Afterword Avast, Abaft!

Another pre-Wheels-Coming-Off story.

Jeff VanderMeer (of Florida) was flown in for a Turkey City Writers’ Workshop in September 2005.

I noticed A Lot of the workshop stories were about pirates, but just thought everyone was under the sway of Johnny Depp or something. (I remember one story where someone yelled out “Kraken storm!”)

It was only after he left that I found out he and his wife Ann were publishing a pirate fantasy anthology. Then everything became clear.

I’d been thinking about this story since around 1968 when I was reading Ernest Newman’s biographies of Richard Wagner. No; really.

I was trying to get The Wandering Jew into the story I’d imagined back then.

No matter what else J. M. Barrie wrote (a whole lot), he’ll always be known for Peter Pan. Yes, sometimes it’s cloying in that especially vexing Victorian-Edwardian way, and, yes, Barrie was somewhat of a Case.

But the work will live forever, like the titular creation.

Well, as soon as I started writing this (October to November, 2006) everything—Hook, Gilbert & Sullivan, especially Dick Deadeye—fell into place. (See Topsy-Turvy if you haven’t.)

It was accepted and published in Fast Ships, Black Sails, published in 2008 while I was hospitalized. Hartwell picked it up for his Year’s Best Fantasy 2009.

The title is what sailors yelled when they farted on a sailing ship.