Pirates of Appalachia
a work in progress
Besides drinking and sleeping a lot (usually in that order), I’m happy to report that I also write a lot. The novel (maybe two) I’m currently hard at work on is Pirates of Appalachia. Pirates is an epic absurdist satire set in the post-Trumpocalyptic future. Combining elements of adventure, fantasy and a whole lot of political and sociological mockery, it is by far both the most ambitious story I’ve ever written and the most fun I’ve ever had writing.
I’ve completed the first draft and the complete outline for the second draft rewrite, so I’ll be sharing updates on my progress and some sample draft chapters here, as well as some video updates on YouTube as the spirit moves me.
Below you’ll find the working cover, synopsis and prologue for Pirates of Appalachia. Please be sure to share your feedback (good and bad, I love both, probably even more so the constructive bad!).
Pirates of Appalachia
…the devil’s in the rum
In the aftermath of the Trumpocalypse, the country has been bankrupted by in-app purchases and the healthcare system paralyzed by pandemics of Candy Crush Thumb and Instagramorexia. Disease, poverty and cyberwars rage, splintering the country into unincorporated areas and independent city-states.
Engaged in an audacious battle to become the next mayor of the Independent City of Pittsburgh, Babyface Adam Patterson and Heel Mike Hawk both have big ideas on how to repurpose the city’s debt, until a cancer diagnosis sends Adam searching for a god he has long abandoned. Meanwhile, in the nearby unincorporated hills of West Virginia, the classic tale of a boy venturing into the big city to become a man and woo the girl he loves has gone spectacularly awry, culminating in the formation of a bootlegging band of pirates hellbent on sailing down the Ohio River and sacking the city. Will the citizenry finally have someone worthwhile to vote for, will the city even survive? In this epic absurdist satire the real question is—how close to our future is this?
Prologue: The Thunder
“So you want to know what’s in that mason jar you’re forbidden to touch, do ya? Well, if you want to know, I’ll tell ya, but be forewarned that it’ll completely change the way you see the world and yourself. But I reckon it’s time you know where ya come from and who yer daddy is.
“Kohl, inside that mason jar is your inheritance—the one thing your good-for-nothin’ daddy left ya. Now, it’ll make a boy rotten learnin’ what he’s set to inherit before it’s time, but in your sad case, knowing your inheritance may just prevent you from repeating the same mistakes as yer kin. Son, you’re going to inherit the most bitter, despicable, evil, mind-altering treasure map this world has ever known! Now people hear ‘treasure map’ and think they’re on the trail to gold and riches, but that map was written with the devil’s tears and belonged to the infamous Pungent Pirate Pat, and all it can offer ya is death, and probably herpes, if I know yer father, and trust me—I do.
You see, Kohl, when I was a child, folks could barely feed and clothe themselves in the hills. That was before the Steel City built a bridge and gave us a taste of their high class way of life—before the leaves glowed from the radiation at the toxic waste dump, and before the pussy cats grew to outrageous sizes and began sauntering about in the night, thieving and eating people’s eyeballs!
“Back then, there were pirates in these here hills, and when I was still in pigtails, the Pungent Pirate—so called ‘cause of the foul odor of pickled eggs and chewin’ tobacco on his breath—laid siege to Wheeling. Why, when he sailed into town he had little more than some fishin’ line, a piece of chewed gum, and some mason jars full of Devil’s Lightning. He didn’t even have a ship or a crew at the time, just a dinghy and his pet rat, Asparagus. But it only took him three days to rig a system of pulleys with the fishin’ wire throughout the town. I remember seein’ it, the lightning bolts dancin’ inside those mason jars as they bobbed through the streets. I was sixteen and had been out of school for five years, so I thought I knew it all, but it thrilled me every time I saw folk open a jar and get zapped! It turned young men into old lechers, old lechers into gray cads, middle-aged women into Spice Girls. Sometimes someone’d spill some of the lightning and it’d shoot off into town and start a fire in the square or pinch a grandma on her butt.
“By the time the sheriff tried to intervene, the east side of town smelled like sweaty plumber cleavage and half the population had mutinied and joined up with the Pungent Pirate. The menfolk built a ship—a grand vessel with sails and cannons and a place for making more lightning right there on the deck. The town of Wheeling became a port, and the pirates sailed the rivers and creeks—the Ohio and the Potomac and the Shenandoah and even the Gauley—pillagin’ and fornicatin’ and disrespectin’ mamas along the way! Why, they’d lay siege to your trailer and sing merry songs to you, reaching their fingers into any hole they could find until they’d finally fish you out of bed and out of your overalls. The Devil’s Lightning turned guns and good intentions useless, and before long every cop in the hills had turned pirate and the panhandle of West Virginia was as malodorous and swarthy as Memphis!
“The Pungent Pirate stole all the booty in every town along the Ohio, and when he returned to Wheeling he took my shoes. They say the Mothman foretold of his comin, but I was just a young girl and I didn’t believe in the stories, so I didn’t know he was coming until he’d already done and came. When I awoke in the morning I was alone in the barn sticking to a bale of hay and reekin’ to high heavens, and next to me was that mason jar and treasure map. I reckon you came along nine months later. Some people say it was only six months, but I ain’t ever been very good at a-countin’, and our kin is known to brew babies suspicious fast.
“While I slept, the Pungent Pirate had sailed for Pittsburgh. So immense his greed and lust had become that he wanted to sack the City of Bridges, but as you may have guessed a bridge collapsed in Point Pleasant and the intrepid ship was sunk. The Pungent Pirate and his stinky crew of merry bootleggers were never seen again—not even at custody hearings. And the recipe for the Devil’s Lightning was lost to the sea. Some say the Pungent Pirate died and became a dumpster—”
“You mean died in a dumpster, Mama?”
“No—I meant what I said—became a dumpster. Other stories go that the pirates built a new ship and sailed to foreign lands as far away as Georgia and became known as the Hillbillies of the Caribbean. But I believe there are people amongst us as old as the hills, who live as long as they loot. And I say those moonshining buccaneers are still here, lurking, and at any moment the Pungent Pirate could return with some fishin’ wire and lightning and start poking his fingers where they don’t belong!
“Kohl, I’ll be damned if any son of mine is going to follow in those loathsome footsteps! The pirates are why we don’t go to school like them city slickers, and why our kinfolk don’t bus back in forth in those adorable jars. That’s how low they dropped property values! I want more for ya—I want class and sophistication and intelligence. That’s why I named you Kohl, after the fancy department store where you can buy anything for more and shop all night during the holidays. By God, yer gonna go to Pittsburgh, get one of them fancy jobs in the little gray coffins with the doodads, whatnots and chairs that swivel, and have babies that learn from those fancy screens with the three dimensions. We don’t have three dimensions in the hills, and that’s what I want for my grandbabies. So you won’t be gittin’ your hands on that map till I’m dead and gone!
“Sorry, Mama got herself all riled up. Hand me my oxygen and Twinkies, would ya?… Ah, that’s better…
“Kohl, the Pirates of Appalachia are still here. But they’re slumbering, and for the sake of society and our real estate value they have to remain that way. It’s treasure that awakes them. If them pirates git any idear that that there map exists, they’ll do anything for it. And Kohl, if that happens we’ll all wind up with herpes.”
“Was it really full of lightning, Mama?”
“Kohl, we’re all full of lightning. When ya fart, that’s the thunder.”