Guest Posts – Lit World Interviews

Guest Post by author Samuel Marquis: The True Story of Captain Kidd: An American Hero and Antihero for the Ages

The True Story of Captain Kidd: An American
Hero and Antihero for the Ages
By Samuel Marquis

There comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain

My ninth-great-grandfather Captain William Kidd stands today as not only perhaps the most famous piratical plunderer of all time but the swashbuckler most responsible for the buried-treasure mythology that continues to fascinate historians, writers of all stripes, pirate aficionados, treasure hunters, and the general public. I have heard the passed-down family tales of my treasure-chest-burying-scoundrel of an ancestor since I first learned to walk, and although many of them have proven to be complete balderdash, they have made a lifelong impression on me. As Mark Twain understood, hidden treasure is a powerful allure for a young lad —and for that we can thank the “trusty and well-beloved Captain Kidd,” as he was celebrated by King William III of England in 1695 before being transformed into the “most notorious arch-Pyrate ever to sail the seven seas” a mere three years later. As British pirate scholar Patrick Pringle has written, it is unlikely that Captain Kidd “will ever be displaced as the Great Pirate.”

However, despite his villainous reputation, how much of an “arch-Pyrate” was Captain Kidd really and how much of our enduring fascination with both the man and myth can be chocked up to our love of roguish outlaw legends, deeply entrenched American folklore, and the supernatural? The answer is more surprising than one would imagine.

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A quick historical sketch tells us that Captain Kidd (1654-1701) was an educated man who could read and write and trace his roots to a common but respectable Protestant Christian family from Soham Parish, Cambridgeshire, England. Having gone away to sea at an early age as an apprentice or cabin boy from the port town of Dundee, Scotland, he possessed ample nautical skills developed from the hard experience of a life at sea and thorough training in mathematics and navigation. He also had a little salty roguishness in him from spending two decades in the Americas from the mid-1670s through the 1680s sailing, fighting, and drinking with rowdy, violent, and vulgar buccaneers and merchant seamen. Whether he did in fact serve under the most famous buccaneer of all time, Sir Henry Morgan (1635–1688), remains unknown, but there is no doubt that William Kidd was a patriotic English privateer during his twenties and early thirties, sticking it to imperial Spain with the fate of the two bellicose empires hanging in the balance.

In his era, the early Age of Enlightenment (1685-1815) and middle Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1730), Kidd was a respectable privateer not a pirate, meaning his activities were sanctioned by the English government through a “letter of marque,” a license authorizing him to legally attack, capture, and plunder enemy ships in wartime. Yet, like many sea rovers in his day, his ultimate fate, as well as his perch in history, would depend on the not always clear distinction between legal privateer and outlaw pirate. Privateering as a seafaring profession for both patriotism and profit has existed at least as far back as the Roman Republic, and privateering ships and the privateersmen who manned them (both are referred to as “privateers”) served the function of an auxiliary, cost-free navy that were recruited, commissioned, and unleashed upon the enemy when the resources of combatant European nations were overextended.

While the Anglo-American, Dutch, and French buccaneers of the seventeenth century Caribbean were most certainly ruffianly and profligate, they were licensed privateers not renegade pirates, and Kidd lawfully plundered the Spanish on land and by sea in the Gulf of Mexico and West Indies to weaken Spain’s grip in the New World. The buccaneers’ lifestyle was built upon a modern-like, egalitarian political framework. Their homegrown system of direct democracy resulted in a unique brotherhood defined by honor, trust, integrity, and lending a helping hand to those in need. It played a huge role in nurturing Kidd’s core democratic value system and generosity. During his seafaring career, he went out of his way to help the unfortunate and he employed African Americans, Native Americans, East Indians, and Jews as share-earning stakeholders aboard his privateering ships-of-force, making him rather progressive and tolerant compared to the vast majority of his contemporaries.

In 1688, Kidd made New York his home port and bought valuable waterfront property in the city, and from July 1689 through April 1698 he fought as a licensed privateer in King William’s War against France (1689-1697), following William and Mary’s seizure of the English throne in the Glorious Revolution to ensure a Protestant succession. By May of 1691, he was a bona fide New York war hero, gentleman, and man of affairs married to the most dazzling socialite in town: the twice-widowed, twenty-year-old Sarah Bradley Cox Oort. With his “lovely and accomplished” wife Sarah, the wealthy New York privateer and merchant ship captain, jury foreman, and model citizen would have two daughters, Elizabeth and little Sarah, and in 1695 he was recruited by a group of wealthy London investors to lead an expedition to the Indian Ocean to battle the French and hunt down freebooters as King William III’s lawfully licensed privateer.

The plan was for Kidd to hunt down the Euro-American pirates of Madagascar, legally seize their ill-gotten riches, and keep them for not only himself and his privateering crew but for the king and lordly sponsors from the powerful Whig party that dominated the English government. Among Kidd’s wealthy London financial backers was Lord Bellomont, a powerful Whig House of Commons member and soon-to-be royal governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Kidd was to capture the “predators of the seas” and their freshly plundered riches after they had raided the royal treasure fleets of the Great Mughal and other East Indian shipping between the Malabar Coast of India and Mocha and Jeddah in the Red Sea. Based on the New York privateer’s sterling reputation, the investment group not only issued “the trusty and well-beloved Captain Kidd” two special government licenses but built a 34-gun warship, the Adventure Galley, to his specifications.

Unfortunately for Kidd, his nearly three-year-long voyage turned out to be an epic disaster and turned him overnight into one of the most notorious criminals of all time. His great misfortune was that he had followed in the wake of the English pirate Henry Every, who had pillaged the Great Mughal’s fleet and encouraged the mass rape of the Muslim women aboard one of the plundered ships. A year into the expedition to the far side of the world shortly after Every’s debauchery, Kidd and his crew had still not encountered a single enemy French or pirate ship that could be seized as a legitimate prize and they had suffered one disaster after another, including raging storms, a tropical disease outbreak, severe thirst and starvation, and repeated attacks by the East India Company, Portuguese, and Moors (Muslim East Indians). Increasingly desperate to earn some money under their standard “no prey, no pay” privateering contract, a large number of his New York and New England seamen wanted to become full-fledged pirates themselves and plunder the ships of all nations to garner the prodigious riches of the East. However, the law-abiding Captain Kidd would not allow any violations of his two legal Crown commissions, one to fight the French and the other to hunt down pirates.

During the grueling voyage, Kidd accidentally killed his unruly gunner, William Moore, a man with two prison sentences to his name, by smacking him in the head with a wooden bucket while quelling a mutiny; and he lawfully seized two Moorish ships, the Rouparelle and Quedagh Merchant, that presented authentic French passports and carried gold, silver, silks, opium, and other riches of the East. However, while these wartime seizures were 100% lawful and he never once himself committed piracy in India, he soon thereafter looked the other way during the capture of a Portuguese merchant galliot that presented official papers of a nation friendly to England. His seamen sailing separately from his 34-gun Adventure Galley in the captured Rouparelle seized from the Portuguese vessel two small chests of opium, four small bales of silk, 60 to 70 bags of rice, and some butter, wax, and iron. Though a measly haul, the act technically constituted piracy even though Kidd wasn’t directly involved in the capture. He only allowed the seizure to pacify his mutinous crew, who had by this time divided into “pirate” and “non-pirate” factions aboard his three separate privateering ships; and in reprisal for the damage inflicted upon the Adventure Galley and severe injuries sustained by a dozen of his crewmen from two Portuguese men-of-war that had attacked him without provocation months earlier.

Despite the countless challenges he faced during his perilous voyage and a second full-scale mutiny because he refused to go all-in on piracy, Kidd miraculously made it back to the American colonies from Madagascar with around £40,000 ($14,000,000 today) of treasure in his hold and the French passports that proved he had taken the Rouparelle and Quedagh Merchant legally in accordance with his commission. However, when he and his small band of loyalists reached Antigua on April 2, 1699, they received heartbreaking news. The Crown, at the urging of the East India Company, had sent an alarm to the colonies in late November 1698 declaring them pirates and ordering an all-out manhunt to capture and bring them to justice. With the Englishman Henry Every and most of his plundering, gang-raping outlaws still at large, Captain Kidd was now Public Enemy #1 in the world.

He decided to try to present his case for his innocence and obtain a pardon from his lead sponsor in the voyage, Lord Bellomont, who had by this time taken office as the royal governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. After burying a portion of his legally obtained treasure on Gardiner’s Island in Long Island Sound and distributing a number of goods to several trusted community leaders and seafaring friends as a precautionary measure, Kidd sailed into Boston on July 3, 1699, to meet with Bellomont, who had promised him a full pardon. But with Kidd now a wanted criminal and Every still at large, Bellomont and the other London backers, members of the once powerful Whig Junto that had fallen from power to the spiteful Tories, wanted nothing to do with the scandal. Having merely lured his business partner into Boston by dangling the possibility of clemency before him, Bellomont treated Kidd with suspicion and arrested him and his loyal seamen shortly after their arrival to port.

After being stripped of all his lawfully seized plunder and enduring six months of incarceration in Boston, Kidd was shipped to England to stand trial. Abandoned by his wealthy Whig sponsors who had been supplanted by the revitalized Tories, he was found guilty and hung in public shame on May 23, 1701, where he proclaimed his innocence before a drunken, jeering mob of Londoners. Days later, his corpse was coated with tar and hoisted in a gibbeted iron cage downriver at Tilbury Point near the mouth of the Thames, where it would remain for the next twenty years to serve as the English State’s grisly warning to other would-be pirates of the fate that awaited them if they dared threaten England’s valuable trade relations with India by pursuing the short but merry life of a pillaging freebooter.

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The question of Captain Kidd’s guilt or innocence has been hotly debated by historians and the reading public ever since his gruesome public hanging. However, it is important to bear in mind that Captain Kidd was not a 100% innocent man. Even by the sketchy standards of the early Age of Enlightenment, he was guilty of at least one act of piracy during his Indian Ocean expedition, or at least of failure to lift a finger to prevent his crew from committing piracy in the taking of the Portuguese galliot; and, possibly but not definitively, one count of manslaughter in a fit of passionate rage against his mutinous gunner William Moore, who had two prison sentences to his name, one for striking his captain, before sailing with Kidd.

At the same time, although Kidd was not a fully innocent man by the legal standards of his age, he was most certainly no pirate like Henry Every, which is an ironic twist that many people find hard to reconcile for the man who has been called “the most famous pirate of all time.” As one historian has put it, “His innate respect for order, his sense of duty and mission, his past life as an honest, successful seaman, as faithful husband and loving father, and above all, his ambition for the future—all these factors precluded Kidd from ever becoming a true pirate. If he committed piracies, they were acts of expediency, even acts of survival.” Thus, the most famous “arch-Pyrate” of all time was no outlaw pirate in temperament, inclination, or practice. Contrary to our embellished tropes over the centuries with characters like Long John Silver, Captain Hook, Captain Blood, Captain Jack Sparrow, and rocker Keith Richard’s as Captain Teague, the father of Sparrow, Captain Kidd never forced anyone to walk the plank, swilled rum with treasure chests overflowing with gold, silver, and jewels at his feet, or roared catchy pirate phrases like “Arrgh!” or “Shiver me timbers!” or “Dead men tell no tales!”

The real Captain Kidd was simply a bold adventurer at the wrong place at the precisely the wrong time in the wake of the Henry Every debacle. But even more critical to his ultimate fate, he was backed by the worst kind of sponsors imaginable. Not only did the Machiavellian Lord Bellomont coerce him into leading a virtually impossible expedition to the Indian Ocean to hunt down pirates, by threatening to seize his crew and ship in 1695 when Kidd initially turned down the command of the voyage, he and his fellow Whig noblemen dropped him as soon as he became a potential liability. Though these unspeakably powerful leaders gave the pirate-hunter firm, up-front assurances that they would stand by him in his difficult mission, they threw him overboard like ballast at the first whisper of trouble to protect their lordly reputations.

Unlike the largely unknown real pirate Henry Every, Captain Kidd’s story has been told and retold in thousands of accounts, from the heavily biased broadsheet newspapers and ballads of his day, to the countless books and journal articles produced over the past five centuries, to the Hollywood swashbuckler films of the silver screen during the past century. And yet, the tale of this humble-born New York privateer—who rose up by his own bootstraps to become the “trusty and well-beloved Captain William Kidd” of the King of England himself—has been lost to us in a foggy haze of legend, myth, and propaganda for the past four centuries.

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” proclaimed fictional reporter Maxwell Scott in the classic 1962 Western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, directed by John Ford. But when it comes to my ancestor Captain Kidd, such an approach cannot suffice. For the simple truth is there was an actual flesh-and-blood Captain Kidd, and the story of that Kidd, my real ninth-great-grandfather, is far more fascinating, nuanced, action-packed, and ultimately tragic than the caricature of mythology and pop culture.

Few historical figures have cropped up at so many important turning points on the global stage, come into contact with so many historically noteworthy individuals in such a short period of time, have seemed to be everywhere at once, had more lies spread about them in their own lifetime, or cast such a long shadow for five consecutive centuries and counting. Case in point: Kidd’s trial was the greatest courtroom drama of the eighteenth century, and one of the biggest political scandals in British-American history, rocking the New World and the Old and threatening “to tip the subcontinent of India to the Maharajahs.” But it was nothing but a sham proceeding to make sure Captain Kidd hung for the crimes of Henry Every and the other real Red Sea pirates of the 1690s.

But once we peel away the onion layers of mythology and propaganda to uncover and illuminate the real Captain Kidd, as judged by the moral standards of his era, we realize that he was a good, honest, and courageous man given an impossible mission and sponsored by dirty, rotten scoundrels who threw him to the wolves. Thus, at the end of the day, the supreme irony at the heart of Captain Kidd saga is that the man widely considered “the greatest pirate of all time” was no pirate at all. Behind the Kidd myth was a real man: a son, a husband, a father woven into the tapestry of early America, rendering him for all the ages a unique yet flawed colonial American hero (or perhaps better anti-hero), whose life story by a simple twist of fate happened to be fascinating, exciting, bizarre, and heart-rending enough that Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Robert Louis Stevenson have all made him immortal in their most celebrated works.

It is for this reason that the legendary Captain Kidd has had the last laugh on us all.

Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal

About Sam:

The ninth-great-grandson of legendary privateer Captain William Kidd, Samuel Marquis, M.S., P.G., is a professional hydrogeologist, expert witness, and bestselling, award-winning author of twelve American non-fiction-history, historical-fiction, and suspense books, covering primarily the period from colonial America through WWII. His American history and historical fiction books have been #1 Denver Post bestsellers and received multiple national book awards in both fiction and non-fiction categories (Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews Book of the Year, American Book Fest and USA Best Book, Readers’ Favorite, Beverly Hills, Independent Publisher, Colorado Book Awards, and others). His historical titles have garnered glowing reviews from bestselling authors, colonial American history and maritime historians, U.S. military veterans, Kirkus Reviews, and Foreword Reviews (5 Stars).

You can get Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal at Amazon.

Website: SamuelMarquisBooks.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samuelmarquisbooks?fref=nf

X: https://x.com/Sammarquisbooks

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14171086.Samuel_Marquis

Author Michael Kenneth Smith on Researching for Fantaisie.

Fantaisie by Michael Kenneth Smith is a historical novel set in the volatile years after World War II. Former Polish RAF pilot Jan Orlinski accepts a job flying cargo from Paris to the Belgian Congo, only to discover that his missions may involve more than he’s been told. Meanwhile, Sophie Gordon—banished from Britain due to her father’s past—takes on a covert role misleading Soviet spies, until she is captured and imprisoned.

Michael Kenneth Smith is the author of six historical novels, including The Postwoman, an international Amazon bestseller based on the true story of WWII resistance fighter Andrée De Jongh.

Website | Facebook | X

While researching for Fantaisie, I hit a roadblock trying to accurately portray the mechanics of the two-seater Messerschmitt Bf-109G-12 that plays such a crucial role in Jan and Sophie’s escape. Aviation forums and history books offered conflicting information, and I was struggling to visualize how a fighter pilot accustomed to a Hurricane would adapt to German controls.

My breakthrough came at a small aviation museum outside Paris where they had a partially restored cockpit section. The curator, noticing my intense interest, introduced me to an elderly aviation engineer who had worked on restoring various WWII aircraft. Though he’d never flown them in combat, he understood their mechanical differences intimately.

He spent an afternoon explaining the quirks of the Bf-109’s control systems, even sketching diagrams of the cockpit layout and explaining how the handling would differ from Allied planes. His technical knowledge paired with his storyteller’s ability to convey the sensory experience of these machines transformed what would have been generic flying scenes into something much more authentic.

When the book was nearly finished, I sent him the chapter featuring Jan’s escape flight. His note back simply said, “I could feel the wind through those bullet holes in the wing fabric.” That validation from someone who truly understood these machines meant everything.

A HUSH AT MIDNIGHT – BUILDING AN ADVANCE READER TEAM

A Hush At Midnight front cover — A Hush At Midnight

A HUSH AT MIDNIGHT – BUILDING AN ADVANCE READER TEAM

Guest post by Author Marlene M. Bell

One area most vital to the success of an independent author is building their advance reader team. Readers who receive an advance copy of the new book prior to its release to the public online and in bookstores. The idea is something I had no clue about when I began publishing books. In a sense, the author becomes the replacement for a traditional publishing house, taking on the same responsibilities that a publisher handles after obtaining a contract from a publisher. The publisher is key in publicity on new books for the most part with less burden on the author, from what I understand. The traditionally-published author still works on publicity, but not in the same capacity as an indie writer does.

I often wondered how traditionally-published authors’ books received so many early reviews—some landing on platforms prior to the book’s release. Advance Readers and a press release to media are instrumental in getting the word out on new book releases. It wasn’t until I had published a couple of books that I realized how to work on the advance team and why a team was necessary.

It takes several independent books published and good reviews in order to gain a reader following. People who like a certain writing style and love to tell others about books are an indie author’s best friend.

The Facebook platform and book groups bring in most of my reader leads, and from there, I’ve moved into Instagram, book blog tours, and a much larger following on X, formerly Twitter. My author website, marlenembell.com has a signup area built in for those who would like to join my advance team for each book launch. I prefer to send out signed paperback copies prior to the book release as a thank you gesture to my early readers and give them something special other than eBooks.

Gaining book momentum is difficult for independent authors with so many books published every day. They number in the thousands. However, I’ve found as the number of books published grows in an author’s repertoire of work, so does the reader audience. In my case, I have a romantic suspense series with four books in it so far, a children’s book based on a true story with our bottle lamb, and my new release is a standalone mystery unrelated to the Annalisse series. A HUSH AT MIDNIGHT was needed to break some of the habits I’d fallen into by writing familiar characters. I’ve attempted to create something for many readers in different genres.

Building a loyal following begins with early notification for each new book and making your readers feel special through giveaways. I do many giveaways to gain followers and promote each new book. Readers love to spread the word about books they’ve read. An advance team is a must for every author during a time when so many reading choices are available to the public.

**Thanks so much for allowing me to talk to your readers! I hope they will check out A Hush at Midnight the next time they’d like to read a twisty mystery with interesting characters. A mystery that’s hard to uncover who the villain might be!

You can get A Hush at Midnight at Amazon. and Book Bub.

This tour is hosting a tour-wide giveaway of 3 books. Everyone can join in the fun by posting the entry form on their blog! The grand prize winner will also receive Wildflowers Across America by former First Lady, Ladybird Johnson, a bag of wildflower seed, and a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/4221b3a8366/?

About the Author

Marlene M. Bell has never met a sheep she didn’t like. As a personal touch for her readers, they often find these wooly creatures visiting her international romantic mysteries and children’s books as characters or subject matter.

Marlene is an accomplished artist and photographer who takes pride in entertaining fans on multiple levels with her creativity. Marlene’s award-winning Annalisse series boasts Best Mystery honors for all installments including these: IP Best Regional Australia/New Zealand, Global Award Best Mystery, and Chanticleer’s International Mystery and Mayhem shortlist for Copper Waters, the fourth mystery in the series. Her children’s picture book, Mia and Nattie: One Great Team!, written primarily for younger kids, is based on true events from the Bell’s East Texas sheep ranch. The simple text and illustrations are a touching tribute of belonging and unconditional love between a little girl and her lamb.

You can follow the author at:

Website: https://www.marlenembell.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marlenembell

X/Twitter: @ewephoric

A Hush at Midnight Blog Tour Image — A Hush at Midnight Blog Tour

Secret Santa Claus Club, author Jeff Janke- Guest Post

Why do we spend so much time and effort creating a fairytale world for our children, just to take it away from them? Author Jeff Janke faced that dilemma three years ago when his daughter started questioning her belief in Santa Claus. Like most parents, he had two problems to solve–how to gently teach his child the true meaning of Christmas, and how to prevent her from spoiling the fairytale for other children. Out of this problem, Secret Santa Claus Club was born.

Secret Santa Claus Club is a beautifully illustrated story about a little girl thinking back on the magic of each Christmas. She remembers meeting Santa at the mall and seeing her first bike under the tree on Christmas morning. As time goes on, she starts to wonder if it’s all real. When she decides she’s ready to know the truth–her parents help guide her to the true meaning of the holiday.

Secret Santa Claus Club was written to be a tool for parents during these challenging moments. Combined with love, patience, and compassion, SSCC will help transition the reader from believing to becoming. At the end of the story, your child will be invited to join Secret Santa Claus Club. They’ll understand the importance of keeping the secret, creating the magic for believers, and helping other members of the club.

Secret Santa Claus Club Book Cover — Secret Santa Claus Club

See the tour–wide giveaway at the end.

A Reader’s Review

“I recommend using Secret Santa Claus Club to help break the news to any child. Or if your kid knows already, like mine did, it can help put the strange idea of “becoming” Santa into perspective. There’s some emphasis on keeping the secret from other believers (and helping spread the magic), which I really appreciate. Very glad I purchased. The quality is excellent. But most importantly, the story is really sweet.”

— Erin M. (Amazon reviewer)

A Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Santa Talk: How to Use a Secret Club to Help Support the Truth and Transition your Child

My daughter, River, was 9 when she started to question Santa Claus. It really took me off guard, but I knew this momentous occasion deserved something special. I couldn’t find the exact solution I was hunting for, so we held off telling her and I spent a year writing her a book.

I had several goals in mind, some driven by common fears all parents have in my shoes.

I wanted to make sure she didn’t feel betrayed. Saint Nick was real after all! But would she feel like I lied to her all these years?
I wanted to keep Christmas special and full of magic. I didn’t want it to lose its luster.
I needed to hold her accountable for all the believers in her life. I didn’t want her to spoil the secret for any of her peers.
And I wondered if I could replace feelings of exclusivity with inclusivity.

These goals and fears are what drove me to my light bulb moment. The Secret Santa Claus Club was born. 5 years later, I can say it worked better than I ever imagined.

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Here are the steps I took, the insights I gained, and the changes I would make:

Make Your Own Club Rules:

For me, I focused on spreading the magic and keeping the secret. Of course, every family will have their own unique approach. In a nutshell, here are my SSCC Rules:

Respect all Santas, including mall Santas and parents dressed as Santa
Help fill stockings
Never share the secret with any believer, no matter how young or old
Only caregivers can invite members into the club
Always leave milk and cookies
Carry on all the same Christmas Traditions with love and joyfully give to others

Find other members:

If your child has a tight-knit crew, find out who’s in the know and who isn’t. Share the concept of your club with family members and parents. Encourage them to extend their warm welcome to your child. River loved the feeling of community once older folks started talking about “the club”.

Find believers:

It’s helpful to know who to guard the secret from. And it’s also fun to pick a few close believers—like siblings or friends—and perform “acts of magic” for them. More on this below.

Create Club Activities:

Spreading the magic was a huge emphasis for us. River loved finding out how her mom and I made magic for her over the years. It gave her great ideas on how to pass it on. Some examples of club activities are writing letters from Santa to younger siblings or friends, or picking out stocking gifts for the family and stuffing them.

Charity:

I wish I specifically mentioned charity in our written club rules, but we always make sure to focus on it during the holidays. There’s no better way to honor the legacy of St. Nick than by giving to those in need. We started the tradition of finding someone in our community less fortunate, brainstorming a helpful gift, and leaving it for them anonymously. We also have River pick out 5 of her toys to donate. This helps make room for what’s coming.

Make it official:

If you’d like to make it more official and are crafty, make a badge, ID Card, patch, certificate, or ornament. We printed the club rules on linen certificate paper and I was so surprised at how much River studied those rules!

Celebrate:

Don’t forget to celebrate the induction of the club like a graduation or special achievement. This is a big deal! A rite of passage! Ask other adults to recognize the newest member into the club. A talk with family ahead of time can really make the transition special.

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One of the best parts about using the Secret Santa Claus Club was the way it transformed the event from a potential tragedy into an adventure. Once River joined the club, there was so much for her to look forward to; it replaced the magic that Santa supplied with a whole new world of magic of her own making.

If you’d like a tool to help your family start this conversation and introduce your child to the Secret Santa Claus Club, grab a copy of my children’s book! https://a.co/d/2tk9rFD You certainly don’t need it to have a successful transition, but it can be helpful. I also have lots of helpful blogs on my website: www.secretsantaclausclub.com

Happy holidays to you and your family and best of luck to you!

—Jeff Janke

Secret Santa Clause Club at Amazon.

We are doing a tour–wide giveaway of a book, club sticker, and club postcard. Jeff has EIGHT sets available for US and/or Canada winners.

Just click below.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/463009dc8/

Author Bio:

Jeff Janke is a single dad who considers himself more of a problem solver than an author. When his daughter started questioning Santa, he wrote a book to help guide her from a world of believing in Santa to a community of truly becoming Santa. When his daughter wanted to invite other friends into the club (after they learned the secret), and after lots of encouragement from friends and family who have faced the same dilemma, he decided to publish Secret Santa Claus Club to help other parents and children too!

Website: https://www.secretsantaclausclub.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secretsantaclausclub/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SecretSantaClausClub

Amazon: https://amzn.to/45T1H7r

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63391605-secret-santa-claus-club

Can a Novel Really Change Anything? – A Guest Post by author Lee Schneider.

Can a Novel Really Change Anything?

By Lee Schneider

They say “you are what you read.” Can your reading habits change the world?

Cover of Surrender by author Lee Schneider — Surrender by Lee Schneider

Novels are an ideal delivery system for ideas that shake things up. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906, took the meatpacking industry to task for its treatment of workers. The novel, and the movement that grew around it, spurred on the public lobby for government regulation of meatpacking, including passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, is quoted often today as we grapple with the power of centralized government and the ways we can deploy technology as an instrument of control. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, depicts a timely fight many people are in now about reproductive freedoms. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, opened up readers to gender fluidity, a topic that has become politicized now.

If we consider political or world-shaking novels like Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night, (1968) or Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, (1969) Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), or non-fiction, like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which warned in 1962 of the ecological disaster we face now, our list of books that have the potential to change the world will get long. I don’t have that much room on my night table!

But if we limit our reading list to speculative science fiction only, books like 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Left Hand of Darkness and the like, we will read stories that have a way of telling us more about the present than about the future they depict. I’d call speculative science fiction writing an exaggeration of the present, a way to see the present through the lens of the future.

Pick up a copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot stories, published in 1950, and you might find the prose a little stiff and some ideas dated, but you’ll not be able to ignore that these stories have become the instruction book for how we might respond to robots who are gaining on us in intelligence and even consciousness. Programmers who make chatbots today have to consider the ideas and predicaments and moral problems brought up by Asimov. 1984 is a must-read today to frame what is going on now with the surveillance capitalism imposed on us by Meta and Google. 1984 is a vital read to understand digital censorship of public libraries by public officials and other advocates. The facial recognition technology used by police departments sounds like something Orwell imagined. But it is here today.

It’s useful to look back to the science fiction novels of the past to understand the present, and novels published today will provide the interpretation we need of tomorrow. The Three-Body Problem, with its notion of an alien invasion in the works for 400 years, or The New Wilderness, with its story about how we might find our place in nature from now on, may be the books we turn to for an explanation soon, when we wonder what in the world happened to civilization or how our world has changed so much in so short a time.

Now, you may say to yourself, people may read all these books, but they really change things? Are any minds really changed? They can be, if we are thinking about culture change.

Heather White, author of One Green Thing, has an example for us. She writes that if each one of us does one small thing to address climate change, it will eventually result in a culture change around climate. It seems like a tall order for a thought to do all that, but if held by enough people, it can change the world. After all, if hashtags like #blacklivesmatter or #metoo can focus social action, why not a novel?

About the Author:

Lee Schneider is a novelist and non-fiction writer. His most recent book is Surrender, a speculative science fiction story set in 2050 with a climate change theme. It’s available on Amazon, Apple Books, bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble. His website is https://futurex.studio.

The Walk-On a true Chicago story.

The Walk-On a true Chicago Story

Guest Post

by Author

Richard Podkowski

In The Walk-On, Mike “the Steelman” Stalowski is a blue-collar kid who grew up in the shadows of the Chicago steel mills, where hard-working immigrants poured molten steel 24/7 while smokestacks belched black smoke until they were shuttered in the mid-70s. The word steel in Polish is “stal” which is the root of the Steelman’s surname. Technically, my interpretation means he’s made of steel.

Chicago, one of the most diverse cities in the world, has many nicknames including Chi-town, City of Big Shoulders, Windy City, Second City, and oddly for most, the Third Coast. Although if you’ve ever been on the lakefront, you understand.

Many people have heard of the South, North and West Sides. No East Side as you’d be in Lake Michigan. The city has over 200 distinct neighborhoods. You’ll find the Steelman in Hegewisch, Lincoln Park, Little Italy, Wrigleyville and the Gold Coast. The long-standing North Side / South Side rivalry is real. One of my characters from the South Side mocks a friend from the North Side for not venturing farther south than Roosevelt Road. Technically, the dividing line is Madison Street. Ironically, both live in the western suburbs, which is another rivalry.

The South Side is known for being more blue-collar, and it definitely has some of the city’s most poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Conversely, the white-collar North Side includes the bustling downtown area, with its well-known skyscrapers, lakefront recreation and residential high-rises, mansions, upscale eateries and shopping options, and numerous cultural destinations.

I am proud to have grown up on the South Side. We were certainly blue-collar, poor actually, and I lived in a tiny cottage bungalow. Like Stalowski, my parents were Polish immigrants who came to Chicago seeking a better life. My dad toiled in the South Side stockyards until he became a printer. My mother worked on a Westinghouse Corporation factory assembly line, alongside other Polish and Hispanic women. She didn’t speak good English, and she didn’t speak bad Spanish. They got along just fine.

I didn’t visit downtown until I was in 1^st or 2^nd grade and never dreamed I would one day attend Loyola University on the North Side lakefront. In all fairness, I confess that after becoming empty-nesters, my wife and I lived in East Lakeview and loved it. We walked everywhere: grocery store, gym, church, Wrigley Field, live theater, restaurants, Lincoln Park and even to the glitzy Magnificent Mile on North Michigan Avenue. Can’t do that in the towns of area codes 708, 630, or 847.

The baseball rivalry is real too. The Cubs are the North Side heroes. The White Sox are their South Side rivals. Fortunately, the whole city roots for the Bulls, Blackhawks and Chicago Bears. In The Walk-On, the city cheers for the fictional NFL Chicago Storm. As the book begins, Mike “the Steelman” Stalowski, notorious hometown hero hailing from the South Side, has been a fan favorite for years.

I hope you’ll enjoy Mike’s escapades around Chicago — my beloved hometown.

You may purchase The Walk-On at Amazon.

Richard Podkowski

About the Author

Richard Podkowski, a native of Chicago’s South Side, began writing fiction while studying criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago.
As a United States Secret Service special agent, Richard protected U.S. presidents and foreign dignitaries and investigated major domestic and international financial crimes until he retired in 2003.
Richard’s projects include a Christmas romantic comedy screenplay and a crime story, both
currently in the works. In his free time, Richard enjoys riding his road bike, working out, and
making Christmas ornaments. He currently resides with his wife in Los Angeles.

Website: https://richardpodkowski.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.podkowski
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richard_podkowski

Andrew & The Treasured Spirit of the Northland – Guest Post by Author Able Barrett

Andrew & The Treasured Spirit of the Northland

I enter the darkness that has been cultured for thousands of years, the legends of life gone by, ringing within its corridors with a deafening silence. I feel the presence of both good and evil, which seem to loosely pull at me. Which direction to take? A light can only slightly penetrate the thickness of the darkness. Faces begin to appear as ghost-like images; it’s a warning, which I do not heed.

The images become clearer. They are the faces of beautiful women, goddesses perhaps; they draw my very being deeper into the darkness, serenaded by their gentle voices lifting away my fear of the unknown. I am floating now, effortlessly on a bed of soft blowing air. I am totally consumed. Have I fallen under a spell? I call out for help.

Suddenly there is a flash of brilliant light and the real faces of the women are revealed to me. They are the true evil ones, the guardians of the darkness, the Temptress Sirens of the Dark Lords. They have surrounded me. I see a faint light in the distance. I begin to run towards the light, I feel Temptress Sirens clawing at me as I try to go towards the light in hopes of a safe passage. I hear a voice ever so softly… “Don’t go to the light……. Don’t go to the light……. It will deceive you. Use your faith and follow your heart.”

I stop but I can feel the Temptress Sirens stalking me. I move through the
complete darkness with my eyes closed now. There then appears a golden mist that forms a stairway leading upward through the darkness. Without hesitation, I follow the stairway climbing slowly out of the darkness. I can still feel the draw of the Temptress Sirens at my back growing stronger. I become weary as I continue to climb. The strength of the Temptress Sirens is beginning to hold me back. I fear I cannot make it to the top. A silhouetted hand appears from out of the darkness above me. I do not know whether to take it. I have no choice. I grab the hand and a gentle pull brings me away from the grasp of the Temptress Sirens. I hear their shrieks of madness slowly fade away as I am pulled forward.

A gentle light appears and an Angel appears before me. She has the youthful
beauty of a thousand ages. I hear her gentle voice speaking to me yet her lips do not move. Her name is Afriel. She is a being of light charged with safeguarding young life. She is to protect that which is youthful and tenderly growing within each of us, no matter how old we actually are. Afriel grants youth, vigor, and vitality. She places her hand on my forehead and closes her eyes as she nods her head and says, “go forward and save your brother, Nicholas.”

Andrew and his older brother Nicholas were separated as children.

Nicholas had been snatched away by the Prince of Darkness, and Andrew had all but given up hope, but now their mother is ill, and he’s determined to reunite them before she passes – despite her objections.

With his dog Jenny by his side, Andrew sets out on an epic and perilous crusade well beyond his wildest imagination, facing evil protectors, giant wolves, dark magic, Sorcerers, Goblins, and even the Prince of Darkness himself.

Then there’s The Great Tree.

It’s enormous, with a presence that’s nearly impossible to describe…

And it’s clearly the heart of the kingdom of the wicked Sorcerer.

This is the setting for the adventure story that changed Christmas forever!

All proceeds from the sale of The Great Tree go to The Last Road Dog Animal Sanctuary to rescue unadoptable dogs, cats, and horses, an approved 501 (c)(3) Animal Public Welfare Charity that greatly appreciates the ongoing support of readers like you!

Jenny the dog is based on a very real Jenny, the author’s vision of a true warrior – who has her own inspiring story that he’s happy to share with anyone who asks.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGK2ZNJF
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60553311-the-great-tree

Author Links:
Website: www.thelastroaddog.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TLRDSANCTUARY
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blkdogr4/

Author Bio:
Able Barrett is a former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney and U.S. Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force Prosecutor who shamelessly admits he loves animals more than most people, and he’s the manager of The Last Road Dog Animal Sanctuary.

Cathy A Lewis and Her Inspiration for The Road We Took.

“The discovery of my family lineage through ancestry, and the role that this played in my desire to preserve history.”

In 2018 I had ankle surgery which side-lined me from my work as a Chef. There would be no walking for six months, and I found it imperative to have a creative project to keep me from going bonkers during the lengthy recovery.

When my dad passed away in 1995, a small suitcase came into my possession. The suitcase contained all the artifacts and souvenirs from my dad’s 1933 six-week excursion through Europe. He was on the way to the Boy Scout World Jamboree, held in Godollo, Hungary, during the first
two weeks in August. The trip took place during the height of the depression. I was surprised to find he went on the journey with fifty dollars in his pocket. My dad was sixteen-almost seventeen at the time.

I had every intention of returning to the suitcase, but for the time being, I left it for an occasion when I could devote adequate attention to investigating the contents. It took me twenty-three years to return to it.

A week before surgery, I finally got down to business by waking the suitcase from its quiet repose.

I felt like I was digging into a buried treasure. To my surprise, I found a rare jewel-my dad’s journal, filled with details from his entire trip through Europe, beginning on day one, leaving the Port of New York. Dad’s journal was full of information, recorded daily, about what he saw and experienced.

As I surveyed the suitcase’s contents, bits and pieces of conversations about his trip and time with the Boy Scouts shared with me in my youth came rushing back to the forefront of my mind.

While reading the journal, one entry, in particular, shook me, causing my spine to tighten. While in Vienna, Dad wrote about a conversation he had with a Hitler Youth. The conversation took place while he strolled the streets of Vienna with some of his troopmates. It was there they caught the attention of a boy about the same age as them.

The boy’s name was Wolfren Wolften. He was a former Boy Scout, now a Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth uniform consisted of a brown shirt and black shorts, with a Sam Bowie belt stretched across the chest. On the sleeves of the shirt were Nazi armbands. Upon the head, a cap. To some degree, the Hitler Youth uniform seemed modeled after the Boy Scout uniform.

Wolfren spoke of a speech Hitler gave soon after coming into power as Chancellor of Germany on January 30 th , 1933. In the spring of 1933, Hitler proclaimed that no Austrian or German boy would attend the Jamboree to be held later that year, during the summer. Furthermore, Hitler decreed it compulsory to join the Hitler Youth. All boys of a certain age were forced to quit all other groups and activities. This young Austrian boy lamented that he could not attend the Jamboree. My dad wrote about conversing with him for some time. They had many interests in common.

They spoke at length about the Jamboree and what would take place. Later that evening, after returning to the hotel, dad wrote about the boy and the conversation that took place, concluding,

“I found him to be a fine fellow.”

That one entry, precisely those eight words, caused me to pause. Simultaneously, an idea began to form in my mind.

My dad did not know at the time that in ten years he would marry a Jewish immigrant whose extended family was murdered by the Nazis. I felt compelled to write at that moment, deciding to preserve the historical events conveyed by my dad’s writings.

I became fascinated with the last leg of dad’s trip and the four days he spent traveling through Germany before boarding the ship at Bremen back to the United States.

Dad detailed what he saw while traveling through Germany after the Jamboree.

He witnessed a massive rally and parade of German tanks, trucks, well over 100k armed forces, all marching through the streets of Munich. He noted that the Nazi symbol of the swastika was ubiquitous throughout Munich, with flags and banners covering every government building and many private homes. With all the tanks, trucks, and troops, the event was directly in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. While in Nuremberg, he wrote about a Hitler Youth rally with forty thousand members, all marching in formation while goose-stepping.

At that time, the world, by and large, had no idea what was going on in Germany. History would show that France and Great Britain knew. While the world was aware that Hitler was in power as Chancellor, the Treaty violations were not common knowledge. Dad saw these events taking place and wrote of them.

The second part of preserving my family history comes from my mom’s journey and her family.

While growing up in a suburb of Rochester, New York, I did not know about my family ties to the small border town of Baranovichi, Poland, now called Belarus. My mom told my siblings and me fables about her family, her ancestry, and like most children, we believed her.

We were not aware of the hidden anguish she carried, knowing her extended family died at the hands of Nazis. I was not aware I was Jewish until I was seven years old, and at that age, I had no understanding of what that meant.

My mom wanted us to believe her carefully constructed story of her upbringing. She desired to protect her children from the prejudice and hatred she suffered when first coming to the U.S. after marrying my dad in the canal zone in Panama in July of 1944, during the 2 nd World War.

My mom’s mother left Baranovichi in 1919 after World War I, traveling to Argentina. My grandmother traveled from Baranovichi to the Polish Corridor strip of land along the River Vistula to escape, traveling to Switzerland where she acquired a passport in Bern. My mom’s father’s journey to Argentina is somewhat of a mystery. Some accounts say he served to fight with the British Army during World War I, and at its conclusion, he took an British freighter to Argentina.

My grandparents allegedly had family living in Buenos Aires, where former Baranovichi residents Pauline Turetsky and Harry Silberstein re-connected and married. My mom’s birth certificate is from Buenos Aries, verifying she was born there.

The other facts of how my grandparents came to Buenos Aires remain unverified. Unfortunately, no one living can attest to the details of the journey—all who could have passed on.

My thirst for family history came too late in life to uncover the many mysteries that exist today. These perplexities haunt the recesses of my mind, leaving questions unanswered.

While the facts of my mom’s marriage to my dad are verified, I found a newspaper announcement of my parent’s wedding, written by my dad’s father, stating the contrary.

To compound matters and create further dissimulation, my grandfather published the wedding announcement of the marriage of his son “to the daughter of an Englishmen and a Mexican American woman.”

Clearly, he wanted to do everything he could to gaslight friends and family to prevent them from discovering that his eldest son married a Jewish immigrant.

Five years ago, I purchased a genealogy test. It was high time I took action to unravel the never-ending yarn ball of questions that kept me awake at night.

Another thing-my mom’s family dispersed from South America after sojourning through Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador. I have a photograph of a family passport from Peru to Ecuador with my mom, siblings, and parents.

My mom went to Panama to work, where she met and married my American dad. Some of her family moved to Mexico City from Ecuador, some went to Canada, and some eventually landed in Tel Aviv, Israel. I knew very few of my cousins or their extended families. My mom told me that they were all Orthodox and wouldn’t have anything to do with me, seeing that I wasn’t. I
took those words at face value.

I filled out the perfunctory questionnaires on the genealogy site, adding details to my profile. Using caution, I kept personal information to a bare minimum.

The results that came back astounded me, confirming me to be 49.9% Ashkenazi Jewish on my mom’s side of the test. I felt a small victory over the doubt that assuaged my mind for years. The test also revealed that my Haplogroup of DNA showed my ancestors originated in Israel two
thousand years ago and dispersed from there, eventually landing in Eastern Europe, Poland. Finally, I felt like I was getting somewhere.

History confirms that the 2 nd diaspora of the Jewish people occurred with the Roman conquest of Israel two thousand years ago. The pieces of the puzzle started to come together.

Three months passed, and one day, an email arrived from the genealogical site. A man was inquiring about my family and me. He had the matching last name as my mom, but I had never heard of this person before. While initially suspect, I nevertheless began conversing with him through emails for several days. I subjected him to a series of hoop-jumping for my peace of mind. At first, I thought he was a quack or someone trying to obtain personal information. He satisfactorily completed the many tests to authenticate what he said, and I met through email, my first cousin, once removed. He is the son of my mother’s brother, the second of three sons.

This one cousin wrote to our extended family across the US, Canada, Israel, and Mexico, introducing me as Matildé’s youngest daughter, asking my newly found family to reach out to me. Because of the genealogy search, I’ve discovered over one hundred cousins- some first, second, third, and fourth, but a family, nonetheless. Undoubtedly, my investment in the testing
was well founded.

Between my father’s journal and the search for my mother’s family, I’ve authored a book based on some of the facts I’ve uncovered. While it is historical fiction, my book weaves a story of suspense and intrigue based on my father’s four-day excursion through Germany. By authoring this book, I can preserve some of the historical facts of my father’s trip along with certain aspects of my mom’s life before coming to the United States.

I’ve felt it is of the utmost importance to preserve my family’s history for posterity’s sake. This book is a legacy for future generations.

I am the first person in my family to author a book.

https://cathyalewis.com/

You can get Cathy’s book at various book outlets including those below.

Kevin Vought Author of I’m Supposed to Make a Difference. His story.

I grew up looking like a very average kid. I lived most of my young life in the suburbs of Rochester, New York. That’s over on the western side of the state along the shores of Lake Ontario for those who aren’t familiar with the state.

My household included my parents, a brother who was about two and a half years older than me, and, of course, me. We almost always had a pet. At least one cat, two for a while, and a dog for a short time.

My parents weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor, either. We never went hungry, but we often didn’t have as many frills as some of my friends. For most of my childhood, my parents shared one car. We all shared a single bathroom with one sink. I don’t think either of those things were all that unusual back then, but seem relatively rare today.

My brother, Bryan, and I spent hours playing basketball at our hoop in the driveway and easily as much time throwing the football around in the backyard. We were closer than most brothers I knew and spent a lot of time challenging each other to be better athletes or just hanging out listening to music and playing games.

On the surface, it all looked very idyllic. If you threw in a white picket fence and a fresh baked pie every night, we would have looked like a typical 1960’s sitcom family.

You know that saying “don’t judge a book by its cover?” Of course you do. It never fit a situation better than it did with my family. The simple smiles flashed to the outside world were nothing more than a front to hide hearts as black as coal. Monsters barren of souls who were masters of covering their tracks to avoid discovery.

You may be thinking those sentiments are too strong. My own wife, Jill, didn’t believe me at first when I began digging up old memories. “Parents don’t do those things to their children,” she would say. “I’ve met your parents, they’re very nice people,” she would mistakenly add. Finally, in 2007, Jill pleaded with my father via email to reach out to me and help me through digesting some terrible memories I was having about my paternal grandfather. He simply ignored the email. That was also a turning point in my relationship with him. After that point, as the years went on and my memories filled in more completely, my father began making up more and more ridiculous lies in an attempt to cover his tracks. Between the 2007 snub and his subsequent backtracking on so many things he had already said, Jill finally began to realize just how evil he really is.

What did my father do that was so egregious? Did he molest Bryan or me? Did he beat us? No. He feared my mother far too much to do those things. Through his actions, things he would say from time to time, and an email he sent me sometime around 2006, it became clear to me that he wanted to. He “abused” his significantly younger siblings when they were growing up. “It’s what I learned” he emailed me. I’m certain he never “unlearned” it. My mother made it extremely clear to him, though, that she would come at him with absolutely everything she had, legally or otherwise, if he so much as looked at Bryan or me again the way he did one day. On that day when I was only about five, he was clearly ramping up to do a lot more than just yell at Bryan and me. She clearly wore the pants in the family, though, and she very well controlled most of his actions and kept him in line to the best of her ability.

What could my father do that was so wrong and so damaging under the iron fist surveillance of my mother? It appears that my father knew my mother’s strength and convictions from the beginning of their relationship. As such, he never told her what kind of person his father was. My father went to great lengths to hide his upbringing from my mother. Not only did he hide what kind of person his father was, he demanded that we spend every Saturday out there with them along with most holidays. When I say we spent the day, we went out there immediately after eating an early breakfast and we stayed out there until midnight or later. My father would typically spend the day alone with his father talking in the back work room or garage. Mind you, my grandfather is a well known violent pedophile who would go as far as threatening to kill my dad and his six siblings whenever they got too out of line. The first red flag: my father enjoyed this violent pedophile’s company and time to an extreme level.

There was more to my father keeping his past secret than wanting to visit with this violent pedophile on a routine basis. When I was still quite young, my father convinced my mother that Bryan and I should be sent to his parent’s place for at least two weeks to “have fun out in the country.” Had she known what my grandfather was all about, she clearly would never have allowed the weekly family visits, let alone leaving Bryan and me alone with this nut job. I have little doubt my father was delivering us to his father so he could live vicariously through his father’s actions. I also have little doubt that he got an earful about what happened during the two weeks we were trapped there on his Saturday visits.

You’re probably wondering now what in the world happened while we were there. It’s not even what you’re likely thinking. To me, it’s a lot worse. In the summer of 1980, I was seven years old. I have had nightmares indicating that my grandfather may have molested me, but I’ve never reconnected to those memories if he had. What I do remember is a lot worse. He abducted an eleven year old girl while I was alone with him. My brother was out of the house all day with my grandmother running errands. I believe the girl lived relatively close by and was a friend of Bryan’s and mine.

He attacked her and forced me to stay in the room with them. As she screamed, the guilt of doing nothing overwhelmed me. I knew helping her would likely end in my death, but I refused to stand there and do nothing. When I awoke from being knocked unconscious, she was gone. I’ve never been able to confirm whether she survived the attack or not, but I think I’ve found her with the help of a private investigator – alive and well today. She won’t respond to my emails or outreaches on Facebook. Presumably she’s not in a place where she wants to pick at that scab.

You at least had your mother to run to, right? Not exactly. My mother always looked out for me in the big things, such as keeping me safe from my father and worrying about why I came home with my face completely swelled up when I was seven. In other matters, though, I was pretty much her verbal punching bag.

My mother almost desperately wanted a daughter. She was convinced I was going to be a daughter. From the moment I was born, she became suicidally depressed. She never was able to move past the disappointment and lambasted me for everything I did. Even when I’d get 100% on a test, she would point out how lazy and stupid I was for only getting 95% the week before. After all, she reasoned, this 100% clearly showed I was capable of being perfect all the time. Talk about setting the bar high!

I knew she would blame me for the little girl’s death if I told her about it, so I kept my mouth shut. That wasn’t easy to do because she wouldn’t stop examining my swollen face for days. She even took me to the doctor to have it examined to see if my father’s excuse that I had been exposed to poison ivy in smoke was realistic.

All this and a lot more is described in much better detail in I’m Supposed to Make a Difference: A Memoir About Overcoming Trauma and Abuse. The book includes excerpts from emails I’ve exchanged with my father, greater details of all the situations described here plus more, and discussions of how this affected my mental health. The discussions on mental health include sections about suicidal feelings I battled from 11th grade through to about 2019. It lays out how I managed to work through the suicidal depression and anxiety with the help of a wonderful psychologist (who wrote a great foreword for the book) and an extremely knowledgeable psychiatrist (who wrote a wonderful afterword for the book). I’m hopeful the book will serve as motivation for others fighting with similar childhood traumas.

You can find the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09C3Z7XC5. Released on Tuesday September 7 in paperback and Kindle. The Audiobook version is being produced and will be available soon!

Who’s the Real Criminal: Blackbeard the Pirate or Governor Spotswood Who Hunted Him Down?

Who’s the Real Criminal: Blackbeard the Pirate or Governor Spotswood Who Hunted Him Down?

By Samuel Marquis

In Blackbeard: The Birth of America, Historical Fiction Author Samuel Marquis, the ninth great-grandson of Captain William Kidd, chronicles the legendary Edward Thache—former British Navy seaman and notorious privateer-turned-pirate, who lorded over the Atlantic seaboard and Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. A Robin-Hood-like American patriot and the most famous freebooter of all time, Blackbeard was illegally hunted down by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood, the British Crown’s man in Williamsburg obsessed with his capture. This year marks the 300th anniversary of Blackbeard’s death.

On February 14, 1719, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Spotswood wrote a letter to Lord Cartwright, a proprietor of North Carolina, in which he attempted to explain his justification for authorizing the invasion of his lordship’s colony and killing of Blackbeard the pirate and nine of his crew members at Ocracoke Island on November 22, 1718. The pirate, whose real name was Edward Thache of Spanish Town, Jamaica, and his men had recently been pardoned by Governor Eden of the colony, and Spotswood wanted to make sure that he was not accused of exceeding his authority and committing murder in North Carolina waters. His deliberately misleading letter was one of the British governor’s usual interminable fussy letters, and in it he falsely boasted to have rescued “the trade of North Carolina from the insults of pirates upon the earnest solicitations of the inhabitants there,” even though only one complaint involving a single minor incident had been filed. He further expressed his hope that his actions would “not be unacceptable to your lordships.” He admitted that he had not informed either the proprietors or Eden about his invasion plan, which was required by law, but chose not to mention that this was because he believed Eden to be conspiring with Blackbeard.

When Spotswood invaded the proprietary colony of North Carolina to the south, neither he nor the seventy Royal Navy officers and crew members he commanded to hunt down Blackbeard and his pirates had the authority to invade another colony. In the fall of 1718 at the time of the attack, Blackbeard was, legally speaking, a citizen who had broken no laws and was in good standing. He had been pardoned by Governor Eden for his previous piracies, had paid the appropriate fees to the governor and customs collector Tobias Knight in the form of casks of sugar, had applied for and received legal approval to salvage a French vessel captured near Bermuda from that same governor, and had yet to be indicted for any crime. Spotswood had, in effect, authorized the kidnapping or killing of the resident of another colony—depending on whether Blackbeard resisted or not.

But the governor was not bothered by the overt illegality of his scheme. He had already made up in his mind months earlier that he was going to go after Edward Thache without reservation, by taking action first and seeking approval from the British Board of Trade and lords proprietors later. He wanted the notorious Blackbeard—and Governor Eden and Tobias Knight too—so badly that he could taste it. He had long been intent on extending his control and influence over Virginia’s southern border, which he never considered to be far enough south, and he was intent on acquiring the fledgling proprietary colony and folding it into his own powerful royal colony of Virginia. By finding damning evidence that Eden and Blackbeard were in collusion and that Eden and Knight were receiving bribes for looking the other way, he hoped to make a Virginia takeover a reality.

The aggressive overreach of Spotswood begs the question: who is the criminal in this case, the lawfully pardoned and likely retired pirate or the colonial governor who knowingly broke the law to hunt him down, killed him and his crew, and then put the survivors on trial?

Between January 1716 and November 22, 1718, when he was killed at Ocracoke at the hands of Lieutenant Maynard and the Royal Navy, Edward Thache captured more than thirty merchant vessels along the Atlantic seaboard, Caribbean, and Spanish Main, and one 200-ton slaver, which he converted into his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. At the peak of his freebooting career in April 1718, he served as commodore of a 700-man, five-ship, 60-plus-gun pirate flotilla that rivaled the strength of any pirate fleet in history. According to one researcher, Blackbeard and the other pirates of his short-lived era had at their zenith “disrupted the trans-Atlantic commerce of three empires and even had the warships of the Royal Navy on the run.” And yet, during the course of his career, he never physically harmed anyone until the day he was battling for his life (he was reportedly shot five times and stabbed more than twenty times before he finally fell from being decapitated by a seaman’s cutlass). In fact, Thache typically showed his victims respect and let them down easily after taking their ships as prizes, giving them vessels in trade, food and provisions, and even receipts for merchandise.

In an age when violence was commonplace, he did no more harm to captured ship captains than to detain them for a brief period of time. As pirate historian Arne Bialuschewski states: “I haven’t seen one single piece of evidence that Blackbeard ever used violence against anyone.” Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates, echoes this sentiment: “Blackbeard was remarkably judicious in his use of force. In the dozens of eyewitness accounts of his victims, there is not a single instance in which he killed anyone prior to his final, fatal battle with the Royal Navy. “

The son of a wealthy plantation-owner from Jamaica and a former Royal Navy officer and privateer on behalf of the British Crown, by 1716 Thache became a no-holds-barred outlaw taking the vessels of all nations. But he and his men did not view themselves as outlaws, but rather as Robin-Hood-like figures and American patriots fighting against British domination and the Atlantic mercantile system that favored the 1% of their day. And that was how the American people largely viewed them, too. While the upper-middle-class Jamaican was portrayed as a “barbarous” monster by the pro-British newspapers, merchant elite, and Alexander Spotswood, he was known as a Robin-Hood-like folk hero defying the British Crown among his fellow American colonists. The image of Blackbeard as a cruel and ruthless villain imbued with almost supernatural powers was largely created by propagandist newspaper accounts of the era (particularly the pro-British Boston News-Letter) and Captain Charles Johnson’s (Nathanial Mist’s) A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, first published in 1724 six years after Blackbeard’s death. As Bialuschewski states about the latter: “This book has been plundered by generations of historians, despite the fact that it is riddled with errors, exaggerations, and misunderstandings.” More than any published work, Captain Johnson’s propogandist tome created the notorious but unrealistic Blackbeard image that we know today and celebrate in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and TV shows like Black Sails and Crossbones.

And what about Spotswood? While Blackbeard was playing out the role of Robin Hood of the high seas, the governor of Virginia was getting rich and fat at the colonists’ expense and showing open contempt for the colony’s lower house of elected representatives and the colonial democratic process. The governor’s many critics claimed he employed heavy-handed tactics to control tobacco exports through his Tobacco Inspection Act, rewarded his loyal friends with patronage positions, and acquired large tracts of valuable land through shady practices. With his Indian Trade Act, he granted the Virginia Indian Company that he created a twenty-year monopoly over American Indian trade, and charged the company with maintaining Fort Christanna, a settlement in the southern tidewater region for smaller Indian tribes. Establishing the company was Spotswood’s attempt to circumvent political opposition by shifting the financial burden of defense against Indians from the colonial government to private enterprise, but in doing so, he angered those who had invested in private trade. All in all, his policies were unpopular with Virginia tobacco planters, landholders, and commoners alike since all sought to maintain their independence from the British Crown. By 1722, he was toppled from government due to “an accumulation of grievances” from Virginia’s House of Burgesses and his own Governor’s Council, but by then Spotswood had made so much money from questionable land deals that his governorship had become immaterial. He would remain the wealthiest man in Virginia until his death in 1740.

One of his more disgraceful actions was to deny payment of the promised reward money to Lieutenant Maynard and the other Royal Navy seamen who had battled Thache at Ocracoke until four years after the battle—even though Spotswood had, by binding decree, promised prompt payment upon the capture of the pirate and his crew. After four years of delay, many of those who had fought valiantly and spilled blood upon the decks of the two naval sloops had died or retired from the service, and so never received a penny.

For Spotswood, the judgement of history has been severe, particularly when it comes to Blackbeard. He knowingly launched an illegal expedition in violation of the King’s and governor of North Carolina’s pardons to destroy the freebooter (who was likely retired from piracy) and his crew, all in an effort to gather evidence to be used to undermine Eden and his second-in-command and thereby further his own career and financial gain. In the eyes of history, it is Spotswood who is far more criminal, immoral, and unethical than Blackbeard, Eden, or Knight. Not only did he knowingly and illicitly violate the sovereignty of a neighboring colony, he conspired with and was closely associated with the ethically suspect Edward Moseley, Colonel Maurice Moore, and Captain Vail. In December 1718, the Moseley gang broke into the house of North Carolina Secretary John Lovick in an attempt to examine Council records for incriminating evidence against Eden and Knight. When Spotswood’s North Carolina conspirators Moseley and Moore were tried the following year, the event was a sensation and Moseley was fined and barred from public office for three years. Spotswood did his best to distance himself from Moseley and Moore, but his critics knew better.

In the end, he is remembered as a slave-owning British elitist, stodgy bureaucrat, hypocrite, and profiteer who used the governor’s office to lord over “the people” in the name of the Crown, promote his own self-interests at the public expense, and destroy his political enemies or those, like Blackbeard, that he disapproved of.

He will always be Inspector Javert to Blackbeard’s Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Biography

The ninth great-grandson of legendary privateer Captain William Kidd, Samuel Marquis is the bestselling, award-winning author of historical pirate fiction, a World War Two Series, and the Nick Lassiter-Skyler International Espionage Series. His novels have been #1 Denver Post bestsellers, received multiple national book awards (Foreword Reviews Book of the Year, American Book Fest Best Book, USA Best Book, Beverly Hills, Next Generation Indie, Colorado Book Awards), and garnered glowing reviews from #1 bestseller James Patterson, Kirkus, and Foreword Reviews (5 Stars). Book reviewers have compared Marquis’s WWII thrillers Bodyguard of Deception and Altar of Resistance to the epic historical novels of Tom Clancy, John le Carré, Ken Follett, Herman Wouk, Daniel Silva, and Alan Furst. Mr. Marquis’s newest historical fiction novel, Blackbeard: The Birth of America, commemorates the 300^th anniversary of Blackbeard’s death. His website is www.samuelmarquisbooks.com and for publicity inquiries, please contact JKS Communications at info@jkscommunications.com.

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