N.J. Walters | It’s a Pirate’s Life For Me

Some books are more personal than others, drawing bits and pieces of my life and interests into the story. That’s exactly what happened with DRAKON'S PLUNDER, book 3 in my Blood of the Drakon series.

What’s in a name? Well, a lot. And for me it all started with the heroine.
Sometimes I know right away what my character’s name will be. Sometimes it takes
a while for me to discover it. This book is set off the coast of Maine and I
knew it would involve salvaging a wreck from the 1800s. Even though the ship in
my book went down in bad weather, it got me thinking about pirates.

I did some online research and discovered Samuel Bellamy, also known as “Black
Sam” Bellamy, the “Prince of Pirates.” He was an interesting character who lived
large and died young. I thought it fitting my heroine be named Sam Bellamy,
since her father wanted a son and claimed they could be related to the pirate,
even though that is never substantiated.

Which leads me to my own history. No, I’m not related to any pirates…that I know of. But I did grow up hearing about one named Peter Easton. He operated along the coast of Newfoundland in the early 17^th century and had a fort in Harbour Grace. I have relatives there and spent part of my summers as a child visiting the area. There is a museum on the original site of the fort, the building erected in 1870 as a customs house. And as you would expect, pirates and Peter Easton are featured in the museum displays. It seemed the perfect last name for Ezra.

So here we have two people with pirate names—Bellamy and Easton—both of them
trying to recover an artifact from a sunken vessel and keep it out of the hands
of the Knights of the Dragon. Ezra doesn’t know if he can trust her since she
was working on the ship owed by the Knights. Sam doesn’t know if she can trust
the stranger who plucked her from the frigid Atlantic Ocean. But these two will
have to band together to fight the even bigger threat facing them.