now celebrating: pirates and Venn diagrams

Inspired by Anne Bonny, a female pirate in the early 18th century. Born in Ireland, she moved with her father to Charleston, South Carolina, and lived on a large plantation. When she was 13, she stabbed a servant girl in the stomach with a table knife. As soon as she was old enough she moved off, marrying a sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonny, who had a vague plan to inherit her father's estate. Meanwhile, her father disowned her. In retaliation she set the place on fire before heading off to the Bahamas, where she met John "Calico Jack" Rackham, and began her colourful pirating career. The last we know of her is that she was eventually caught and sentenced to hang. {cover for cigar-tin story #29 -- of course, the pirate story I put inside will be an original, one of my own, and possibly involve sea monsters and the end of the world.}

This fellow puts me in mind of the Great Gatsby, without all the murder and suicide. {cover for cigar-tin story #28} *Sold*.


"And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years." ~ Revelation 20:2. I once had a girlfriend who was terrified of snakes ... actually, that sounds rather dirty. {cover for cigar-tin story #27}

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Cigar-tin stories are $22 in Canada or $24 international, which includes shipping. If you see one you like, either email me or go through my Etsy site. Thanks!

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The other day I identified myself -- through my Facebook "status" -- as a diagram, and several people made sport of that. 'But I am a diagram,' I thought. In point of fact: I am a Venn diagram. All I am, at this moment, can be expressed as a Venn diagram. Now I've created an open Facebook group for all of us who would like to draw ourselves (and others) as Venn diagrams. Try it, it's fun!

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The drawings from last week have now been done over with watercolour. What do you think? It's strange, even disorienting sometimes the way an artist's feelings about his/her work will be at odds with the general reaction of viewers; in this case, while I liked these pictures very much, people's response was muted. Part of that may be explained by the fact that they belong to a story I'm writing, and so have a narrative, both on the page and in my mind, while to everyone else they're just some little watercolours on card. But still ...

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My writing group is doing a reading over a Queen's lunch-hour on February 24th. Best of all: it's free.

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My wife has a cottage for rent this summer -- it sits on a bluff overlooking the Northumberland Strait, with wooden steps down to the beach, the Confederation Bridge visible in the distance, and Prince Edward Island too, just across the water. It is pretty much in the centre of the Maritimes. When we go I like to spend my days swimming, reading, and hitting golf balls along the sandbars. Three bedrooms, fully functioning kitchen and bathroom, with a gas barbecue around back. And she just put up a Facebook fan page!