Like Pirates? Of course you do. _Fast Ships, Black Sails_ coming out from Nightshade press.

Blatant plug follows:

Fast Ships, Black Sails, is an anthology of short stories about pirates, soon to be released by Nightshade Press. The anthology is edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, and contains a story by yours truly.

The stories in the anthology range in pirate goodness from classic adventures to pirates in space to a surrealist tale chronicling the heroics of “pirates” in the information age. My contribution, “The Adventures of Captain Blackheart Wentworth: A Piratical Tail,” tells the tale of two dastardly rat pirates in a mode that I’ve been calling similar to Beatrix Potter on acid. Here’s an excerpt:

I. Burial at Sea

With a splash, the body of Cracked Mack the Lack went overboard. Captain Black Heart Wentworth, Rat Pirate of the Gully by the Oak, stared after Mack into the turgid brown waters. Wentworth’s first mate, Whiskers Sullivan of the beady eyes and greedy paws, slunk deckside, muttering madly about the pitter patter of fleas rushing along his spine so loud he couldn’t sleep or shit or make water – and when a rat can’t shit or make water, tis a dark day indeed.

Cracked Mack the Lack had been the last of their dastardly crew. Sully’d found him that morning, gone tail over snout in the stern. Arsenic done him in. Mack had a taste for it, reminded him of that crack in the wall called home when papa took the boys out of a morning to learn their way in the world: how to tweak a cat’s whiskers and pry cheese from between spring-loaded jaws. Now Mack was gone, wrapped in a spider web shroud to decay in his watery grave.

“We two rat jacks is all that’s left,” Wentworth said to Sully. “A ship with but two pirates is hardly a pirate ship at all.”

Sully swiveled one ear toward his captain’s voice. He scratched his head with his back foot.

“Tis time for a new mission,” said Wentworth. “This old girl’s been plundering these shores since you and I were press-ganged pups. We coarsened our hair on this route. Its bounty allowed our balls to grow low and pendulous.

“But now, I say, enough! Enough of hustling gulls, robbing their garbage as if twas treasure. Enough of gobbling eggs and spooking minnows. Like our venerable ancestors who carried the plague across Europe on their backs, we must spread our scourge throughout the seven seas! You hark?”

Sully scrabbled in circles, claws scratching on leaf-planks. His naked tail whipped; his beady eyes sparkled; his snout raised to sniff the invigorating maritime breeze. Whether he danced for joy or to exorcise the demon fleas what haunted him was anyone’s guess.

The anthology also contains stories by authors such as Michael Moorcock, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Howard Waldrop, Naomi Novik, and Eric Flint. It’s available for order at Amazon.