Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

OH MY GOD I cannot BELIEVE you were writing why pirate romances are so good AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT as I was.

Arrrrrrrrrrrr!

Shiver my timbers, you lazy swabs. I’ve just been up in the dog watches of the night completin’ my tale of Earls and Elephants. Now I be lookin’ for subject matter for a sequel, arrr.

Mebbe Lady Cardington’s Folly or the Limehouse Leviathan will be a rollickin’ tale of adventure on the High Seas, with buxom buccaneers and foxy freebooters.

Or perhaps it will just be more Earls and Elephants.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

The all-time silliest pirate romance I ever read was Desire in Disguise, by Rebecca Brandewyne. The heroine’s a pirate, and so is the hero—the Crimson Witch and the Black Mephisto, respectively. I picked it up years ago because the premise was that they had an affair in their pirate disguises and didn’t realize that they were actually married to each other!

She did manage to pull it off. I believed that these people had screwed up their lives and their relationship so badly that they wouldn’t recognize each other by voice, smell, or touch. I didn’t find the story romantic, but it was oddly compelling, for some reason.

Yer a fine lass, Candy, for giving this old seadog a shout. Don’t you be missing the the second part of me travails at the Jolliest Roger.

I be saving the naughtiest details for tomorrow. Still to come, I’d say, but a man who puns deserves to kiss the gunner’s daughter. Arrr.

DESIRE IN DISGUISE….OMG, I just kept reading the damned thing over and over.

The French Cow. Snicker.

I love pirates. I ended up writing my own pirate romance, but it’s not about real ones, only a moonlighting school teacher who plays one.

What’s that pirate one where he’s a nobleman AND a pirate and he abducts this girl and rapes her a couple of times and she’s all, “no, no, I’ll never love you”, then he takes her back to her family and she’s all pregnant and then he abducts her again and he won’t believe that the baby is his ‘cause he thinks she’s a slut?

As it happens, there’s been a discussion of The Windflower today at AAR.  I didn’t care for what I read of it, and after reading a good chunk, skimmed to the end. 

Pirate romances, like viking romances, are sort of problematic because the reality of piracy is so dark, and not every author is willing to go there. 

Mrs. Giggles skewered some of the lighter pirate romances in her review of Claudia Dain’s Tell Me Lies.  She wrote:

“This is one of those books that everyone seems to dislike. Well, that means I would probably like it, and guess what? I did! I can see why this book gets panned by many readers though. Readers expecting a crew of pirates with the usual earnest teenaged cabin boy, the gruff German cook, the wise Black second-in-command, and a pirate who somehow never kills anyone or only gently robs ships would probably burst a coronary.

The pirates in Tell Me Lies are very real, very nasty, and not at all willing to let the heroine teach them the ABC’s. And when the heroine is captured by them, she is not given a nice personal cabin…  No wonder those readers expecting The Genteel Pirate And The Schoolmarm start foaming at the mouths.”

Still, I admit I too have a weakness for pirate romances, but for me it’s a lot about my love of shipboard settings.  I love many non-pirate shipboard romances, such as Carla Kelly’s Miss Whittier Makes a List and Susan Wiggs’s The Charm School.  I also love romances that involve desert islands… I guess I’m all about the water.

Could that be Johanna Lindsey’s A Pirate’s Love, Bam?  Except I think the heroine got back to her family by escaping.

Yes, parts of Desire in Disguise were hilarious, esp. yes, the “French Cow,” and “Prinda,” and the scene where they elope.  I’m LOL just thinking about it. 

—LFL

Hey, Missie and I snarked this very cover last week. My only comment- hide your brothers. The Navy’s made a man out of him.;)

There was a mini-series of Julie Garwood’s about pirates, aye? The Gift was my favorite, even though the heroine and the pirate actually got married when she was about four years old.

My love of good pirate stories goes back to when I was a wee nipper (so called, according to Wade G. Dudley, because the ship’s boys would “nip” the anchor cable to the capstan messenger so that the anchor could be raised)and I read of that fierce pirate Anne Bonny, who lived life on her own terms.

Some suggested serious pirate reading in honor of the day:

SHE CAPTAINS—HEROINES AND HELLIONS OF THE SEA by Joan Druett; A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE ROBBERIES AND MUDERS OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES by “Captain Charles Johnson” (Daniel Defoe); UNDER THE BLACK FLAG by David Cordingly; THE HISTORY OF PIRATES by Angus Konstam; and THE PIRATES LAFITTE—THE TREACHEROUS WORLD OF THE CORSAIRS OF THE GULF by William Davis.

The aforementioned Wm.Dudley is the author of SPLINTERING THE WOODEN WALL—THE BRITISH BLOCKADE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1812-1815, an excellent study of naval strategy during that conflict, including the role of privateers. 

And when you want a break from all that serious reading, I’m self serving enough (as all good pirates are) to mention PIRATE’S PRICE, SMUGGLER’S BRIDE and the soon to be released CAPTAIN SINISTER’S LADY by a piratically inclined romance writer.

“...a man who puns deserves to kiss the gunner’s daughter.”

What be the punishment fer a woman who puns? Unless ye missed the punning of “One-Eyed Jack” Hoffman.

Arrrr.

And Beth HOLY CRAP you totally articulated the whole “vacation on white sandy beaches while drinking from coconuts” aspect of pirate romances, too. Even fairly serious romances like The Windflower has moments like those.

I now need to look up Desire in Disguise. I tried reading a Rebecca Brandewyne book years and years ago, and had to give up on it because I was thisclose to poking my eyeballs out. But this is different. This is a pirate romance. A pirate romance in which there’s a character called “The Black Mephisto.” I can’t think of a single pirate romance book that I’ve been able to put down, no matter how bad.

And good GOD they can get bad.

I have a very, very soft spot for Megan McKinney’s Til Dawn Tames the Night and Susan Wiggs’s The Charm School. :>

Candy, have you read Danelle Harmon’s pirate books?  Oh, they’re fun fun fun for everyone, IMO.

And where’s Sherry?  I feel like doing some kind of invocation to get her over here and start her hateration on The Windflower over here.  Oh, yeah, baby, a pirate ship that’s the model of democracy.  Who cares about historical accuracy when you’ve got Rand Morgan, Cat, Raven, Sails, and Devon Crandall?  I swear that book is a revision of The Tempest; but I love it anyway.

“LALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING THE WINDFLOWER IS AWESOME AND I DON’T CARE HOW ACCURATE IT IS LALALALALALALA.”

Hey, I’m just hoping for some backup.  She seemed ready to rumble over there.

“Haven’t tried Danelle Harmon’s pirate books. Her “The [Insert Adjective] One” books were good fun, though not particularly memorable—the two that I read, anyway.”

Yes, perfect summation—they’re like historical Romance lite. But I really enjoyed her pirate Romances, especially because some of them feature both hero and heroine pirates, and they’re FUN! And as a bonus, IMO they’re more substantial than the “One” books.

“Which reminds me! I have a Jennifer Ashley pirate book on my TBR shelves. WHEE! Guess what I’m going to start reading tonight?”

I read the last book in this series and need to start from the beginning.  Loved the last one, though.

I third or fourth the rec for Susan Wiggs’ THE CHARM SCHOOL. While not at all realistic, the ugly duckling story still has an undeniable charm and poignancy.  It and THE WINDFLOWER are my only two pirate romance keepers. (Faux Jay, I give Meagan McKinney credit for creating an image in TIL DAWN TAMES THE NIGHT I’ve never forgotten even as the rest of the book became a blur—that amazing tattoo reveal!)

Candy, me beauty, they calls me ‘One-Eyed Dick’, dontcha know, because ‘One-Eyed Jack’ be a mite too subtle.

Punishment for a punning lass? I’ll let her get off with polishing me peg leg. Arrr . . . a double double entendre, ‘tis.

I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned Siren by Cheryl Sawyer.  Jean Lafitte!  And the heroine’s a rival pirate, too.  Very, very cool.  Made me want to put on an eyepatch myself.

Yep, Bam, it’s Johanna Lindsay’s A Pirate’s Love which, as un-PC as it is for me to admit, I absolutely loved. Yeah, the hero - Tristan I think his name was - was a complete asshat. He kept the heroine prisoner and raped her over and over again. She wasn’t the brighted bulb in the box because she let him believe that the baby she was carrying wasn’t his, thus perpetrating the most annoying type of Big Misunderstanding known in Romancelandia, that of Heroine Is A (Not) Big Slut.

But the best part, in the end, when she’s giving birth while he’s fighting the bad guy…

Classic! It’s one of only two or three Lindsay’s I’ve designated a keeper.

Damn, Sarah - I reallllly hope somebody knows the one you’re talking about, because that sounds friggin AWESOME. A parrot. Scoring her forearm. An evil twin, a surplus of piracy, AND A PARROT.  I’m sold.

I can’t think of a single pirate romance book that I’ve been able to put down, no matter how bad.

Hehe Candy, nice to know I have at least one possible reader for that Pirates on the Baltic Sea plotbunny lurking in my Future Projects file.

I’ll throw some Teutonic Knight in, too, for the sake of variety. :-)

I love The Charm School, but I don’t think it qualifies as a pirate romance.  Yes, the hero is a ship’s captain, and yes, there’s some stolen cargo involved (trying not to give away spoilers here), but the ship isn’t a pirate ship, and they don’t attack other ships at sea. 

Re. Cheryl Sawyer’s Siren, I thought it was beautifully written in places, but the hero’s slave-selling bothered me.  I know Lafitte was a real historical personage, and Sawyer was being true to history, but it still bothered me.

Aarrggghhh! (not aarrrr tho’ - RL Stevenson is responsible for innumerable literary crimes against the westcoun’ry accent). A Pirate’s Love was such a let-down for me after Man of My Dreams that I couldn’t actually finish it. Which is amazing, given that where I was living at the time meant that getting my grubby paws on any sort of novel, let alone a romance, was an epic hassle. But if anyone wants to explain why I should give it another go, please do. Not that it turned me off pirates - how could any book do this after the delights of Frenchman’s Creek?

The whole suspension of disbelief thing does work in mysterious ways. Pirate novels walk a fine line for me. I’m prepared to forgive them way more historical howlers than I would straight historical fiction. But they have to stay in their own little pirate world, and preferably never ever land so that I can sit back and enjoy the big shiny boots and swishy buckles…

EvilAuntiePearl, I would say, if you want to read a pirate story and give Johanna Lindsey another try, I recommend reading Gentle Rogue.  Funniest book she ever wrote IMO (though Man of My Dreams gives it a run for its $$$).

catching up here to say:

Candy, the second novel in the Wilderness series (Dawn on a Distant Shore) mostly takes place at sea. With pirates. Male pirates, and an old woman pirate, and a first class selfish bitch pirate-type.

And you have a copy, I think.

Rebecca Brandewyne?  Never mind pirates, my powers of disbelief suspension are working overtime to believe there’s someone writing pirate romances called Rebecca Brandewyne.  It’s just too good to be true.

Could this possibly be her real name?  Was she fated to write pirate romances?  Is she descended from a long line of smugglers?  Is she secretly a pirate herself?  I can see the cover blurb now: Brazen Becks Brandewyne writes in the quiet of her cabin between romps with the cabin boy. 

Please somebody put me out of my misery and tell me if this is her real name or just the perfect pseudonym.

runswithscissors, I think Rebecca Brandewyne is her real name. I’ve read several articles that said as much, but they could be wrong, I guess.

Celeste, thanks for letting me know.  No disrespect intended to Ms Brandewyne - as the possessor of an unusual name myself, I’m always curious about other people’s names.

ps just checked out Rebecca Brandewyne’s website which features a photo of her wearing a pirate-tastic red leather vest ... in case further proof were needed.

“...if you want to read a pirate story and give Johanna Lindsey another try, I recommend reading Gentle Rogue…”

LFL, thanks for the recommendation - Gentle Rogue’s the one with James Malory, isn’t it? I did read that one and quite enjoyed it, but on the whole preferred MOMD. Possibly because I had a sneaking suspicion that JL had used the ship from A Pirate’s Love, and wondered how it could be sea-worthy after that heroine’s continuous stomping-of-her-foot-in-anger. Always suspected the poor ship was riddled with holes from the abuse by the end of that story.

MOMD also made me really fond of a couple of characters I’d normally find unlikeable (the spoiled brat of a heroine, especially), which was a very nice surprise. I do love having my expectations confounded.

Yes, Gentle Rogue is James Mallory’s book.  Another enjoyable Lindsey book is Once a Princess.  No pirates in it, but they do spend some time on board ship. 

Re. Rebecca Brandewyne, I believe it is her real name, but not the one she was born with.  I think she changed her name.  I could be wrong about this though.