This week: Notorious Pirates Edited by: Annette  
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“If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” ― Mary Read
“I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you needn’t be hanged like a dog.” ― Anne Bonny |
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Notorious Pirates
Pirates are not all called Jack Sparrow or Henry Avery. There are some who have prettier names. Although they may not really be prettier in their deeds.
Cheng I Sao
Cheng I Sao and Cheng I ran a wife and husband corsair outfit that comprised hundreds of ships and 50,000 men starting in 1801. Upon her husband's death in 1807, Cheng I Sao quickly asserted her dominance. Her formidable crew preyed on supply junks and fishing vessels, raided South China's coastal villages, and plundered their way across Southeast Asia. Cheng I Sao had no patience for misbehaving pirate men. Anyone found to brutalize a woman was beheaded and those who tried to desert her lost their ears. When the British and Portuguese navies tried to hunt her, she instead made a barter to stop pirating and retired with all her riches until she died peacefully at the ripe old age of 69.
Anne Bonny
Ah, those illegitimate children. They don't stand to inherit anything, but somehow they are under the same prism of expectations as their "true born" siblings. Anne Bonny wasn't going to let that stand in her way. Fierce and courageous, Anne could hold her rum and wield a pistol like she meant it. And she cursed with the best of them. Anne was friends with Mary Read. Together, they raided trading vessels and fishing boats in 1720. When their crew was arrested by pirate hunters, Anne and Mary escaped the hangman's noose by claiming that they were pregnant.
Mary Read
An adept cross-dresser, Mary Read spent most of her young years impersonating men. First her dead half-brother so that the boy's grandmother would give her money. Later, she renamed herself "Mark" Read and hired on as a soldier and then became a merchant sailor. She became a pirate in the late 1710s when her ship was attacked by buccaneers and they pressed her to join them. After a while, Mark/Mary befriended Anne Bonny. The two were fearsome and gave the pirate hunters a run for their money. Despite her sturdy self-esteem, Mary ended up dying in prison from a fever.
Grace O’Malley
The British monarchy had nothing on Grace O'Malley's 20-ship fleet. She lorded over the western coastline of Ireland starting in 1560 when she took over her family's pirating business. English and Spanish shipping vessels or the ships of her rivals didn't stand a chance. Although she had to spend 18 months in prison, Grace was not reformed from it. Quite the opposite: she resumed her marauding until the British authorities impounded her fleet around 1590. Grace was not to be stopped. She went straight to Queen Elizabeth I and presented herself as a poor old woman who desperately needed her ships and her imprisoned sons back. No sooner that she had her equipment back, she went right back to pirating all the way until she died in 1603.
Rachel Wall
This girl's early life is shrouded in mystery. As the story goes, Rachel from Pennsylvania and her husband George settled in Boston where they got ahold of a small boat. First, to fish off the coast. Later, to prey on ships off the coast of New England. Rachel and George's racket was to pretend that their ship had taken water and they were in distress. Whenever a good Samaritan boat tried to help them, they instead boarded and robbed the would-be helpers. And they murdered them too. In 1782, a storm really destroyed their boat and killed George. In 1789, Rachel was arrested. Although she penned a confession letter in prison, she was hanged in Boston on October 8 of that year.
I hope these fierce pirates give you a new appreciation for women at the wheel and new ideas for creating larger than life pirates with small feet.
What images come to your mind when you think of pirates? |
| | Burnt Skerry (18+)
A pirate on a quest for a Fire Microlith finds it a more dangerous task than he imagined.
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Replies to my last Fantasy newsletter "Urban YA: Not Always in First Person" that asked: Which point of view is your favorite to write and read in fantasy?
s  wrote: Thank-you for this one! These - Third person omniscient point of view; Author filtering; Adjectives and adverbs; Simple sentences - are not sins in writing. If you use them well, then they are fine. I feel like sometimes reviews here are people trying to show they are clever and have read capital-L literature. That's wonderful... but it's also a hard sell. I just hope people read this and take note.
Thank you for your kind comments. You are so right that literary literature is not for everyone. Neither writing it nor reading it. The vast majority of readers want to understand what they read - at least most of it. That's what the commercial successes clearly show.
BIG BAD WOLF Feeling Thankful  wrote: There's all kinds of Fantasy. I don't like sticking to just one sort.
You are so right that Fantasy has many kinds.
Beholden  wrote: Thank you very much for including my short story, The Box, among the list of Editor's Picks.
As regards the matter of POV when writing fantasy, it's natural to me to use the third person omniscient stance. This is most likely the result of how the story is created - first the geography of the place, then the history, and then I look more closely to see who is involved in the stories within that history. So I'm usually writing as an observer and, because I created the world in which the characters live, I know just about everything about them. They still have the capacity to surprise me with things I didn't know, however, and often they do.
As for my favourite POV, I generally write in the third person but occasionally, if there's a good reason for it, I do use the first.
Funnily enough, the book that this story was written as a taster for, The Gabbler's Testament, is an exception to what I've just said, since much of it is written as the Gabbler's spoken account of his adventures. But I don't think I would ever do that again. He took me to some strange places at times!
Hey, it's good to have a variety of styles. I use first person on rare occasions when I want to achieve a specific feeling in the story. Other than that, I prefer third person omniscient as a reader and as a writer. |
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Fantasy: August 16, 2023 Issue [#12119]
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