which they’d be spoken, I concluded the series with a third story that filled the role of your basic open-ended adventure story closure.
Pirates (no, not the baseball team)
I put the finishing touches on this trilogy of tales whilst in grad school for my MFA: I attended Naropa U. from 1999 till my graduation in 2001, and I finished the polished Crowns of Gold (as the entirety was now called) in 2000. As most of my Naropian professors notoriously hated Fantasy as a genre, I conscripted author and adjunct (and partner to beloved Jack Collom) Jenny Heath to take me on as an independent study for a whole semester, to work on this book. We would soon call each other ‘Pirate Jenny’ after the song from Threepenny Opera, and we’d partake in long sessions of reading aloud, workshopping, critiquing, revising, and tea-sipping at her home in Boulder, till it was finished and gradable (and, we thought, publishable).
During this time, I began 2 additional stories to round the whole enchilada out to a more publishable-novel-length book of 5, but those never ended up in what I think of as the final draft: for one thing, Pirate Jenny never went over those extra two with me and with her expertise; we only worked the OG trilogy. One of those extra stories is incomplete too, though it’s actually pretty good (at least, what’s there is good, if I remember correctly). I wish to Davy Jones I had any idea how I had wanted that story to continue. I do know it involves a lady city swordfighter losing an eye in a duel, but for the life of me… But I have printed out these two pieces of delicious dregs I’ve dragged from this pirate ship’s bilge, and plan on taking a gander at them for kicks and giggles and drams of rum. (And maybe a prequel? Maybe a prequel.)
*I had been employed as a freelance actor that summer, playing historical Boulder figure Mary Rippon, and my job was to walk up and down the Pearl St. Mall, armed with lots of knowledge about Rippon and Boulder in its infancy (like, 1880s as I recall). The idea was to have lots of cool historical stuff available for mallgoers to explore at the Mall’s centennial. Or, 150-ennial. I had a companion actor to accompany me on my historical meanderings, one Chuck Wilcox. A retired actor, he still freelanced as Shakespeare on the lunching lawns before CSF shows, and headed an educational theatrical tour that a couple of us from acting school did one Spring in Wyoming, where we performed Shakespeare for the high schoolers and a dramatized folktale based on Vasilisa, Baba Yaga and Koschei the Deathless from Russian lore for the elementary kids. But for this Mall gig, he dressed up as Rocky Mountain Joe, and, since no mallgoers usually cared to ask us anything about history, we amused our employed hours with nerdings out. Some of his were old Anglo-Saxon riddles. Some had recorded answers, some didn’t. But he praised my parsings-out, bringing me more that had stumped him for years—he averred I had some kind of near-magical insight into figuring these out, but I thought it was probably just because I was used to reading and analyzing poetry. But anyway.
Crowns of Gold
So now you know the story of the process. How about an excerpt? I’ve actually done a few readings from this book before, a couple at the grad school wherein I was finishing it up, another couple times at faculty readings at some different colleges where I taught. And so I could have shared one of those saucy fight scenes, but this clip hit me recently, as I went back through it after so many years of not looking at it at all, let alone closely enough for revisions. I found it charming, and exciting in a sort of D&D way, if you know what I mean: that delicious anticipation when your party of adventurers first enter the boss monster’s cavern. Or the scenes in the Mines of Moria (can you tell I’ve been listening to LOTR again?) where we don’t know what we’re up against, only it doesn’t feel right, and it’s so so dark, and what’s that drumming in the deep…?
So here’s this, from the end of the first part of Crowns of Gold. At this point in the story, we’re right at the end of our treasure map-led journey.
~
From Crowns of Gold, Part One: ‘Sweet Revenge’
By sunset, Gemma and her half of the landing-party send up a flare to signal to Captain Jonquil that they have found a cave. Painted in tar on the right side of the entrance is the very same that adorns the last of the inscription on her leg. She realizes now it must be her father’s signature mark.
Of the ten men they brought to land, three get posted outside the cave mouth with two pistols and a musket to guard, and the remaining seven enter the mountain. The cave tunnels into darkness.
“I wish my father had used my other leg for a map of the mountain’s innards,” Gemma whispers to the Captain as they crunch over gravel by torchlight.
“I too. But the tunnel seems to be leading only one way.”
She frowns into the round, stone darkness. The tunnel forms a hall wide enough for three men, taller than the tallest of them. It could be nothing more than the smooth-walled hallway of a house, but for the gravel underfoot that soon turns to sand, the smell of rock and clean water, and the distant echo of drops hitting the limestone floor.
One of the men behind murmurs, “That be the sound o’ towers building themselves.”
“Aye, mate.” They all speak in awed whispers, as does any man who walks in darkness amid Nature’s architects at work. Gemma passes a stalagmite, and runs her hand over it. It is rough as coral, and wet. The smell in here is clean, mineral, so unlike the sun and fishy salt of the sea.
A lone bat, startled, flutters past above their heads. They all jump. The fine hairs on Gemma’s forearms stand to attention. She can barely sense the creature’s high-pitched scree. She shudders.
“Shiver me planking,” one of the men mutters. Captain Jonquil is stoically silent.
A thought occurs to Gemma, as they tiptoe on. “Didn’t you say, Uncle, that my father was discharged because of black magic?”
“Aye, that I did.”
A pause.
The Captain’s voice sounds different as he says, “Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” she inhales, breezily says, “I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but,” she pauses, peering into the palpable darkness ahead, “I can’t help but wonder what he may have here guarding his precious store.”
Nearly on the word, their torch blows out.
Darkness fills the spaces around them like soup. Gemma jolts, and freezes. The torch gives a whiff of pitch as it dies. The pirate holding it burst-whispers a curse.
The pirates stand still, the rush of each man’s breath reassuring the rest of them that they are all still together. Gemma can feel her uncle’s tension humming. It is utterly black. She passes a hand afore her face. She can see nothing but swirling darkness and the strange patterns her eyes invent in the empty air. The man behind her trembles audibly.
“John Rope?” whispers the Captain.
“Aye, C-Cap’n?” John Rope’s hoarse whisper breaks and careens off the stone walls around us. Water drips once, twice, thrice.
“Light the torch anew, John Rope,” the Captain’s voice whispers back, immensely calm.
John Rope makes a noise like a strangled whimper. “I-I can’t, Cap’n, sir.”
“Can’t?” The intensity behind his voice turns it from a whisper to a growl. It cuts through the thick darkness.
John Rope can barely stutter for fright. “It...it won’t light again, sir. It won’t light. I tried, sir. It won’t--”
“Enough.”
John Rope falls silent, swallows once. Gemma’s uncle takes in a breath, and lets it out in a soft puff.
As though his exhale had ignited it, there appears in front of them a small bead of light, faintly yellowish in color, bobbing and swaying in the air.
“What is it?”
“A torch?”
“Someone’s running towards us!”
“It’s a lamp!”
Gemma and Captain Jonquil are silent, pondering the bobbing light, not moving. The men shift. Less than faintly, a strain of music threads its way nearer from the direction of the light. It sounds like a pipe, playing an old sad strain. It is barely apparent to the ears, an echo of an echo. The music does to the men what the light didn’t: They take a step or two towards it, hope sounding in their breath, their toes.
“Let us follow it, Cap’n.”
“Aye, Cap’n. It ought to lead us to the treasure.”
The Captain says nothing. Gemma murmurs to herself, “Will-o’-the-wisp,” but the five pirates have already pushed past towards the small light, which now dances, leaving curlicues on the blackness. The men break out into a run, some yelling for the Jonquils to follow. The light bobs. Gemma sucks in air. The Captain shouts,
“No!”
The men do not heed. They, spellbound, hurtle toward the madly dancing light. Gemma screams for them to stop. The Captain curses loudly. The pirates’ deliriously hopeful voices melt into the distance, echoes still bouncing in all directions. The light disappears. The men are gone. A deep laugh ricochets, battering the walls. Gemma holds her ears. The Captain curses once more.
All sounds fade. The flute strain is gone. That strange, wicked laugh’s last echo dissolves. No sign of the five crewmen. The darkness is thick as blankets again. Water drips: plip, plop.
Captain and Gemma Jonquil remain still, standing in the dark of the hall. Without knowing it, they are clutching each other’s hands. Gemma wonders, wildly, whether the heart she hears beating is her own, or her uncle’s.
When their breaths settle, she finds the courage to whisper, “Will-o’-the-wisp.” She feels the Captain nod.
“Damn that Gemmordio,” he murmurs, “And damn those gull-headed, lackwit, sons of cowardly magistrates.”
“The oldest trick in the book.”
“Aye, and a Pied Piper will catch rats. Ah, but we are foxes, are we not, my Gem?”
She takes a deep breath. “Frightened foxes.”
“Nonsense,” he replies with customary confidence. “All we need do is feel our way along the wall, yes? You the left, and I the right. And keep hold of my other hand in between. There, now we have eyes enough to see. And if any forks in the road come up, we stop and choose. Right?”
With one hand on cold stone, the other on warm human, Gemma feels far less like she is floating in midair. “Right. Onward then, Cap’n.”
~
Want more of this, and two other stories to go with it? Good! Crowns of Gold will launch on Dec. 10th, 2025. It’ll be available on Amazon, through Alien Buddha Press. Big shoutout to those folks (one Red in particular for their edits) for picking this work of mine up after so many years of it languishing. Pirates hate languishing.
When you get it and read it, let me know what you think. It’s been 25 years since I was immersed in working on it, and it feels almost like I didn’t write it, that’s how distant it feels. HAVING SAID THAT! No AI was used in this book. At all. Obviously, since I finished it in 2000, and we didn’t have AI back then, but even now in its current production. Including the illustration. Pirates may be thieves, but they’d hate AI.
If it ends up becoming a movie, this should definitely be part of the soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryc8gGfnL5M