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AVAST, YE SWABS!

Welcome aboard, Mateys! This is the official deck for the "Pirate This Book" collection. Available HERE, in case you wandered in here like a castaway and haven't seen it yet. Apart from the amazing quality and just sheer fun of its contents, it's an unusual book in several ways. At one level, it's kind of a joke. Let's line out two of the major reasons it's a book. It's a collection of stories, of course, and we'll detail that more down below decks. But it's also both a joke about, and a serious response to, the controversy you will run into on line regarding "piracy" of ebooks and how it hurts (or doesn't hurt) indie writers. Those two purposes of publication are dealt with in parallel columns here... scroll down to read more about what's inside.

THE PIRACY ISSUE

The issue of ebook piracy--and the side issues of other ways in which readers can get books without paying the writers--has been hotly debated in forums and online groups, to say the very least. And seems to devolve to hard, fast groups with strong beliefs on the issues, one way or the other.

The attitude here, made pretty obvious by the title of this collection, is pretty militantly, "Arrr, ye swab, make our day!"

One of the major influences on that attitude, apart from common sense over emotion, comes from one of the most interesting and valuable indie writers' resources-- Cory Doctorow. His iconic comment is pithy, convincing, and hard to get around: "The problem isn't piracy, the problem is obscurity."

Obviously that doesn't apply to block-buster writers. Steven King and George Martin lose money when people get their sought-after books for free. Of course those who buy them in used stalls or check them out of the library give them no income, either, but piracy might be an issue for best-sellers. They never seem to whine about it, though. And for indie writers, trying desperately to be "discovered", the issue is pointless: we need to do whatever we can to get our books into the hands of readers and build familiarity and hopefully a base of fans.

You hear people who crow about the 10,000 downloads their book got on a Kindle free day turn around and scream that they are being ripped off by some obscure Pakistani pirate bay. The idea is, to get the words out. And that is what this book is all about. PLEASE pirate it, put it up on evil torrent sites, break the DRM and pass it around to your pals, send free copies to the troops.

Yo, ho, freakin' ho...

THE BOOK CONTENTS
Given the book's title and cool cover art (by Piotr Czaplarski) the decision to choose contents that play up to the theme wasn't hard to arrive at.

All the selections were chosen to have elements of piratical mien: raids, grabs, pillage, what have you. And to include, whenever possible, some kind of hot and preferably combative babe. That worked out fairly well, actually.

This table lists the inclusions in the book, with some notes and blurbs on each, and where to fund them, or sign up to be notified when they are ready to sally from port in search of plunder.

Selections
From
Chapter Fifteen
For Your Damned Love
Honeybunz Runz Gunz
Tijuana Nocturnes
The Mall Snatch
Boneyard 11
AutoCinematic
Mary of Angels
The Chisholm Heist
Bailin'
Safe Sex
The Weekend Warrior
Room With View
Properties of Light
Deconstructive Criticism
Short Cuts
High Seas
Afro-Cuban Boogie-Woogie
The CERN Raid
Mayan Calendar Girls
Armed Response
GUYStuffs
Argumetum Ad Amphetamine
Flesh Wounds
Chillin' On Minius
Sky Seeds
Chapter Forty-Four
Sweet Spot
Smuggler's Cove
Only Words
Steenking Badges
Mexican Slang 101
love.
He's been hired to bring back the wild heiress kidnapped by a cartel hotshot, but is starting to wonder how many of her new lovers she's going to get killed before he takes her home to Daddy. This bank robbery is just the first try-out of her newest toy: an armed gang of Mexican bandidos.
Running guns into Mexico: it's not just a job, it's an adventure. Of course, so is working as a stripper in a bar patronized almost entirely by drug gang middle-management.
Just kidnap the drug lord's hot wife from the Pilates studio. How hard could that be? They aren't the last gangsters in this story to underestimate Nan. Actually, this fairly wild screw-up is one of the milder scenes of chaos as this novel works its way along several kinds of border.
What better place to land when crashing across the U.S. border than in a drive-in movie? If the Camponeta family has any doubt that life in the North might get weird, they get the big picture during this spectacular sprawl as Jungle Girl takes on the Border Patrol with an appreciative audience.
This first bank heist introduces Cole and Bunny, the lovebird robbery team, and showcases some of their talented gunplay and hotwheeling, even if Cole gets a little shot-up. But it's not the last rowdy job they pull off once they get tangled up with worse than cops or robbers... politicians.
Many might think Wiley has gotten too wasted to write his weekly column, since he's wheeled into the Mimosa duct-taped to a mover's dolly. But they reckon without the creative/destructive powers of Strack's Bongzilla and the squirming talent that underlies Wiley's insidious takeover of the San Diego media scene.
Every story tells a picture in this hyper-novel linking images taken by the nameless photographer narrator. Some are beautiful, some--like this one--might make you cringe. Even black and white pictures are actually about shades of gray.
Colin engineers the Final Solution to the problem of critics. But will it really rid artists of these parasites... or be a critical failure?
One from this first collection of a wide spectrum of short fiction.
You expect a pirate collection to have some naval guns thundering on the high seas, right? Here's a chase of a stolen Cuban naval vessel, a withering firefight, heroism under fire...and a machinegun-wielding bikini babe. What more could you want... a parrot?
Coming back with some new calendar girls, a new concept of what the End Of The World might play out like, new global forces involved, and a break-in of epic proportions... crashing the turf of The God Particle.
Who watches the watchdogs has always been a problem, but what could go wrong when the dispacher of armed patrolmen is starting to smoke rather than snort and chase ruination in the form of the two strippers they call Little Red Yvette and Little Blonde Yvonne?
Drug laws don't make for less drugs, but they sure spawn a more complicated brand of outlaws. And you don't always have to be a tweaker to see the theological implications of it all.
Some people, if they were handed the key to hypertunnel travel around the universe, might use it to build human knowledge. But Benito and his muchachos are Tijuana street punks, so they use it to deal dope and chase tail. And are finding out that other planets have their own criminal elements, their own intoxicants... and their own armed cops.
It's not unusual in Mexico to find out it's the Law who are doing the theft and murder... including killing the Mazatlan mayor during Carnival and menacing the femme fatale that baseball hero turned journalist Mundo Carrasco is obsessed with. So where would he turn for help and justice, except to the criminal class?
Song lyrics are poems--some more than others. This selection of decades' worth of songwriting is presented here as poems on the page. And included in the Pirate This Book canon is a little ditty about smuggling... with a few starry-eyed senoritas thrown in.
One of the best-selling English books in Mexico, and a resource praised by everybody from Mexico Mike and People's Guide down to backpackers and gringo scum. And for the pirates in the crowd... this list of legal and crime terms.
The author of this book is Linton Robinson, an award-winning professional writing lifer from the dark days before ebooks and internets. Born in Occupied Japan, Latin America resident for 25 years, he's an outsider with a bit of piratical experience.
This book represents a light approach to a serious attempt to familiarize more readers with his fine writing, keen sense of humor, and deplorable character and table manners.
The cover artist is Piotr Czaplarski, AKA Peter the Tomato, a talented young cartoon/comic artist from Warsaw.
Unlike many comic fiends, Piotr finished school and got a job as graphics designer for an ad agency... the better to support his continual drive to perfect his comic art. He's recently started taking commissions for artwork.