What's this? Another post within just a couple of weeks of the last one, how can such a thing be happening?
I'd like to say that I've decided to be less lazy about sharing stuff, or that maybe I'm just in a sharing mood, but the truth is that I will probably fade away into the shadows after this post unless something really interesting (to me, anyway) happens.
I received an email on Friday, Jun 14, from the author I mentioned in the last post, Bryan Cantrell, announcing his presence at the Santee Renaissance Festival on Saturday (yes, the day after I received the email). Bryan was going to be sitting in a booth with a few other authors (some with pirate-themed books, some not) in the The Pirates of Treasure Cove area. Bryan also announced that a special edition hardback edition of Pirates of the Wild West in the works that was just weeks away from publication - and it would feature two new maps within it's pages1.
Being the gigantic nerd I am, I canceled all the plans I hadn't made for Saturday and dragged the wife over to check out the Santee Renaissance Festival on Saturday morning (closer to noon, to be honest).
I was expecting a lot more people and many more booths, but I quickly learned that this is only the second year that the Santee Renaissance Festival had been in existence and that because it is only held over a single weekend, it's having trouble finding many exhibitors. So, the sparseness of booths was...well, expected. Needless to say, it didn't take long to find the Pirates of Treasure Cove.
The first thing I found was a tent with a mermaid and a bunch of surly pirates. Well, to be honest, they weren't really all that surly, but who am I to questions their dedication to being pirates?
A walk around the back of the mermaid's tent revealed a treasure map! The hunt was on!
I continued my journey, finding another tent with three pirates each sitting behind a table displaying their wares. I quickly recognized the books stacked on the middle table as Pirates of the Wild West and struck up an eagerly nerdish conversation with Bryan Cantrell.
I babbled for quite a while, talking about his book, other noteworthy pirate books (he told me about a book he had recently read that I was unfamiliar with: The Rattler), pirate podcasts (the Pirate History Podcast, which i discovered was available on Amazon Prime as part of my Prime membership), and just life in general2. Bryan also mentioned an upcoming trading card project he has in the works that sounds like something right up my alley.
And he gave me a cool pirate bumper sticker - he obviously knows that Pirate swag is the way to a nerd-boy's heart.
Next to the author tent and the Pirates of Treasure Cove tent were the Clan Dark Sail tents, filled with an impressive array of pirate weaponry, pirate games, and a pirate surgeon's booth - complete with a Russian pirate surgeon who shared, in gory detail, exactly how various surgeries were performed and the instruments were used.
The last thing we saw in the Pirate zone (it wasn't a very big Ren-Faire, as I mentioned) was a pirate juggler. He was very skilled and had a comedic act that didn't work quite as well with standing spectators (by his own admission), but it was still an impressive display of dexterity and was also pretty funny (one of the photos that apparently didn't take was a closer view of his sign which said who he was).
After seeing everything there was to see in Pirate land, we wandered around and looked at the other displays, booths, and stuff for sale. There was an archery area where you could try your hand at archery, an area where you could receive instruction on medieval weaponry (sword/staff/pike), an outdoor pub, and several booths selling jewelry, custom made soap, and other various hippy-dippy stuff that you'd expect at a Ren-Faire, but no pirate stuff at all outside of the books I've already mentioned3. Boo!
After I had returned home and was looking though the photos I took, I was surprised when I didn't find many others that I was sure I had taken of the things Id seen. So...what you see here is all that I have to show for the $30 it cost for the wife and me to enter and park.
1 I was disappointed to only have been able to buy a paperback version of this book, so I'll definitely be picking the hardcover up when it becomes available.
2I was surprised to find out that Bryan doesn't actually live that far away from me.
3
I didn't even talk to the other two authors, but one was selling a non-pirate children's book and the other may have been selling pirate books, but I was too busy talking to Bryan to find out.
It's been...well, about a year and a half since I've bothered to put anything up here. And even Dan has stopped noticing. So I guess nobody's coming by here but me these days. Good.
So I've been saving all kinds of stuff to blather on about here (books, records, places I've visited), but haven't bothered to share any of it, because...well, it just doesn't seem to be worth the time. But I did write something up about a book I'd read a couple of months ago, so I guess I might as well share that. So with that scintillating introduction, here are my thoughts on Pirates of the Wild West (who doesn't love a good pirate story?)...
Pirates of the Wild West, Bryan Cantrell
I was browsing through the stacks of Barnes and Noble several months ago and stumbled upon a signed copy of Pirates of the Wild West mixed in with the multitude of other books on the shelves. I'd never heard of the book or its author, Bryan Cantrell, so it was kind of surprising that I even noticed it was there.
I've loved pirates for as long as I can remember (I thank Disneyland for that) and have read many fiction and non-fiction stories about pirates over the years (Tim Power's On Stranger Tides being the gold standard in my opinion). Also, a great non-fiction pirate book I just read is Keith Thomson's Born to be Hanged. Sadly, both Pirates of the Wild West and Born to be Hanged sat on my to-read shelf for too many months before finally being read (so many books, so little time spent reading these days - a beautiful hardcover, gilt-edged edition of Treasure Island is still sitting on the shelf waiting to be re-read for the first time in decades).
But enough about other pirate books...
One of the things I loved about Pirates of the Wild West was the inclusion of actual historical pirates, and the effort made to flesh them out. Between Disney's historically inaccurate pirates and Black Sails2 moderately more accurate portrayal of pirates, I have mental images of all the actual historical pirates in Pirates of the Wild West. But in addition to the physical descriptions provided of each of them, it was also interesting to read the inner-dialogue of one pirate's opinions of another, something you don't really get in TV shows/movies.
Here's an excerpt wherein Henry Jennings shares some thoughts about Edward Thatch (Blackbeard), Sam Bellamy, Charles Vane (spelled "Vain" in the book), and Benjamin Hornigold.
Jennings looked over at the monster that was Edward Thatch. Wine was dripping from his long braided beard as he laughed and was patted on the back by Sam Bellamy. He despised them both. Partly out of jealously, as they were two of the most successful pirates ever known.
Bellamy, he mused, was just lucky. He was an excellent sailor but did not have what it took to run a ship with an iron fist. Bellamy was a true believer of the pirate republic ideals. He fancied himself a Robin Hood, known for his mercy and generosity. Young and an idealist, that one. It was told to Jennings that Bellamy had pursued piracy in the hopes of earning enough money to win the approval of his love's father up in Cape Cod. Bellamy was a street rat that wanted to marry into a proper upper-class family and Jennings could understand exactly why the girl's father would never allow it. No matter how much money a rat could steal, a rat he would still be.
Thatch, though, was something else altogether. He arrived in Nassau as a mystery of sorts. It was apparent that he was an educated man, well read, and an adept war technician that one would dread to come up against in battle. Jennings had overhead him converse in as many as six languages, yet the debauchery that he was capable of would bring a blush to the cheeks of the devil himself. Whereas Jennings' first mate Vain was a tool of violence to be used by someone with intelligence and wit, Thatch was an instrument of destruction that could not be controlled and could possibly outsmart you at every turn. Jennings knew he should not take chances when dealing with that one. Best to leave him for Hornigold to clash with, and maybe both would do each other in on their own.
And now, not to get to spolier-y, but I think the title of the book kind of gives this away anyway...
Taking the pirates to another time period with technology that rendered the competitive advantages in the pirates' own time moot was an interesting twist. Generally, time travel stories send a future time traveler back to a more primitive time, giving the traveler the advantage. But black powder guns and cutlasses are no match for six-shooters and rifles that can fire multiple rounds between reloads.
The old west characters in the story were less-engaging for me, but that may just be me - old west outlaws lack all the romanticism of pirates sailing the Caribbean. Admittedly, both pirates of the Caribbean and old west outlaws were, in reality, little more than murderous thugs who lived by thievery and violence. Not the most admirable sorts.
There were a few typos in the story that remained uncaught by the editor in the paperback copy I bought (a copy which began losing a few pages as I was reading it), but for the most part the text was well structured and very readable.
I won't hesitate to pick up the sequel, should it appear.
1Speaking of the novels of Discworld, I've been re-reading them in order. I've found beautiful hardcover Unseen University Editions of the first four: The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, and Mort (which I haven't read yet - I've been reading several other books since finishing Equal Rites).
2Black Sails is a cable TV show, not a book - for those unfamiliar with its pirate-y goodness
Speaking of lapses between updates...man, this one's a doozy. And I have no excuses. I've been collecting ideas for stuff to ramble on about for...well, long since before my last subpar update. I'm still primarily working from home and potatoing on my couch more often than not when I escape the seductive glow of my computer monitors. But I guess working from home for 8-10 hours each day steals most of my enthusiasm for doing much of anything else on a computer and I generally just want to get away from the keyboard.
My vinyl collection continues to grow (the very latest acquisition was the new Adele record that I didn't really care enough about to buy when it was initially released, but decided to pick up when I saw it on clearance for $12 at Target). I plan to share more about the many albums I've acquired one of these days.
I've also finished quite a few books since the last mention of the books I've read. Most recently, I read Before We Were Yours, a book I only picked up because the little girls on the cover reminded me so much of my own beautiful daughters. After languishing on my bookshelf for a few years, I finally read it and I'm glad I did. It was very well-written and reminded me of a John Grisham-esque foray into the sordid world of adoption in the early 1900s. It's a historically accurate, though fictional, story with actual long-dead people and fictional characters based on historical accounts. Overall, a sad but uplifting story.
We haven't traveled much lately, but I'm sure there are a bunch of trips I've taken over the past couple of years that have gone unmentioned. I might get around to sharing details one of these days, but the jury's out on that one.
So that's all I've got for today. Maybe I'll share more later (if Dan asks me why I'm such a lazy piece of garbage again).
