First an update

See photos and video on Out of My Mind

What a week! Last Sunday we got our first few inches of snow in Olympia for 2012. (For photos see January 15 - 18 posts on Out of My Mind.) It was refreshing seeing the white stuff falling and sticking to the ground—I don’t think we’ve had a decent snowfall for a few years. Monday rolled around and we had close to a foot of snow, so I worked from home. Through the week the snow kept building. For example, on Tuesday night we cleared a foot of snow off our back deck. The next morning it looked just as it had the day before… and it was still snowing. School was closed, I was able to work in peace without my normal 60 mile commute, and we even got to go sledding out on the golf course. Then Thursday morning rolled around. I had a business call and fifteen minutes into it, the power went out. Thank God for our generator. It kicked in immediately and was running fine. Then the unthinkable happened; our cable went out. Then the generator sputtered out.

Well what else can you do when you have no power, not Internet, and you can’t go anywhere because of two feet of snow outside your front door? I decided it was time to start shoveling snow. I had been putting off the task since the first day because we have a driveway that it more than 100 feet long and I was hoping it would melt before we needed to go anywhere. But here it was Thursday and the snow was so thick I knew it wouldn’t be gone by Friday. Oh, did I mention Friday was my birthday? And that my driver’s license expired? I needed to renew my license and I wasn’t going to let 2,000 cubic feet of snow stop me. I shoveled for three hours before I had a clear path from the garage to the street. My accomplishment came with a price. I threw out my back in the process. I’ve been in pain ever since. Well, I got my license renewed, we celebrated my birthday by candle light, and got our generator working again.

The best part of this whole winter adventure has been the free time I’ve had to read. Oh, it’s been ages since I’ve been able to sit and devour a book without distractions like television or e-mail. Fortunately, I had been to the library the previous weekend and found Tim Powers’ novel On Stranger Tides (1988). If the title sounds familiar, it’s because the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie was based on the book. When the movie came out, I thought the title sounded familiar. I had been looking for books by Powers that I hadn’t read yet and On Stranger Tides was on my reading list. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I thought it would be good to read the book first. And since it was a loaner from the library, I moved it to the front of my reading queue—and finished it in no time.

Now for the story…

Tim Powers has probably influenced my writing more than any other author. There have been a slew of authors who have inspired me to write, but Tim gave me a new direction to take my writing. I like to think of Powers as a historian who likes to fill in the gaps with his own version of history. His historical fiction takes a decidedly supernatural turn that, combined with historical characters and events, leaves the reader wondering what was real and what was fiction. On Stranger Tides follows the adventures of John Chandagnac, whose search for his inheritance in Haiti is sidetracked when the ship he has booked passage on is captured by pirates, and he is forced to join their ranks or perish. John becomes the pirate Jack Shandy and through his resourcefulness gains the confidence of the pirates and becomes quartermaster to Captain Phil Davies when he saves his life from the British Navy. This inevitably brings him into the service of the infamous pirate Blackbeard who, with the aid of voodoo and two sorcerers from the old world, is seeking the Fountain of Youth. Shandy joins in the search in hopes of rescuing or at least protecting Elizabeth, from her father Benjamin Hurwood, Oxford professor turned sorcerer.

Shandy’s love for Elizabeth compels him to learn the secrets of those who would hurt her and find protection from their magic in order to thwart their unholy schemes.

I enjoyed this story as much as any of Powers novels. It successfully combines historical characters and settings with ghost stories and magic. It’s difficult to say how much of the story sprang from his own imagination and how much is based on his research of pirates and the myths and superstitions of the time. It conveys a transitional period in history when pirates were losing their grip on the oceans of the new world and civilization moved in forcing the spirits of the land and sea to withdraw from our world.

Benjamin Hurwood’s character (and several other characters in Powers’ novels) is an archetype for my character Professor Charles Denny in How Deep Lies the Shadow. Denny differs in that he approaches the supernatural as simply another science and doesn’t acknowledge that the powers that he is dealing with are more than just forces of nature—like gravity or electricity—with predictable outcomes. He learns the hard way that these powers have minds behind them and are mischievous at best and malicious at heart. He employs their powers like he would a bag of tricks. Hurwood, on the other hand, is quite aware of the spirits he’s dealing with and is driven by his obsession with bringing his dead wife back to life—at the expense of his daughter’s life.

The book is loaded with quirky and memorable characters, tropical settings, and a sense of high adventure on the seas. Powers paints the pirates in barbaric terms and manages to make some of them noble (think “the pirates code”). Powers doesn’t gloss over details, but fills each ship, each storm, and each island with a rich description the puts you right there in the Caribbean. There are a few surprises along the way and the expedition to the Fountain of Youth could have popped right out of Wonderland.

Loved the book. Love the author. Highly recommend you read On Stranger Tides if you enjoy pirates, speculative fiction, historical fiction, or high adventure.