3 VAMPIRE PIRATE ROMANCES Midage Dating

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HOW TO DATE A PIRATE: AN INTERVIEW ON DECK WITH THE CREW OF WALK THE WALK

Today is special. I’ve got a character interview with the stars from Marilyn Barr’s new vampire-pirate series, Walk the Walk. Of course, I traveled back to 1724 and climbed aboard the pirate ship, Patricia’s Wish, to talk to the crew. Teeth, Chub, and Branko were on deck to greet me.

Shirley: We are docked just off the coast of Aruba on this beautiful starlit night with Carajillo cocktails in our hands. Let’s get started. Good evening, gentlemen.

Teeth: Avast ye, lady! No gentlemen for miles which is why we can enjoy our time with you.

Chub: Calm your blond tresses, Teeth. She’s just welcoming us… But if you don’t slow down your gob, the drinks you are downing will have you welcoming the morning with a blooming headache.

Branko: Sorry about me hearties, we have had a time of it of late. We are thankful to be alive and sipping my favorite combination—coffee and spirits—although the drinks didn’t need the extra spike of rum…Teeth.

Chub: Aye, these drinks are strong enough to strip the tar from the hull. I wonder who they will strip first?

Teeth: Eight doubloons on Branko.

Branko: Wait—I’m a married man, not the one sucking them down like a bilge pump. My bet is on Chub.

Chub: Avast ye! Pick on the short man, why don’t ya? Well, I’ll take your bet and put my doubloons on Teeth. It’s not the size of the man’s chest but pudding in his head which leads to cupshot staggering.

Shirley: You obviously know your cocktails. When you are dating, do you take your date to the bar or prefer to make her drinks here on the boat?

Branko: We meet the wenches in the tavern…I mean…that’s where they work…

Teeth: Aye, convenient with them being on the account at a tavern. They can take you up to their room and try you out proper.

Chub: Ain nothing proper about the way wenches try you on, Teeth. One look at your face and they swoon—that is until you open your bawdy mouth and gobshite flows out like rum from the castes.

Branko: I think me hearties are confused by your concept of ‘dating.’ To answer your question, we would never invite a woman aboard for pleasure. Tis’ bad luck to have a woman—

Chub: You suspicious hypocrite! I’m telling Magda—that’s his wife—you no longer approve of sailing with a wench onboard.

Branko: Don’t imply Magda’s a wench. She’s a vampiress and will drain you—whether she has a soft spot for you or not.

Chub: Aye, best we keep the wenches in the tavern, Shirley. When we sailed under Blackbeard, he had strict rules on such visits. Ol’boat surgeon Snips was quick to point out how it kept the pox off our boat.

Teeth: Pox, pox, pix, pox. Bhah! I’ve had them thrice and survived with my nutmegs intact.

Shirley: (Shivers with revulsion), so I guess dating in the Caribbean isn’t popular if you are a pirate. How did you end up married, Captain Branko?

Teeth: Oh, buss my cheeks! Branko has stepped down as Captain and his missus too. I now Captain this vessel with Chub as me quartermaster.

Chub: You best lay off the liquor, friend, your heels are blazing with temper tonight. To be fair, I served as quartermaster under Teeth, Branko, and second quartermaster under Blackbeard. We don’t ‘date’ as you call it because most of us were rescued from slavers’ ships like Branko, or our childhoods were in the gutters of Europe like me. Pirates are savvy not to get wenches pregnant because we don’t want to leave fatherless children to childhoods like ours.

Branko: She doesn’t care about boat politics. She’s asking about romance—which you lot have the experience of Governor’s daughter around a sugarstick. I met Magda on a boat much smaller than this in Charles Town Harbor.

Shirley: Was she a sailor or passenger?

Branko: No, she was chained in the hull on her way to the Sheriff’s picture frame by way of dissection.

Shirley: I’m sorry, what?

Branko: Her lily-livered first husband had sold her to science—on account of being a vampiress he couldn’t stand. She was chained in the bottom of his boat in wait for the scoundrels to collect her body while she was living in it! When I came aboard, my conscience couldn’t allow a lady to wait in chains. She was being treated like an animal, not a human being. It wasn’t right.

Shirley: You were her hero.

Chub: Aye, running for your life is the most common ‘courting’ in the Caribbean. I never thought to steal a boat to find my lady love. It worked for Branko, so maybe that’s what I’ve been doing wrong. Branko and Magda have that special love which consumes the heart and creates a pudding head out of a learned mind. While all pirates would have set Magda free from her chains—we believe heartily in equality among full-shares—only a few wish to settle down. Branko wasn’t hunting for an escape boat, nah, he was hunting for his soulmate.

Shirley: So, Book 1: Walk the Plank is the first few weeks of Branko and Magda’s dating—if I can call it that. There are two more books to the series, Walk the Deck and Walk the Night. Are those your dating tales, Teeth, and Chub?

Teeth: Blimey, no. It takes three books for Branko to get to the marriage bed. He had a lot to contend with as Captain with the treasure galleon, naval authorities chasing us, yellow fever, secret islands, Hoodoo—

Shirley: Yellow fever and Hoodoo?

Chub: Aye, I stepped onto death’s doorstep with Magda before a powerful witch—

Branko: Watch it. That powerful witch is my little sister, Chevelle, and you owe her your life.

Chub: Praise be. Not all me hearties made it through yellow fever on the upright—many are buried with the disease. Bless their souls.

Teeth: Again, I had yellow fever and beat it on me own. Strong body, strong man, strong—

Branko: If you saw strong mind, I’ll cast you into the drink. You haven’t the head for figures, letters, navigation—

Teeth: Ask my arse! Like you can navigate! I didn’t lead Magda around the rice paddies of Carolina in circles—for four days!

Chub: That’s enough me lads. Calm yourselves in front of Miss Shirley…who—are you wearing a wedding ring?

Shirley: I’m going to stop you there, Chub. Women in the 1700s were pirates or property and neither appeals to me. I’ll keep my indoor plumbing, antibiotics, computers, and cars.

Branko: Shirley’s right. She’s from the future and not the one for you, me hearty. Your lady love is out there, Chub. Take my advice. Stop plowing through wenches—that will only get you pox—and don’t chime in with how you beat the pox, Teeth! Having a body the pox finds inhabitable is not an admirable trait!

Chub: My apologies Ms. Shirley. Gets lonely on the high seas despite having fifty-plus men aboard a mid-sized vessel.

Teeth: Look at her face! She’s not falling for it, Chub.

Branko: You need a magical lady, Chub—not that Ms. Shirley doesn’t have her words of the future to dazzle us. Take it from me and our recently married cook, Leaf. You need a lady who is ‘other’ to keep you on your toes—

Teeth: And keep a dagger under your pillow.

Branko: Nah, that’s just me lady Magda. Chub, you haven’t found your lady love because she’s not between the thighs of a three-penny-upright…but you will find her. I have faith both of me hearties will find love.

Shirley: Aww, that’s oddly sweet…in a way.

Teeth: That’s why Chub and I have recruited a new crew in Aruba. Patricia’s Wish is full of supplies, and we are doing the sweet trade. Leaf and Branko may have settled into noozed life with wives and homesteads, but we have taken to the seas again. One of us will find love—by hook or by crook.

Shirley: So Branko and Magda’s romantic trilogy ends with Walk the Night which releases today, however, the story continues?

Chub: Aye, I take over the narrating of our adventures—mostly because I’m the only one aboard who can fill out the Captain’s Log.

Teeth: Is that why you are teaching me to read? Kencracker, I thought it was out of the goodness of your heart.

Chub: Blackbeard ate the goodness in my heart when I was but an unlicked cub. Bet your last doubloon. I teach everyone on board, so I don’t have to do everything! Captain Teeth, Eze from the secret island, and I continue plundering with Patricia’s Wish in Quartermaster, coming to you in 2023.

Shirley: Thank you for your hospitality—

Teeth: Won’t you stay for the dancing?

Chub: Teeth, where are your clothes?

Shirley: That’s my cue to leave. Branko, can we take your dinghy back to the mainland. I think I’ve seen enough…more than enough.

Branko: Aye, I’ll escort you. You aren’t the first to run at the sight of Teeth’s nutmegs.

Shirley: Thank you for joining the crew of Patricia’s Wish. Branko’s love story is available on Amazon and free with Kindle Unlimited subscription. To celebrate the release of Walk the Night and the completion of his trilogy, Book 1: Walk the Plank is on sale for $0.99—today only. We look forward to Chub’s novella, Quartermaster, which will be released as part of the Mortar & Pestle romance series next year.

Trailer Link: https://youtu.be/jYU118kUCeQ

Blurb for Walk the Plank

Branko learns he will be sold into slavery when they dock in Charles Town, so he doesn’t hesitate to jump ship onto a neighboring sloop in the harbor. This boat will weigh anchor with him at the helm–once he decides what to do with the lady chained in the cargo hold who claims she’s a vampire.

Magda Dashkovari’s body has been given to science while she’s still living in it. Her prayers are answered when a pirate boards her boat, but she should have asked for her rescuer to be less bloodthirsty than she is…

Scientists hunt her in town, plantation owners hunt him from the north and south, Blackbeard blocks Charles Town Harbor to the east, and a war rages between settlers and natives to the west. These unlikely allies will have to link together to escape a life in chains…but will their trust in each other endure their journey to freedom?

Excerpt from Walk the Plank

“Who is Blackbeard?” My heart skips a beat at her naivete. Her accent is foreign, so I forgive the slight. Unfortunately, she takes the opening to worm her way further into my mind. “We got off to a poor start. I am Magda Dashkovari, and I am a vampire.”

My disbelief bubbles like a good ale as we reach the deck. Gut-busting, belly-aching, side-stitching laughter brings tears to my eyes. From a madman captain who masquerades as a demon to a madwoman boat owner who masquerades as a vampire—I can pick ’em, can’t I? She wraps her wrist with furious revolutions while I wipe my tears.

“I don’t care what you are,” I tell her, “as long as you are leaving.”

“I could drain you.”

“I could throw you overboard.”

“I’m staying.”

“—in Charles Town Harbor, and this boat is leaving.”

“I will sink this boat before I let you return it to my husband! Whatever he has promised in reward is a lie. Once you are in his harbor, one of his minions will drain you—”

“Oh, he’s a vampire, too. Is there a whole colony waiting for me somewhere? Listen, sea hag, I don’t know your husband, and the last thing in my future is to return his boat.”

About the Author

Marilyn Barr currently resides in the wilds of Kentucky with her husband, son, and rescue cats. She has a diverse background containing experiences as a child prodigy turned medical school reject, published microbiologist, special education/inclusion science teacher, homeschool mother of a savant, certified spiritual/energy healer, and advocate for the autistic community. This puts her in the position to bring tales containing heroes who are regular people with different ability levels and body types, in a light where they are powerful, lovable, and appreciated.

When engaging with the real world, she is collecting characters, empty coffee cups, and unused homeschool curricula. She is a sucker (haha) for cheesy horror movies, Italian food, punk music, black cats, bad puns, and all things witchy.