Samuel Smedley Tour 2011

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I will be giving presentations and signing copies of Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer on the following dates:

Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT – Saturday, July 9, 1-3pm.

Fairfield Museum and History Center, Fairfield, CT – Sunday, July 10, 1pm.

Governor Jonathan Trumbull House and Wadsworth Stable, Lebanon CT – Saturday, July 16, 1pm.

More appearances to come!

Also: if you’re planning to purchase the book on Amazon.com, please do so on Thursday, June 16. The reason I want friends to buy on that date is because (I have been told) having a large number of sales on a specific date does more for the book’s Amazon ranking than if just a few folks order copies every day. If you forget or can’t do it — no worries, just buy it some other time.

And if you have read the book — please write a review on the Amazon page! Tell me what you liked. If you think I made a mistake, let me know. Again, the ranking is determined by activity on the Amazon page, so the more reviews, the better. Thanks!

Cover Art

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The History Press has released the cover art for Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer.

The illustrations composing the cover were all made by William D. Lee, an institution in Fairfield’s history and Connecticut’s art history.

A WW2 veteran who graduated Yale on the GI Bill with a degree in fine arts, he was responsible (along with many other things) for renovating the Sun Tavern on the town green and organizing the 1989 commemoration of the British attack on Fairfield, which involved hundreds of re-enactors and even a mock naval engagement off the beach.

Late in writing the book, I contacted Bill to ask permission to use several images inside, including a photo of a scale model of the Defence he had built. Serendipitously, Bill had been at work completing a painting of the Defence when I called. Not only did he offer use of the painting, but he went ahead and painted a portrait of Smedley specially for the book. The portrait is based on the single surviving image of Smedley known to us, a tiny cameo he had painted allegedly while in Amsterdam.

Bill amazes me with his boundless talent and creativity — he can seemingly call new things into existence simply by laying his fingertips on wood and canvas and metal. His house is like a combined art gallery and toy store. He once made sailboats for a living; has created architectural facades and murals for buildings throughout southern Connecticut; fashions model ships and trains and even built a remote-controlled model of a Sikorsky S-39. I cannot overemphasize his generosity and I feel very fortunate that he participated in the project.

Also, the book’s website is live. I’ve kept the design simple, but it includes a description and a brief excerpt. It will be available for pre-order at Amazon and bn.com in a few weeks and should be in stores by late June.

Upgrade!

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If you’ve visited this site over the past few weeks, you may have noticed odd things. Like parts of the sidebar vanishing. Or giant 40-point typeface. Or broken code.

Like a caveman reverse-engineering a spaceship, I’ve been futzing around with the design of the site. I’m very pleased with the result. There are a few minor additions I’ll be making in the near future — including the cover art for Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer, which is amazing — but any weirdness you may have experienced (I’m looking at you, Russian spambots!) should be at an end. Well, the technical weirdness anyway.

A huge thank-you goes to Jeremy Tolbert at Clockpunk Studios for the new title banner above. It’s difficult to find recommendations for good designers; whenever I ask my IT friends if they know anyone — naively believing that maybe, you know, the guy or girl in the next cube over does graphic work on the side — I receive such helpful advice as, “Try Craigslist.” Jeremy’s price was right and he worked unbelievably fast (a matter of hours) to deliver the product. He does whole WordPress themes in addition to his graphic design. Please consider him if you need a job done.

With the behind-the-scenes work complete, hopefully I may now devote more time to content. Meantime, give a shout if anything is still acting wonky on your end.

Writing History

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Angus Phillips on Richard Henry Dana’s classic Two Years Before the Mast:

Not that it’s a quick or easy read. Dana, son of a poet, made the choice that all who write about the seagoing life must make—whether to do so in the rich, exotic language of the ship and risk losing landlubbers along the way, or to dumb it down so everyone could breeze through. He took the hard way, keeping it real, as we say today.

The challenge of writing Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer was weaving a narrative that was equal parts local history, American Revolution history, and maritime history, bound by a tight 30,000-word limit. And, early on, I had to confront the same issue Phillips raises: whether to spend valuable verbiage explaining nautical jargon to readers or to proceed regardless and hope they speak salt as a second language.

I adopted what I call a History 201 approach, specifying recurrent themes or details but assuming readers knew the general course of events or customs (or at least could look them up). I rarely defined the differences between types of vessels, for example. If the reader really burns to know what a schooner or snow is, there are better explanations available elsewhere than I had space to give. In contrast I defined brigs and ships because Smedley’s Defence was both.

Another decision: I jettisoned the traditional measure of a ship’s size by tonnage, which involves a complicated formula interesting only to Age-of-Sail historians and model-ship builders, for a comparative yardstick by number of cannons. Saying a ship was 200 tons means nothing to a reader, but he will understand that a 16-gun brig was more powerful than an 8-gun schooner and dwarfed by a 64-gun frigate.

Otherwise, the West Country accent isn’t too thick. Any reader who knows her bow from her stern should enjoy it.

I delivered the manuscript April 1 and the copyeditrix and I are doing polishes now. Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer goes to press in early May and should be available by late June.