Questions, questions

Here are some questions - and my answers - from comments on the blog, emails and school groups:

Q: How long did your book take to write?
A: There are three books in the Swashbuckler series, and it took me about three years to write all of them.
But the first one took longer than the others, because I had to do an awful lot of historical research and planning for all three during that first phase.

Q: Which one of the three books is your favourite?
A: Oh dear. Other writers always have really clever answers to this question, and often say they love whatever book they've just finished writing.
But I have to admit that the The Pirate's Revenge is - hopefully - the funniest. So I guess it's my favourite. So far. I hope you'll think it's funny, anyway, as well as exciting.
I love humour in otherwise dramatic books: I just read Jeanette Winterson's new book for young readers, Tanglewreck, and I laughed out loud several times while I was reading it. Sometimes you need a good laugh when terrible things are happening in a book.

Q: Does Lily find her Dad?
A: Not telling. Sorry.

Q: Will there be more Swashbuckler books?
A: The third book is called The Silver Swan, and it will be out in May next year. After that, who knows?
I'd quite like Swashbuckler to sail off into the South Seas, and I have a few more ideas, but we'll have to see how the first three books go first.

Q: Have you written any other books?
A: I've written an adult book set in World War One, which hasn't been published yet - I'm rewriting it at the moment. And I'm working on a new series of timeslip novels for young readers set in World War Two, but they aren't finished.

Q: Who was the most bloodthirsty pirate?
A: Pirates were a pretty horrible lot, all in all. Some of the most fearsome were those in the Mediterranean, who took thousands of slaves and sometimes captured entire villages.
Blackbeard is probably the most famous pirate, and he certainly tried to make people scared of him - and it worked. I don't think he was really all that great as pirates go. But I wouldn't ever want to meet him.

There are more readers' questions about pirates and about the books on the Swashbuckler site. If you want to ask a new question, just click on the word "Comments" below. It'll pop up a little window, and you can type your question in there. You don't have to log in, just tick the Anonymous button, but you can write your name with your question if you like.

Sail away

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ Mark Twain

The whalers

My great-great-great-great grandfather was a whaling captain. His name was Samuel Mott, and this is his cottage, which you can still see in Port Fairy, on Victoria's Great Ocean Road. It's a museum now - a very small museum.
Old Samuel wouldn't have approved of me when I protested against whaling outside Parliament House with my "Save the whales" badge on, many years ago.
Nobody needs whale products nowadays, so there's no reason to go on killing them.
But for centuries, whaling was one of the most important and lucrative maritime industries. Whale oil and blubber was used in lamps and soap, people ate whale meat, whale bones were used in women's corsets and combs, and ambergris (a fragrant resin found rarely inside a whale's head) was essential for perfume and incredibly valuable, as indeed it still is. A couple of months ago a boy walking his dog found a huge lump of ambergris on the beach, here in NZ, and now he's rich.
It was a hard life, as it was on any fishing boat. The crew sailed away from home for months, sometimes years, on relatively small ships. If a whale's spout was sighted ("There she blows!"), they struck out in small boats, rowing as hard as they could, often for miles, hoping to spear the whale with a harpoon.
Once speared, the whale might drag the boat under, or smash it to pieces, or tow it leagues away. Many whalers were lost at sea, or terribly injured. But they became the folk of legend: of Herman Melville's book Moby Dick.

You can read more about the history of sailing ships on the Swashbuckler website.

The Pirate's Revenge

Here it is!
The Pirate's Revenge, book two of the Swashbuckler trilogy, is out on October 6:

Once a pirate slave, Lily Swann is navigator on the Mermaid, running the French blockade of Malta, when she learns her long-lost father may still be alive.
But before she can follow up her discovery, Lily clashes with the vile Captain Diablo, who forces her to show him the way to the famed Golden Grotto. Furious when he is unable to locate its fabled wealth, he abandons her to die in the darkness. As she battles her way out, Lily discovers the true treasure of the grotto, and her silver sword is soon put to the test.
But after another confrontation with Diablo, Lily is cast adrift with her old adversary, Hussein Reis, in a tiny boat without oars, sails, food or water - the pirate's revenge.

You can download a larger version of the cover here.

News flash

Release dates for The Pirate's Revenge, the second Swashbuckler book:
Australia - September 27
New Zealand - October 6