Arrrr: Why We Love
Pirates
When I started my Sentinels of New Orleans series several
years ago, I wanted to bring some famous New Orleanians into my urban fantasy
tale. And no one is more famous in New Orleans than the early 19th-century
French-born pirate named Jean Lafitte.
Originally,
Lafitte was going to be kind of a morally shady character who’d be in one
scene. Then he came back for a second scene…and a third…and a fourth. Now, as
the standalone novella and story collection PIRATESHIP DOWN comes out, it might
as well be his series. Fact is, the more I researched the real Jean Lafitte,
the more fascinating he became.
Luckily
for me, readers also fell in love with the wily (and oh-so-sexy) scoundrel,
which made me think about another famous pirate—the fictional Captain Jack
Sparrow—and why women find pirates sexy.
Because
we do. Right? Tell me it isn’t just me!
So here are my 5 Reasons We Love
Pirates:
1) They’re alpha bad boys. This cannot be stressed enough: Women love Alpha
Bad Boys. Less so in real life, where they often end up being abusers or jail
material, but a sexy bad boy with an air of danger that we can tame? Oh yeah.
(Of course we don’t want to tame him TOO much.) I mean, my undead Jean Lafitte
might profess his desire for heroine DJ, a wizard, but she knows as well as he
does that he never leaves home without a few hidden daggers and a mean-looking
pistol. And the cutlass. And sometimes a sword.
2) They are exotic. I mean, they live for months at sea. They mete out
their own kind of justice. Oh sure, they’re thieves, but they’re thieves in the
middle of the bounding main and all that stuff. No office jobs or farm work for
these guys. The exotic nature of their work and lifestyle adds to their
wildness, their bad boyness. See No. 1. Jean might brush elbows with the social
elite of the preternatural world, but at the end of the day he goes home to his
mansion on the beach furnished with lavish furnishings stolen from Spanish
galleons. Not to mention the cannons in all the second-floor windows. You know,
in case the gendarmes show up.
3) They dress like, well, pirates. They wear tight pants and tall
boots, and those open, flowing tunics always show tantalizing glimpses of
six-pack abs. I mean you have to be strong to engage in swordplay and hoist
sails in the same day, right? Well, okay, I don’t know that Jean Lafitte
actually wore this outfit, but my undead Lafitte does, and he looks damn fine
in it.
4) They’re morally ambiguous. In real life, no sane woman wants a
morally ambiguous man, but in our book boyfriends, well, they’re incredibly
unpredictable. When Jean drags DJ and their merman friend Rene into his scheme
to steal a sunken ship in the novella PIRATESHIP DOWN, we know he’s going to
get in trouble. He’s probably going to get arrested. Will he go along quietly
in handcuffs or will he kill someone to go free? And if he does allow himself
to be arrested, it simply means he’s plotting more mayhem for later. Is he a
good guy or a bad guy? Yes and yes. Such moral ambiguity makes for an exciting
relationship. As long as it stays in the land of fiction, anyway.
5) They’re
socially unattached. Rules don’t apply to them. They are vagabonds of the
sea. They’re free in a way many of us wish we had the guts to be, able to
follow the whims of the wind, visiting foreign ports. They do everything at a
hundred percent—from drinking to fighting to women. We love pirates for the
same reason we love cowboys. Well, okay, larcenous and sometimes murderous
cowboys. Well, okay, let’s forget the cowboy analogy.
So there you have it—the reason
that I, at least, love pirates. Or at least one particular French pirate who
captured my heart and imagination and doesn’t seem to be in danger of releasing
them.
Pirateship Down: Stories from the
World of the Sentinels of New Orleans
Suzanne Johnson
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Suzanne Johnson
Date of Publication: November 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0996822008
ASIN: B0169K0YW8
Number of pages: 278
Word Count: 55,000
Cover Artist: Robin Ludwig Designs
Book Description:
French pirate Jean Lafitte is tall, cobalt-eyed, broad-shouldered, and immortal. What’s not to love? But New Orleans’ most esteemed member of the historical undead is headed for trouble. He’s determined to reclaim Le Diligent, his gold-laden schooner lost at sea in 1814 and recently found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico near Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.
The U.S. Coast Guard and the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office might beg to differ.
New Orleans wizard sentinel DJ Jaco and her merman friend Rene Delachaise can either lock up their friend Lafitte or join him on a road trip to Cajun country in order to save him from himself. Terrebonne Parish—not to mention its jail—might never be the same after the events of the all-new novella Pirateship Down, presented here along with a collection of urban fantasy stories and essays.
Wizards and Cajun merfolk, sexy shapeshifters and undead French pirates. Welcome to the world of the Sentinels of New Orleans in this collection, along with a little Louisiana lagniappe. No previous knowledge of the series required!
Available at Amazon
Excerpt:
About five
minutes passed before I heard Jean Lafitte in the hallway of the prison, having
a spirited, if one-sided, argument about Spanish fruit. I definitely heard the
words orange and Spaniard. And the pirate never had anything nice to say about
Spaniards since he’d spent most of his human life plundering their ships.
The door opened,
and he strode into the room, sending my empathic senses into overload with the
force of his outrage. I closed my eyes and tried to squelch the urge to bray
like a donkey, because the source of his anger was obvious.
They’d taken
away the cord he used to tie back his shoulder-length, wavy black hair, but
that wasn’t the problem. The problem was his fluorescent orange jumpsuit with
Terrebonne Parish Prison stamped on the back. The suit was tight across his
shoulders and baggy across his hips, obviously not tailored for the pirate’s
athletic build, and the pants were three inches too short and flashing bare
calf. He wore short white athletic socks someone had scrounged up for him.
Obviously, his pirate boots had been confiscated. It wasn’t an outfit designed
to please a man as arrogant and aware of his good looks as my undead pirate.
Jean shifted his
commentary from his guard to me. “Drusilla, a grievance must be made against
these ruffians and thieves. They have stolen my clothing and given me only
this…this….” He ran out of words.
“Ugly-ass orange
jumpsuit?” I offered, always ready to help Jean with his command of modern English.
“Oui,
exactement. I demand that you obtain my release, tout de suite. And you must
know, a woman who allows her husband to remain in such conditions for an entire
evening must face reprimand.”
I leaned back in
the chair and crossed my arms. “And you must know that, in this day and age,
should a man reprimand his wife too much, said wife might leave her husband to
enjoy a longer time in his prison cell wearing his ugly-ass orange jumpsuit.”
The guard who’d
accompanied Jean into the room listened to this exchange with no expression.
Now that Jean and I were both in silent mode, he leaned over to fasten the
handcuffs to a ring on the center of the table, which forced the irate pirate
to sit down.
“You got half an
hour,” the guard said. “I’ll be right outside. If I hear or see anything
through that door that I should not hear or see, visitation will be ended. That
includes shouting, moving of furniture, excessive use of profanity, or sexual
activity. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Not a
problem.” I had a confusion potion with Jean’s name on it in my shoe, and I
wasn’t afraid to use it.
About the Author:
Suzanne Johnson is the author of the award-winning Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series for Tor Books, including the 2014 Gayle Wilson Award-winning Elysian Fields. Writing as Susannah Sandlin, she is author of the Penton Legacy paranormal romance series, including the 2013 Holt Medallion winner for paranormal romance Absolution, as well as The Collectors romantic suspense series, including Lovely, Dark, and Deep, 2015 Holt Medallion winner and 2015 Booksellers Best Award winner for romantic suspense. A displaced New Orleanian, she currently lives in Auburn, Alabama, and loves SEC football, fried gator on a stick, uptown New Orleans, all things Cajun (including a certain Cajun merman named Rene), and redneck reality TV.
website: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com
goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/Suzanne_Johnson
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7 comments:
That excerpt's hilarious!
I love their banter.
Thanks, Paula! Jean is SUCH fun to write, and DJ has his number :-)
I agree with your top 5 reason we love pirates! Although,I don't think I would want to be at sea with one for months at a time. I like my comforts too much!
I agree, Liz. I rather like cruising, though, where changing locations in which to drink, eat, or sight-see is about as "roughing it" as one gets. Well, as long as the ship doesn't sink or one doesn't....well, let's just say the last one I went on, I found myself ordering a peach bellini for breakfast while I was playing Bingo with the octogenarians. I realized it was time to go home. :-)
^^ i think Jean could change any woman mind if she wasn't for Pirates yet^^ he has his own kind of honor yes but he is true to it at least we can't be teh same for most of the population
Thanks for your 5 Reasons We Love Pirates. My daughter just got back from NOLA. Got me a cup from Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop. The girls really enjoyed New Orleans.
I'm so looking forward to reading Pirateship Down. :D
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