Episode 39 - Rose Prendeville Samples Maggie and the Pirate's Son

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Rose Prendeville Samples Maggie and the Pirate's Son

Katherine Grant: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Historical Romance Sampler Podcast. The place for you to find new historical romance books and authors to fan over. I'm award winning historical romance author Katherine Grant, and each week I'm inviting fellow authors to come on and share a little bit of their work and themselves.

They'll read a sample of one of their books, and then I'm going to ask them a bunch of questions. By the end of the episode, you'll have a sense of what they write and who they are. Hopefully, you and I both will have something new to read. So what are we waiting for? Let's get into this week's episode.

All right, I am so excited to be joined today by Rose Prendeville. Rose is a librarian from Middle Tennessee with a passion for stories about found families and flawed people doing their best. She lives with her husband in a garden full of bees, delighting in books with [00:01:00] happy endings because she firmly believes in their ability to brighten the world.

Thanks so much for joining me, Rose.

Rose Prendeville: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Katherine Grant: I'm very excited, and you're reading a pirate book for us today, is that right?

Rose Prendeville: Yes, yes. My newest book Maggie and the Pirate Son.

Katherine Grant: That's so exciting. What can we look forward to?

Rose Prendeville: Oh, man.

We've got only one hammock. We've got some hijinks up in the top of the sails. And a lot of, a lot of fun on the high seas. mystery, intrigue some, some good dudes and some very bad dudes all wrapped up in a cinnamon roll hero and a pretty feisty go getter heroine.

Katherine Grant: That sounds amazing.

I look forward to reading it. What scene are we getting today?

Rose Prendeville: Today you're getting a scene that is shortly after Maggie is discovered on the pirate ship. So Maggie has [00:02:00] snuck aboard and she didn't know it was a pirate ship and was looking for some adventure, and so this is shortly after they've, they've been at sea, it's been storming, and

she gets found in her hiding place, and has to face up to the realization of just what this adventure is going to entail.

Katherine Grant: Exciting. All right, we'll take it away.

Rose Prendeville: All right. She refused to give in and call the anxiety which gripped her throat and hammered her chest, regret.

She was having an adventure, and she was going to enjoy it, damn it. Perhaps she should remain hiding, slip out to find something edible and potable in the dead of night, though how she'd know if it was day or night in this cave of perpetual shadow she was uncertain. Hmm. That was a problem for later. At the moment, she felt far too weak to stand, let alone scavenge, and was more inclined to go back to sleep.

Then she heard footsteps shuffling towards her, and she froze, not yet ready to be discovered. When [00:03:00] Custard reappeared, popping out from behind a stack of crates with a mrow, maggie released her breath, perplexed by how one small cat could make so much noise. A larger figure stepped out to join the cat.

Maggie gasped and shrank back into the hole, knocking her head hard enough to see flashes like a meadow filled with fireflies. The newcomer wore a loose white shirt with a darker colored waistcoat. He stood a good few inches taller than Maggie, with a thick muscular neck and arms and a patch flipped up above his left eye.

"What in God's name have you done?" He whispered, as though she were guilty of more than poor judgment and profuse vomiting, which couldn't possibly account for the full range of stench pervading the cargo hold. There was something distinctly bovine about the smell, and no matter how filthy, Maggie hoped she wasn't capable of smelling like a stable.

"Nothing," she rasped back, her hackles rising. Not enjoying the way he towered over her, Maggie pushed herself up the wall to standing, though her legs [00:04:00] felt weak and wobbly, and her head began to swim. He glared at her even harder. Now she was close to his eye level, and she scowled right back at him because squinting made her feel a little less like collapsing.

Then a flickering light appeared behind the man, and her eyes watered from the sudden brightness while the man's face turned absolutely thunderous. "Well, well, well," a weasely voice sang, as an equally weasely little sailor, with white skin and wispy white hair, limped out from behind another crate holding a candle lantern.

He clucked his tongue. "What do we have here?" he asked in a gleeful tone that made the hairs on Maggie's arm stand. The first man turned his head only slightly towards the second. And sounded almost sad as he answered, "Stow away." The older man took out a long pipe and tucked it between his teeth, unlit, looking slyly at his younger companion.

"Just found her down here, did you, Bashie?" He asked. His words [00:05:00] tinged with an accent Maggie didn't recognize. "Aye, just now, same as you," the young man rumbled. "Twas Mouser found her first. Sure, and you didn't help her aboard?" "Course not, Roy Shuckus." The second man spoke around his pipe once more. "Well, come on then.

Best taker up top. Mad'll be none too pleased." "Aye." Even as a little child, few things aggravated Maggie more than being spoken about like she wasn't standing right there, and she would have told off both men properly if she weren't half so fatigued, and perhaps a touch nervous. She hadn't expected her host to be overjoyed by her presence, but the way the young man kept glancing between her and his companion, along with the fact she was being taken to someone called Mad, made her insides as much like jelly as her knees.

"You coming or shall I carry you?" the older man asked her, leering over his shoulder. But the first held out an arm to usher her forward, almost like a gentleman, albeit a sullen one. [00:06:00] When she brushed past him, he stiffened as though she was covered in nettles, but he followed close behind, scandalously close, as they ascended the ladder.

And a good thing, too, for she hadn't found her sea legs yet. She took several missteps, grateful to have his solid form behind her to break a fall. He kept his hands at her hips to study her, all propriety left behind on the Orkney shore. There was no room for propriety on an adventure, she reminded herself.

Once on deck, she shut her eyes tight against the blinding sunlight and gasped in great lungfuls of the crisp ocean air, tangy with brine, as she reached for the nearest solid object she could lean against, a mast pole. His left eye now covered by the leather patch, the young man guided her with a firm grip on her upper arm to the far railing where she could lean casually.

Or vomit over the side, should the need arise. The sailor who had climbed up ahead of Maggie roused the other men, directing their [00:07:00] attention towards her until she had quite a crowd gawking. Turning away from the hungry, leering faces, she blinked in awe at the square sails hanging limp and torn after the storm.

"What's all this?" The deep, bassy murmur came from a tall black man. He stepped close to her, but her young captor just shook his head once and peered sternly down at Maggie. "Nav?" Another sailor asked, coming out of the crowd, to scan Maggie with warm, curious eyes. This one was as white and fair as Maggie's sister Ellen, or would have been if he wasn't burnt to a crispy, painful looking red.

No wonder their mother always fussed about bonnets. She'd never seen so many varied faces or heard so many different accented words in her life. As the men drew closer, she suddenly realized quite how foolishly precarious her situation was, and this time she felt only gratitude when the young man who had discovered her moved between her and the rest of the men.

"Don't say a word," he whispered for her ears [00:08:00] only. The crowd parted as a tall gentleman who could only be the captain strode forward. He wore an impressive tricorn hat of brown leather, a gold earring, and a long black coat with a row of brass buttons. His mouth curved ever so slightly on the left side as he studied her from top to bottom, and Maggie shivered.

Shrinking back against the railing. What did you think was going to happen? She could hear her cousin's words spoken in exasperation. Each time one of Maggie's impulsive notions had resulted in a cut lip or scraped knee. Only this time, Jory wasn't there to take care of her. Maggie was very much alone.

Bugger, bugger, bugger. When Bash had first discovered the girl hiding amongst the cargo, he tried to convince himself she was a ghost. He'd heard tales of plenty of apparitions, despite never seeing one himself. Eyeless, mouthless bastards were supposedly condemned to wander the lonely seas after having been murdered.

Women, green with algae, [00:09:00] were said to scream their misery in the dead of night. The girl was certainly pale enough, though he'd never heard of ships acquiring new hauntings after decades at sea, nor to his knowledge had there ever been a living woman aboard the Revenge. And while she looked a bit unkempt and sickly, there was nothing of the tormented soul in her lovely face.

No, for now she was very much alive, more's the pity. As they had stared at each other for that split second before the bloody Dutchman interrupted them, his mind flew through possible courses of action that wouldn't result in either of them being keelhauled, a way to hide her until he could put her on a bloody boat back to bloody Scotland.

Then the damn cook sidled up like he'd known she was there all along and was just waiting for someone else to find her so he wouldn't get the blame. Now the vultures were circling and it would be a miracle if Bash could save either of their skins. "A woman," the captain said, stepping up to examine her, his lips curving into a wolfish smirk.[00:10:00]

With one long finger he tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Where did you come from?" "Inverness," she said in a husky whisper. "By way of Orkney, sir." At least the silly girl recognized the captain's authority. In the sunlight, it was plain. Her lips were dry and cracking, her eyes a bit sunken. Had she drunk a drop since coming aboard?

She must be dangerously thirsty. "Inverness, by way of Orkney," Mad repeated, stepping back from her apace. "Welcome aboard Old Farron's Revenge, madam," he added, gesturing around them. She blinked back at him. Bash could almost see her mind working as she realized it was no ordinary merchant ship, not with a name like Revenge.

She licked those poor, parched lips while the captain scrutinized his pirate crew. "Who, Brought a woman aboard my ship?" Mad demanded, his voice soft but cold as [00:11:00] chert.

Katherine Grant: Ooh, what an exciting moment for us to end. I can't wait to find out who, how, how are they going to get out of this?

Rose Prendeville: Ah, it's going to be a challenge.

Katherine Grant: Yeah, well that was very exciting and I have many questions about pirates for you, but first we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.

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Using the code HISTORICAL, as in Historical Romance Sampler, sign up for a new membership and get three audiobooks for the price of one.

Check out the link in my show notes if you want more information. And now, back to the episode.

Katherine Grant: Well, I am back with Rose Prendeville, who just read us a sample from her recent release, Maggie and the Pirate's Son.

And there was a lot of really funny fun stuff happening in that scene. Like there was so much pirate life details, like even the long pipe, like it's just bursting with these pirate details. And then also it's so tense because, you know, what's going to happen. So first, before we get into the pirate details, I do want to ask, I feel like there are, In older historicals, there was a more common trope of stowaway heroines.

And I feel like it hasn't, it's like gone away for a little bit and you're bringing it back. Were there any specific [00:13:00] stowaway stories that you had in mind as you were drafting this?

Rose Prendeville: You know, I was trying to avoid doing anything that I specifically remembered kind of having seen been done before.

 I honestly first started writing it because I had the title Maggie and the Pirate's Son popped into my head and I I didn't have a story. And I sat down to write and I was like, it's time to write this book. I either need to come up with a new title or I'm going to write a pirate book. And titles are hard and I loved the title.

So I thought, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to write a pirate book. And I, I just started trying to craft the story that would fit Maggie because she was a minor, minor character in the two preceding books. So I didn't have any specifically in mind and kind of just tried to delve into what would her story as a stowaway be.

Katherine Grant: Interesting. And do you often get your story ideas from titles?

Rose Prendeville: No. It was a first for sure. [00:14:00] When I was titling the first book in the series, Mistress Mackintosh and the Shaw Wretch I was just trying to think of a good title for that book. And, and then I knew that the next book would be about Maggie's sister Ellen.

And I, I kind of came up with a title for that one. And this one just popped into my head and I liked how it fit with the other two. I liked how it fit kind of Maggie's character. But no, I would say usually the title is the hardest part and I struggle with it after the thing is already written and edited.

This was definitely a first.

Katherine Grant: It's so interesting to like have that as your entry point. So then that means you weren't I'm going to be talking about the book steeped in pirate lore already. Like how much research did you do? What's your research process? How did you get started with that?

Rose Prendeville: I did as much as possible.

With this one, it was kind of a, it's time. I really need to start this book. So I kind of [00:15:00] started doing research as I started planning this story. But then as I was working on various drafts, I went to two different. National Maritime Museums. We happened to be traveling in Amsterdam and in London, and I dragged my husband to both of their maritime museums.

Disappointingly, neither one had a word about pirates. So, I was, it was, it was starting to feel deliberate. It was very, very, focused on the tea company and then the merchant, you know, marine life and that's really interesting. It's almost like they went out of their way to not talk about piracy. It was so strange, but I was able to still immerse myself in a fairly time period appropriate nautical artifacts and history.

And then when we got home, I made a trip to the it's called the Pirate Treasure Museum in St. Augustine, Florida, which was [00:16:00] specifically a pirate museum. And it was fantastic. It's a little museum right there in, in kind of the middle, the thick of things in St. Augustine. And I was able to pick up so much just from that museum to kind of layer into it and other than that, lots of research looking up historical documents as much as I could kind of as I would come across something looking up, you know, is this realistic, but there's, there's lots of great web resources, particularly in history for kids.

That talk about pirate lingo and, and, and life aboard a pirate ship. And some of it's kind of lower level and some of it is really just very fascinating. So I layered in as much as I possibly could.

Katherine Grant: That's so interesting. And that kind of explains the Dutchman. I thought that was a very interesting choice to have a Dutchman.

So I understand now. I was like, Oh, is that a reference to the flying Dutchman? Is that, do you usually [00:17:00] do that level of research for all of your books or did you end up doing more because it's like Pirates is almost its own world compared to Legion City like you have to like start again with world building?

Rose Prendeville: I would say so. I mean, I do, I do a fair amount of research with any book but This one was a bit more and more targeted, because I really wanted to get the pirate elements right. So you know, the first two were set in Scotland, and I had the good fortune to go to Scotland, but certainly looked up a lot of Scottish history that I tried to layer in with the Jacobites and all that kind of stuff.

But this was kind of a whole, a whole nother level of, you know, the language and the history and you know, this book is set right at the, right at the tail end of the golden age of piracy. And that is almost a theme of the book. It's, it, this ship that they're on, it hasn't been good times. They haven't, you know, had a good catch in [00:18:00] a while or a good prize in a while.

And it, and it sort of illustrates that kind of waning. They're running from the Navy. They're, they're really not sure how much longer they're going to be able to be pirates. And I was able to kind of pull that in from the research.

Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, the other interesting thing about pirates is that they are they are criminals.

That's true. And their lifestyle is very violent. And you know, in many regency romances were called on to like you know, root for the Navy, but here it's all flipped and we're rooting for, you know, in some ways, the bad guy. So it's kind of like, maybe it's, is it like mafia romance? But I don't think it's as dark.

What's your approach towards that?

Rose Prendeville: It's definitely, I would say, not as dark as mafia, but I kind of subverted that a little bit, because a lot of the of the specifically pirate Regency romance he's a, usually the hero is a bit rougher than the type, I, I tend to not write alpha [00:19:00] males, I tend to write cinnamon rolls, and so I created a world where my hero was a reluctant pirate.

He didn't choose to be a pirate. He was abducted. He's kind of held against his will. Isn't really sure there's any point in leaving. He still participates in the piracy. But it attempts to show kind of, there's good pirates and there's bad pirates, and that's definitely at play throughout the, throughout the book.

The captain is not a great guy. And so I kind of tried to show both sides of it.

Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, that will make for a really interesting read. Got to love a lot of fun cast of characters.

Rose Prendeville: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Katherine Grant: And. So in your bio, you mentioned that you love writing stories of found families.

Can

you speak to are you aware of what about that really scratches [00:20:00] your id or gets you imagining things?

Rose Prendeville: Oh, that's such a good question. It really goes back to Being a young adult and I was actually reading kind of young adult literature where that would come together where you'd have this sort of disparate group. Melina Marchetta is really fantastic at that, bringing together this kind of disparate group and they just become really reliant on each other.

And I, I I feel like growing up, my family was really spread out, so my immediate family lived near me, obviously lived in the same house as me, but the whole rest of my family was very spread out. So, while I loved them and had a relationship with them, I didn't see them all the time, and I think I filled that out with with close friends who kind of became that secondary family to me.

And I, I just love that idea of family. choosing your people and finding acceptance. [00:21:00] with people around you who choose you. And I, I love putting that into my stories.

Katherine Grant: Yeah. There's something about the choice element of it that makes it even more powerful in some ways. Absolutely. Yeah. And I read that you were trying to go to space camp and got diagnosed with scoliosis.

First of all, did you end up going to space camp?

Rose Prendeville: Oh yes. So I, I actually went to space camp twice as a young teenager and funny enough, I, just went last month to an adult sort of space camp that was a, it's an astronomy workshop for writers to teach you kind of the groundwork, the, the basic it was almost like astronomy 101 crammed into a week.

But just with us and it was, it was all writers, various types of writers, and then these astronomers, astronomy professors, and Fantastic. Yes, I have gotten to go to Space Camp. [00:22:00] Yes.

Katherine Grant: Yeah. My only reference for space camp is Mary Kate and Ashley go to space camp.

Rose Prendeville: I definitely watched that as a, as a, as a kid.

Katherine Grant: So but the other part of that story is that you got diagnosed with scoliosis and you ended up having surgery for that.

And so I imagine there's some adversity there dealing with surgery as a young person in general do you feel like that shows up in your writing?

Rose Prendeville: That's a really good question. It probably does subconsciously. I think at the time when I was going through it and experiencing it, I didn't really think so much about it that way.

I was a teenager. I was in high school. And I wanted to be. As not different as possible. So I was initially supposed to have surgery actually the summer before my freshman year. And it would have been a slightly bigger ordeal than it ended up being. [00:23:00] Because the science progressed so much just in the three years, I ended up having it the beginning of my senior year of high school.

And I was really, really lucky with where I went to school. You know, they just kind of enfolded me and like, took care of me and helped me get caught up on classes that I missed. So there were certainly academic elements of it that that were challenging, but I had a lot of help. I think the adversity kind of began to come later as there were things I realized I couldn't do.

Thing, even, I mean, even in high school really, I, I, obviously I wanted to be an astronaut and there was a moment in the car with my mom where she had said, listen, With your back, there's no way you're going to the Air Force Academy, like you need, you need a plan B. And it's funny for me now to think about me doing, because I'm just such a different person.

Was I tough enough to have survived that, even the scoliosis aside? I don't know, it was a [00:24:00] different time, but I said, fine, then I'll, I'll, I'll become a writer and I'll write about it. And I actually haven't really written sci fi or written a space story yet. I have some stuff that's percolating but in terms of you know, it's, it's been more as I've I feel like I've realized it more as I've gotten older.

There were certainly always things I couldn't do, but even now, you know, my husband and I were in our forties and he's just now starting to hit the like. Oh, you turn 40 and suddenly, like, your knee doesn't work anymore. You know, whatever. It's like, a lot of the things he's experiencing, I didn't know that everyone didn't experience that all the time because I've had those aches and pains and soreness and stiffness and difficulties since I was 13 years old.

And so it's kind of, It's, it's kind of this evolving realization of ways that things may have been different or harder that I didn't even realize and I've just kind of [00:25:00] gotten on with it.

Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, it's very interesting to me that you were like, okay, I'm not gonna be an astronaut. I'll write about it instead.

And now you've veered into historical romance. How did that happen?

Rose Prendeville: You know, for a long time I was trying to write young adult. And well, I was writing young adult, let's say, and the last young adult book that I wrote actually was set at a fictional space camp. But I, I never ended up doing anything with it.

And I was kind of in a place where I was struggling to balance work and writing and I wasn't having as much fun with my writing as I would have liked to have been. And I was, I was watching something with my husband and it was, had a romance element and I was like, I just love, love, why don't I write this?

And he was like, why don't you write this? It's your favorite thing. And and then I saw a contest to write Highland Historical. And I had been [00:26:00] writing, Okay. Just because I was blocked. I had been writing some Outlander fanfiction just for a friend of mine. I didn't put this anywhere. It's not on AO3.

You're not going to find it. Don't go look. But I was just writing it for a friend of mine because that was the only thing I could seem to write. I was very stuck. And she said, stop what you're doing immediately and go write Highland Romance. And I didn't think that I could. I thought there's no way that's a lot of research.

I just, I don't have the, you know, background. But it was fun. And so when, when I saw that there was this contest, I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it. And it was the most fun I had had writing in years. And then I kind of realized historical romance is my favorite thing to read. Well, you know, I, I should probably be writing it.

So kind of just came about, I started during the pandemic and the rest is history.

Katherine Grant: Yeah, I love that. That resonates a lot with me because I [00:27:00] similarly was reading a lot of historical romance, trying to write other things, and it was just painful, and I was like, what if I tried writing a historical romance?

And all of a sudden it was like I was 12 again, and I was like, this is amazing, this is fun!

Rose Prendeville: It's so fantastic when that happens, it's just like, this is, this is what I should have been doing all this time.

Katherine Grant: Yes! Well, speaking of fun, it's time to take our fun game, love it or leave it. All right.

 

Katherine Grant: So, love it or leave it, protagonists meet in first 10 percent of the book.

Love it. Love it or leave it, dual point of view narration.

Rose Prendeville: Absolutely love it.

Katherine Grant: Love it or leave it, third person past tense.

Rose Prendeville: Love it.

Katherine Grant: Third act breakup or dark moment.

Rose Prendeville: I love it. I do. I do. I'm, I'm definitely the third act breakups, stan I know a lot of people hate it, but I think, [00:28:00] you know, I won't be mad if there's not one in something I'm reading, but I think there's much value and drama in it.

Katherine Grant: Yeah, it's yummy. Love it or leave it always end with an epilogue.

Rose Prendeville: Love it.

Katherine Grant: How about share research in your author's note?

Rose Prendeville: I love that too.

Katherine Grant: All right, and are there any romance rules I didn't ask about that you break or play with?

Rose Prendeville: No, I mean, you didn't ask about the happily ever after, but I will not break that.

Katherine Grant: I kind of assume, I have never asked anyone about that because I kind of am assuming that if you identify as a historical romance author, that you're not gonna toy with that too much.

Rose Prendeville: Yeah, no, definitely not. No, but I, it's, it was funny because You know, you gave me that list ahead of time and I looked on and I was like, I wouldn't leave any of these.

I love them all.

Katherine Grant: I know, they're so good. They're what makes historical romance [00:29:00] so fun to read and write.

Rose Prendeville: They really are. They really are.

Katherine Grant: Well, thank you so much, Rose. This has been fantastic. I've loved talking to you. Where can our listeners find more about you and your books?

Rose Prendeville: Thank you so much for having me on.

My website, roseprendeville. com, everything's definitely there. I'm on Instagram more than I ought to be. I'm on threads. I'm still sticking around on Twitter occasionally and Facebook. I'm on all the things. I'm not so much on TikTok. I have an account. But yeah, mostly Instagram, so.

Katherine Grant: Alright, and are your books exclusive to Kindle, or are they wide?

Rose Prendeville: They are not. They are wide. They are available everywhere.

Katherine Grant: Well, thank you again. I've really enjoyed talking historical romance, pirates, and Mary Kate and Ashley.

Rose Prendeville: Thank you so much for having me. It's a blast.

Katherine Grant: That's it for this week. Check out the show notes where I put links for my guests, myself, and the podcast. Until next week, [00:30:00] happy reading.