"All they knew was that, in Port Royal, the ground did not roll under their feet, and there would be new faces. They forsook evening violin concerts for social pursuits. Combustible fumes choked the air on the streets lined with two-story wooden tippling houses. Inside these dens, easy women with big, sensuous mouths laughed loudly and drank freely to soothe the pain of living. Upstairs, rooms laid in wait for couples who fumbled for comfort in each other."
Pirating Slavery, my novel about buccaneers liberating slave ships, will be published in 16 installments twice a week for four months. The ninth chapter appears here:
"Floating like hummingbirds on the gentle breeze of satisfaction, their flight had muffled the sounds outside of Orelia’s wooden house measuring one hundred feet long and thirty broad.
'Fish. Fish. Fried fish for breakfast,' called a boy’s voice. 'Tamarind. Tamarind,' called a girl.
Their singsong began to penetrate the walls of ecstasy. The sea air slipped through the gap under the door and awakened Yusef’s appetite."
Books, published as installments, make the story more manageable while heightening the experience of reading. The book becomes a companion and a commentary on your day-to-day life as you read it over the course of a few months.
Between chapters, readers have the time to share, talk and speculate about the book.
Try it!
Book serials first appeared in 1836, when a French newspaper published Honore de Balzac. At the same time, in England, Charles Dickens published The Pickwick Papers and ignited a trend. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1851 in 40 installments. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was published in Russia from 1873 to 1877.
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