Beneath Black Sails

by Clare Sager

  If you managed it.

  Ha! Foolish, foolish Knigh.

  She scoffed and leant over the stern rail, cool salty spray dusting her skin, such a glorious relief after the stillness of land, the cruelty of iron.

  “Your family needs money. Hells, you need money. I need revenge. And I wouldn’t say no to the money either. So, no, I’m not going after Drake’s treasure.

  Head cocked, she flashed him a smile, all brash confidence.

  “We are.”

  Vice & Knigh’s adventures continue in

  AGAINST DARK TIDES,

  coming summer 2020.

  Pre-order your copy now to get it on release day at the introductory price.

  Author Note

  Caution: Here be Spoilers!

  Read After Beneath Black Sails.

  So, was that how you expected the first instalment to end? You knew Vice couldn’t just fall into Knigh’s arms and let things be smooth sailing (pun semi-intended) between them.

  Don’t worry, I have a happy ending planned for the characters/series, but you didn’t think these two would find their way there in just one book, did you? No, they have a long way to go, but everything will be settled by the end of the fourth book, Through Dark Storms, I promise!

  They say you should write the book you want to read but can’t find. That’s definitely a good description of my author goals. I love stories that combine thrilling action, cunning intrigue, and a gut-wrenching romance. Some stories get it just right for me, while others get the adventure spot on but don’t have any romance or give it a horrible tragic ending where one of the couple dies. I can enjoy those stories, but they’re not my favourites. When I write, I always try to write the book I’d like to find on the shelf that blends action, intrigue, and romance.

  This series is my take on the classic pirate adventure, heavy on the action and the romance, while my Counterfeit Contessa series leans more towards the intrigue and romance. (If you’ve read the CC books, you might even have spotted a little easter egg in there for the BBS series …)

  I’ve always wanted to write about pirates – it’s probably something to do with growing up watching films like Cutthroat Island and Hook. But, I have to admit, I always put it off because I was intimidated by ships. They’re big, complicated beasts with weird, specific names for every little part and special rules, and I had no idea where to start writing about them convincingly. So I didn’t.

  Then Vice came along.

  She started as an idea for a character for a roleplaying game that never ended up going ahead. When I was creating the character, this backstory hit and I found myself writing pages and pages about how she’d run away to sea, expecting a great, romantic adventure … only for her husband to die in his first battle in the most unheroic way possible. Definitely not a fairy tale ending to that relationship.

  But then, I think happily ever afters depend on where you end the story, don’t they? Vice’s story didn’t end with her husband’s death, as you’ve seen. You can read more about her past in Across Dark Seas, which I give to my newsletter subscribers as a free gift: https://www.claresager.com/bbsback

  That first idea for the character of Vice was some years ago now, but I kept the notes ready to write about her some day.

  After the second Counterfeit Contessa book, A Sleuth & a Charlatan, I wanted a bit of a break from that series – it’s a mammoth-sized book (twice the length of BBS) and quite dark at times. I loved it, but I wanted to write something different – more light-hearted, shorter.

  Guess who poked her head up out of the crow’s nest and gave me a wave. (And a grin and a wink!)

  Maybe it was watching Black Sails on TV or playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag some years earlier, but I had a real hankering to tell a pirate story.

  And Vice was pretty insistent.

  Now you’ve read BBS, you know how tenacious she is, how confident she is that things will work out as long as you give it a go.

  And I could kind of see her point. I love reading and learning – I think that’s part of what I love about writing stories, it’s the perfect excuse to research new topics and keep learning. I didn’t have to know every single thing about sailing a tallship – I wasn’t writing an instruction manual. What I did need to know, I could learn.

  Vice added that what I didn’t know I could bluff. In Knigh’s words: That woman!

  So I bought a stack of books on pirates and sailing ships, I bookmarked gods know how many websites, and I drew myself little diagrams of different parts of ships and the names for directions as an aide memoir. And I let Vice have her way.

  I’m glad I did.

  I loved writing this book, which is, really, my homage to the pirate and sailing stories I grew up with and discovered later in my teens and 20s. Things like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, and, as I mentioned already, Black Sails, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Cutthroat Island, and Hook. I’ve included a few Easter egg references to some of these stories in BBS (and later books in the series, so keep your eye open for those). Did you spot any?

  I had so much fun, in fact, that I actually laughed evilly to myself while writing some scenes. (Particularly the weapons check scene, which is one of my favourites!) And I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I did writing it. If you do and you have a couple of minutes, it would really help me out if you were able to pop a really quick review on up Amazon and/or Goodreads – it doesn’t have to be long, just a sentence or two is fine. It’s the number of reviews that seems to be most important in helping encourage Amazon to show the book to other readers.

  At the time of writing (April 2020), we’re about a week out from the book releasing, but I’ve been getting feedback and reviews on Goodreads from advance readers. The reviews have all been great (Yay!), but one or two people aren’t keen on Vice or aren’t sure of her yet.

  And I’m not entirely surprised by that. She’s flawed, she’s prickly, and she makes some terrible decisions, as you’ve seen.

  But she’s also affectionate, determined, ferociously loyal to her friends, and, really, doing the best she can with her personal traumas. Isn’t that what we all do in life?

  I really wanted to write about an imperfect heroine – someone who’s scarred (and sometimes scared), who uses humour and glibness as defence, and who has a lot of room for improvement. If you’ve read Across Dark Seas, you’ll have seen how some of her less pleasant/more destructive behaviours are coping mechanisms.

  So, yes, she’s great at lying to herself (I think she’s almost convinced herself that she doesn’t have feelings for Knigh!), but I hope you can see that isn’t the whole picture and that a path to growth lies ahead of her.

  Also, like a lot of women in 2020, Vice has had enough. And she’s definitely over following rules set by a man’s world. So, she’s not going to apologise for knowing what she wants and going after it.

  On the subject of feedback, a few readers have commented that they’d like to get to know some of the secondary characters better. I’ve tried to keep this book quite focused to maintain the pace, but rest assured there’ll be plenty of time to get to know various of Vice’s pirate friends (and foes) in the future books. (And perhaps even in spin-off series …)

  If you simply can’t wait until then, you can meet Perry, Saba, Lizzy, and Fitz in Across Dark Seas, the short prequel novel to this series. (When I say ‘short novel’, it’s about half the length of BBS, to give you an idea.)

  Everyone who’s read BBS is united on one thing, though: they love Barnacle. I mean, she’s a cat, what’s not to love? She’s quite special to me, too, as she’s a combination of two of our pets. Her personality is based on our cat Deedee (who’s currently lying in the sun in the living room), and her appearance matches Ghost, the cat we had when I was a child. If you keep an eye on my Instagram feed (@claresager), you’ll see photos of Deedee and her brother Dash.

  Then we have Knigh. Ah, dear, cunning, damaged Knigh. Just like Vi
ce, he’s struggling with his own traumas and emotional wounds, but I’m looking forward to sharing his journey to wholeness with you.

  Did you enjoy them both discovering their past connection? That’s another scene that had me laughing wickedly as I wrote.

  I knew from the start that I wanted Vice to butt heads with a man who was, in so many ways, her opposite. And I loved the delicious irony of him being her former betrothed, whom she was quite adamant she hated and would never marry.

  As I wrote BBS, I was wondering what it is I love so much about enemies to lovers and opposite sides of the tracks/opposites attract pairings (the Counterfeit Contessa books are about a low-born thief who poses as an aristocrat in order to rob from the rich … She, of course, meets her match in one of her aristocratic targets. ;) ).

  Yes, the banter and arguments are fun, and the disagreements are a great source of tension and conflict. But, deep down, I think it’s because of this central idea that is hugely important to me: what connects us is greater that what divides us.

  I love it when characters look at each other, judging by what they see and think they know about X (pirates and pirate hunters in Vice and Knigh’s case), and think ‘We have nothing in common.’ Then as they get to know each other, they discover the other one’s positive traits, surprising deviations from their picture of what an X should be, and, finally, some common ground.

  On the subject of romance … If you’ve read my other series, you might notice the love scenes in this book were rather more spicy! The Counterfeit Contessa books are the first I ever finished writing and I was very much conscious of people I know reading them, so I kept things a bit tamer than I might’ve.

  I also hadn’t discovered that there are all these other readers like me who also love the adventure and the romance, including the sexy times that can involve.

  Nowadays, I know I’m not alone in that. In fact, I’m one of the admins over at Romantic Fantasy Shelf, a Facebook group for readers who love romantic fantasy, fantasy romance, and fantasy reverse harem. In the group, we are non-judgmental about heat levels and there are those who like it sweet as well as plenty who like it spicy. You could say, I’ve found my people! (If this sounds like your cup of tea, you can join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/romanticfantasyshelf/ )

  As for BBS … When I started writing, Vice really jumped off the page as quite a sexual person (and I think in general there’s that angle to pirates – they live by a very different set of rules from the average person in their era).

  I always knew that things between Vice and Knigh would simmer right from the start, with the tension building to boiling point … But with how opposite they are in a lot of ways, I also knew it wasn’t going to be easy for Knigh to act on his feelings and desires. He isn’t the sort to dive in for a quick kiss in an alleyway (or book shop) on a whim. (And Vice, tempted as she is, is too wrapped up in the fact he’s a pirate hunter to make her move as early as she normally would.)

  By the time I got to the battle on the Covodonga, I knew that when Knigh cracked, he would crack completely – kissing, sex, all of it at once.

  But when I reached the glow-worm cave, I was really torn. I wasn’t sure where to pitch it in terms of explicitness. Did I stick with the shorter scene with sensual terms and soft focus I’d already used in A Thief & a Gentlewoman and A Sleuth & a Charlatan?

  I’m a believer that sex scenes are a great opportunity to reveal a lot about characters and their relationships, so I knew I didn’t want to cut away (and I felt like I’d be cheating you guys after all that hot tension). Also, with the way things had bubbled between them for so long, fading to black would have been incongruous.

  Eventually, I decided to just write the scene without worrying about it or thinking of anyone else, just letting the characters lead the way (And Knigh certainly took things in a direction I (and Vice) wasn’t expecting! Naughty boy!). I figured that afterwards I could read and decide whether to tone it down, cut parts, etc.

  In the end, I barely changed the scene and I actually think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. I’m really proud of it. So much is shown between them and it is a fitting culmination of all that sexual tension in what I hope is a great pay-off, while still showing how far they have left to go. Plus, you know, I happen to think it’s hot as hells. Phew!

  Moving on to another issue where I had to make a call about what to show and what not to … I think it’s fair to say that my pirates are a fantasy version of pirates – the reality was a lot dirtier, deadlier, and frequently a lot less noble. Their reigns on the high seas tended to be much shorter thanks to unglamorous ends caused by stray gunshots and nasty diseases. Many of them also engaged in slavery, though there were others who stood against it and freed the enslaved people they encountered. Many pirate crews included former enslaved people in their number. Sad to say it, but even Sir Francis Drake engaged in the slave trade in his early career.

  Some of the pirates referenced in BBS are real figures, like Ned Low and François l’Olonnais. Those two committed terrible acts of torture and were pretty horrifying people, even by the standards of the day.

  History is full of beauty and horror, just like the modern world. In writing this series, I made a call about how far I wanted to stray into the horror and where on the spectrum of cruelty and nobility I wanted my pirates to sit. Again, I was guided by the initial idea of keeping this series fun and more light-hearted.

  If you want to learn more about real pirates, I highly recommend the Pirate History Podcast, which is as entertaining as it is educational.

  Just as my pirates are like real pirates and not, the world I write in is like the real world circa the 17th/18th century but not. Both the Beneath Black Sails series and Counterfeit Contessa series take place in the Sabreverse. Yes, I named it after the real stars of the show – the sabrecats that most cultures ride (rather than horses).

  The CC books play out in not-Constantinople (Arianople in the Sabreverse), inspired by my dual British and Turkish Cypriot heritage, while, as you’ve seen, the BBS books take place between not-Britain (Albion) and the not-Caribbean (Arawaké).

  Some notable differences in Albion: how colonialism/empire played out, the fate of Boudicca and her fight against the Romans, Elizabeth I’s life and how it interacted with the return of the fae.

  I think there are plenty of hints throughout this book and the others in the series to give you an idea of what happened in my version of these events, but let me know if you’d like me to talk about that more in a blog post or future author notes. If you don’t already get my newsletter, sign up here and then reply to the welcome email to let me know: https://www.claresager.com/bbsback

  Some differences in the wider world that we’ve seen so far (there are other things that haven’t appeared in any of my books so far … some day you’ll get to see!). Numerous now-extinct creatures still exist, examples can be seen in the creatures Vice thinks of when she and Knigh swim the reef and she feels the whale shark approach. Sabrecats themselves are based on a mashup of various extinct species that tend to be grouped as ‘sabretooth cats’ with the more recently extinct Caspian tiger. I had the idea that they were domesticated much earlier than cats were in our world because if you’re travelling in a world with dangerous, large megafauna, it’s a benefit to ride a creature that can defend itself and you with claws and teeth.

  Slavery is also different, as seen in the CC books: before the events of T&G, one of the central characters Derry was enslaved in Noreg (not-Norway) and transported to the not-Mediterranean. As the story of colonialism has played out differently, so too has the history and story of slavery. There’s less of it, for one thing, and it’s not focused on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and much of it isn’t based on the idea of people as property. I’ve tried to be sensitive and push the wheel of the Sabreverse’s world towards social justice, but I know that intent doesn’t mean I’m immune from writing things that may be problematic. My unreserved apo
logies if I have and I’d definitely appreciate an email to let me know.

  On a more light-hearted note … The glow-worm cave is inspired by images I’ve seen of an amazing cave in New Zealand full of blue-green glow-worms. So, yes I’m aware that the glow-worms in the Americas don’t tend to be that colour, but those photos were just so gorgeous, I had to try and recreate the place, and I bowed to the Rule of Cool on this occasion. If you’d like to see photos, I’ve saved some on my Lady Vice Pinterest board.

  If you’d like to see that and some other fun stuff relating to the series, I’m adding bits and pieces like a playlist, the Pinterest board, and, soon, a map, to this page on my website: https://www.claresager.com/bbssecret

  So, there you have it, a few of my thoughts and inspirations for this book. What did you think? Who was your favourite character? Vice? Knigh? Maybe you’re a fan of Perry? Or perhaps you prefer a bad boy, like FitzRoy? Who would you like to see more of and get to know better? What moments had you cheering or ripping your hair out? Sign up and reply to the welcome email to let me know!

  I tend to email my newsletter once or twice a month, plus the occasional brief update when I have a new book out, so you’re the first to know. I usually share photos from my travels and research, advance snippets of what I’m working on, fantasy book deals and new releases, plus cool giveaways. You can sign up here: https://www.claresager.com/bbsback