Before last year, I hadn’t really given pirates too much of a thought (not counting the year I wore an eye-patch when I was eight) but they seem to be taking over my life and I have long since given up trying to fight it.

It all started when I wrote a book series on pirates, then there was a piratey idea for one of my current works in progress. Since then, I’ve received pirate-themed spam and now I have just received a copy of my latest book, Blackbeard’s Sword, which is all about, well, Blackbeard the pirate. (Check out this bigger cover image.)

Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

Edward Teach, known far and wide as Blackbeard, holds the coast of North and South Carolina in a grip of terror. Lieutenant Maynard and his men of the Royal Navy decide to capture the pirate, but they need help piloting their way through the shallow maze of coves and inlets. They enlist the aid of local fishermen Jacob Webster and his father, but Maynard doesn’t count on the fact that Jacob may be leading them into trouble. The boy thinks Blackbeard is a hero!

This latest pirate tale was a lot of fun to write because it’s based on the actual events leading up to the capture of Blackbeard. At the time, many people in the US colonies thought pirates were like rock stars. Merchants loved buying goods from them because the pirates sold stuff cheaply, the aristocrats invited pirates to their balls and dinners to impress their friends and hear tales of their fierce sea battles and the bourgeois citizens decorated their homes with the exotic silks, statues and other exotic items, turning pirate treasure into the “must have” items of the day.

When I learned about how mainstream culture at the time embraced pirates and piracy, I figured that kids must have felt the same way. If you were 10 years old and stuck in a small fishing village, wouldn’t you think someone like Blackbeard was rock star?

But, as our hero Jacob learns, there’s a dark side to piracy and it’s one that doesn’t get talked about much in story books. Unfortunately, the dark side is so gruesome that I could only hint at it in this book, but it’s enough for Jacob to learn that being a hero doesn’t necessarily mean sailing around the world plundering treasure and that being pirate means being a criminal.

Blackbeard’s Sword isn’t a straight graphic novel, which is another reason why I really had fun writing it. It’s a hybrid of book and comic, like my first book System Shock. There are graphic novel elements like speech bubbles, panels, etc but there are also pages of full narrative text. This format is a great way to get reluctant readers to make the jump from comics to full chapter books.

Blackbeard’s Sword is published by Stone Arch Books and is available to order from their website or you can ask for it at your local book store.