One More Day Until Publication!

The year was 2011, I believe. I was in Belarus with my Dad, celebrating the new year with some friends. When I got home, my sister pulled me aside. "We watched Pirates of the Caribbean while you were gone," she grinned. I personally hadn't known that was on the approved movie list...

We rented it again shortly afterward, and I got to watch it this time.

Long story short, I fell in love. Not necessarily with the story or the characters, but with the music and the ships and the excitement of adventure on the high seas. And, as one does, I decided I wanted to write a pirate story.

And Jay Hill was born.

I was big into RPGing at the time, and I remember asking my RPG friends for some character ideas. (To this day, I don't know who those were...I think maybe Martin and Collin...maybe Shade? I'm pretty sure Ravin and Heather were mine, and Justin Case was either from Sarah or me.)

In any case, the idea soon flopped. It revived again back in 2014 or thereabouts, when my sister and I were into RPGing in notebooks. We RPGd a pirate story for a while, but again stopped when I started working in 2015.

I tried rewriting the story again in 2016, but again, stopped after a short while. I loved the story idea - pirate hunters, a ship sailing with no sails, Jay Hill himself - but had no idea how to keep the story moving.

Then in 2018, a friend (you know who you are, haha) suggested that Sarah and I try co-writing a story together. We didn't take it super seriously, and pulled up our old, pushed-aside WIPs. And there was Jay Hill, still waiting.

We RPGd back and forth for a while, during 2018-2019. Then came NaNoWriMo 2019, and I personally had no idea what to write. All my WIPs were either in editing stages, or else "vague idea" sages.

Sarah suggested that I finish Ships, Secrets, and Survivors. There was probably enough of the plot left for 50K. I said, "okay, yeah, I don't have any better ideas" and wrote the last half of the book.

And perhaps the fact that now we had a complete book made us sit back and think...what are we going to do now?

Things escalated quickly. We spent December going over our plan, and when 2020 came around, we jumped into action. SSaS was now our main focus.

And now here we are. The book is publishing tomorrow. It's hard to believe, after all these years of writing...our book will be out in the world.

We hope y'all enjoy it.

If you are interested in getting yourself a copy of the book, you can pre-order the ebook on Amazon HERE. If you want something even cooler than that, you can pre-order the signed paperback on our website HERE (and the paperback has some super cool stuff that isn't in the ebook...).

(P.S. Don't forget about the epic giveaway! Got some awesome swag and a mug and book sleeve and an ANNOTATED paperback of Ships, Secrets, and Survivors!)

Have fun, and smooth sailing! :)

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