Everyone's heard of Blackbeard, right? The terrible pirate? Hollywood staple pirate character? But did you know that Blackbeard was a real person named Edward Teach? I remember as a kid thinking he was just a cartoon-ish character and being amazed to learn he was real. You can read all about him on Wikipedia. Born in 1680, he only lived to be about 35 or 40 years old because he was finally captured and beheaded in 1718. Perhaps because it was so long ago, he's become the stuff of legends? Even his flag is kinda creepy.
The ghost of Blackbeard is the main baddie in my new novella The Color of Water. He was such delicious fun to write, re-imagined as a modern day biker. Here's a sneak peek of my heroine, Samantha, unexpectedly seeing Blackbeard, aka Teach, on the streets of Beaufort ~
The summer sun was still hot enough to make me sweat, but it was cooling down as the shadows got longer. The rain had left steamy puddles along the sidewalks, but the sky was clearing just like Matt said it would. Seeing nothing unusual at the Queen Ann’s, I kept walking, turning down an alley to avoid all the tourists on Front Street. That’s where I saw them – a man and a woman having a hella fight in the alley. My heart jumped up into my throat when I realized it was Harley man – Teach.
I ducked behind a dumpster and tried to blend into the back of a building. It didn’t seem to matter to Teach and his lady friend because their screaming argument suddenly dissolved into a groping, kissing thing. I couldn’t stop staring at them. Teach’s beefy, tattooed arms wrapped the woman like an octopus’s tentacles, his fingers snaking through her God-awful, red-orange dye job. She didn’t seem to mind. She kissed him like she was starving and he was a steak dinner. After coming up for air, they stumbled back inside the building.
I saw the door was printed with ‘No one under 21 admitted’ as I hurried past. If he was going to kill her, he would have done it right there, wouldn’t he? I resolved not to tell Matt about it, since he obviously didn’t want me anywhere near Teach. I didn’t want to risk making him mad again. I picked up my pace, running a few blocks so I wouldn’t be late.
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