JENN McKINLAY: I am polishing up the first draft of my first run at writing a fantasy novel entitled BOOKS OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN (coming 2025). It's very fun as it's a fairly new genre and the rules are not yet set. As in, the only limit appears to be my imagination which is both intimidating and thrilling!
I was doing my final read through the other day and I hit a scene that felt flat when all of a sudden...ghost pirates!
No, no, no. I didn’t want to talk about this. The potential for more embarrassment was too probable. Should I pretend I couldn’t hear him? Interrupt him with some other talking point? Listen to him? Ugh, I was so bad at all of this. This was why I was happily single and not dating excluding short lived hookups. Anything longer and I would inevitably humiliate myself.
“I didn’t mean to leave you so abruptly,” he said. Even his charming British accent couldn't soften the words.
Jasper was talking to the back of my head. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to see his pale gaze filled with pity at the lonely librarian who’d been hitting on him. I hadn’t been but if I denied it now, he’d think I was trying to save face—which was even more mortifying. A motion outside the window of the ferry boat drew my peripheral vision. I turned and felt my heart drop into my shoes.
“I was unforgivably rude, displaying the sort of boorish manners—”
“Pirate!” I yelped.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Jasper protested.
I whipped around to face him and all thought of our previous evening’s awkwardness vanished. I glanced around the nearly empty lounge and pulled him down by the lapels of his freshly laundered coat.
His eyes went wide, his face mere inches from mine. “Zoe, I—”
“Listen, I don’t want to panic the passengers but there is a ghost pirate ship floating above the water headed right for us.”
Jasper turned his head slowly to the window. His eyebrows shot up and he muttered, “Bloody hell!”
Yeah, so that happened. The scene is definitely more exciting, at least to me. Now I just have to figure out how one gets rid of ghost pirates? Suggestions?
