Once upon a time, in what could only have been a former life, I drowned. I don’t think it was this life, because, well…
My wife and I went sailing with my college-graduate daughter today. She teaches at a city-run sailing and kayaking camp and has weekend access to the sailboats they use during the week.
If you know anything about me, you know that I have a great love for the exploits of Horatio Hornblower, Captain Aubrey, and my secret man-crush, Captain Bolitho.
C.S. Forester based his fictional Hornblower on the exploits of Thomas Cochrane and Horatio Nelson. O’Brien uses those same logs, plus others he’s researched, for Captain “Goldilocks” Aubrey. And Alexander Kent, the pen name of the well-established author Douglas Reeman, carried a lot of those same stories forward for Captain Richard Bolitho.
All of these fellows sailed for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, chasing and capturing and sinking French and Spanish ships whenever the plot line needed it.
It’s hard to imagine that strangely elite brutality – packing 700 sailors into a ship of the line, sailing the seas to find a similarly-sized enemy, and then to fire iron balls at it until either he or you could fight no more. Victory is ours! Or theirs…
But, it calls to me. And I’ve written a book called Marigold’s End that predates Napoleon, but features that same kind of brutal combat. I love that book.
If you read it, you will love it, too. Or you might merely like it. Or perhaps even dislike it. Hate it. Loathe it. This isn’t going well.
Anyway, today we took a tiny 14-foot sailboat out into the frothing waves beyond the breakwater. Green waves that blotted out the horizon, lifted us way up so that we could see far down the coast, and then dropped us back into the deep trench again.
My daughter told us that last week one of her 9-year-old campers wasn’t dealing with the rise and fall very well. He leaned over the side for a moment, and then sat back up, much relieved.
“There goes my sausage!” he cheerfully announced.
We felt that the wind had gotten up a bit, so we circled around the 1-mile buoy, and then headed back to port.
I must tell you, I was absolutely panicked. I did my best to hide it, but, in a 14-footer, you are right on the water – like, it’s right there. And those waves were green and huge and omnipresent, and I could feel myself drowning right out there. That boat was surely going to tip over, and I would drown.
She turned the boat so that the waves came under our counter, pushing us back into the safety of the breakwater.
But I was in the water, holding onto a rope slung around the quarter of a large sailing ship, plunging under the wave each time a roller happened by. I can see it this moment. I can feel the cold and the panic and the sense of futility. This moment.
The image stayed with me all the way back to the dock, and rides with me here.
I dusted off my old model of the Black Falcon – oh, no need to be nice. It’s a dreadful model, I know – trying to see if I could shake this drowning feeling. No luck.
Now I know I have to write about it seriously. Deal with the story that’s literally dying to be told. I think I actually drowned while hanging onto that rope.
I’m pretty sure the image pops up in Marigold’s End. Now I have to reread it.
I want to rewrite it, but all rewrite projects are on hold for the next few weeks while I concentrate on selling Sawdust Man.
You see, it occurred to me, and this applies to you, that no one will sell your book for you. You have no representative, no agency, other than yourself.
If you don’t represent your book, it will remain unread. If you don’t sell it, it will never sell, and your story will remain untold.
So, I am actively beating the bushes until I find an agent to represent my current offering, Adventures of a Sawdust Man.
Once that is sold, well, maybe then I can afford to drown.
John D Reinhart 