Today is the International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so, first and foremost, arrrh!
This said, I was reflecting yesterday that I still haven’t written a story about pirates. Which is a damn shame.
On the other hand, then I think about William Hope Hodgson’s stories of ghostly pirates, or Tim Power’s wonderful On Stranger Tides1, or George MacDonald Fraser’s masterfully silly but historically sound The Pyrates, or Michael Scott Rohan’s Spiral of Worlds stories, and I realise I’d be facing some pretty harsh competition.
And I did not mention the sacred name of Rafael Sabatini.
By the way, is there any good recent pirate-based fantasy story you would suggest?
I need to update my reading list.
But I was saying…
I have this outline, sleeping here on my hard disk – a pirate story set in the sky of late 17th century Monferrato, while on the ground rages the first of the many wars that, for the following 100 years, used these hills where I live as the main venue.
A swashbuckling historical fantasy work featuring flying ships, Egyptian relics, monsters and yes, pirates.
And so I said to myself that right now I have too much on my plate, but through the winter, I might as well try and write it, and then see what happens.
I could plot it like your standard fantasy trilogy. I just need good covers…
Don’t hold your breath, but it might be coming in 2017.
In the meantime, talk like pirates! Arrrh!
- please forget about the wreck of a movie they supposedly based on it ↩
Karavansara 
20 September 2016 at 16:51
Ever read Delderfield’s THE ADVENTURES OF BEN GUNN? It explains a lot of things; how a harmless wit-bereft fellow like Ben Gunn ever became a pirate in the first place, why Flint was described as “an ugly devil, that blue in the face too”, who the skeleton that “would be Allardyce … you mind Allardyce?” was when he was alive, what Silver did and where he went as a young man with two good legs, and not least … why the treasure was ever buried on that island instead of being shared out and squandered the way pirates usually did. It’s not fantasy, but I found it a terrific read in my teens.
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20 September 2016 at 17:37
I will have to check this out – it’s the first time I hear about it.
Thank you!
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20 September 2016 at 23:24
I remember one of the anthologies edited by VanderMeer. It’s called “Fast Ships, Black Sails” (2009), literally a collection of pirate fantasy stories. If this isn’t enough, it has a short story by Moorcock (“Ironface”) never published before.
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20 September 2016 at 23:36
I have it!
It also features a fine story by the late lamented Kage Baker.
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