It happened while we were fooling around on Twitter.
The thread was the common “share five things about your WIP” (which stands, should you be unaware, for Work In Progress.) Wendy Bayne, bless her, contributed these bits which will appear in her next work of historical fiction, Retribution:
Castle
Secrets
Negotiations
Sabotage
Shark
Being in a silly mood, my response was: THERE'S A SHARK!? IS IT IN THE MOAT!?
Because castles NEED moats, in my view.
Then, after subsequent banter, Ian Nathaniel Cohen wondered if he could get away with placing a shark in the moat of his historical fiction WIP.
“Not gonna lie, putting sharks in the moat of Nottingham Castle is the kind of thing the sheriff and Sir Guy of Gisbourne would do . . .” he said.
The problem, of course, as Ian pointed out, was getting the shark to the moat. Right? There aren’t a great many sharks just hanging around England’s inland. So I mentioned that importing the monstrous fish would be the only option.
How? Valid question.
“Huge honking aquaria,” I suggested. On huge honking ships. (Not sure how to get the aquaria from the coast to the castle, but whatever.)
So Ian pretended to like that idea.
“Hmm . . . Robin Hood vs. a shark underwater . . .” Ian mused.
This is when Jeanne Roland weighed in with, “Uh oh, guys. Looks like it's already been done.”
And voila. The book ad appeared.
(Jeanne is hilarious.)
(Funny licensed fake cover created in Canva.)
To which Delton Ramsey, aka Flightlessicarus, responded (with some validity) with a gif of The Mandlorian saying, “This is not the way.”
And Ian chimed in with another gif screaming “Noooooooooooooooo.”
Well, it’s not THE most ridiculous idea in literary (and I use the term loosely here) history. It might even be funny. Now to figure out which of us is going to write it. Likely not Delton or Ian.
(Check out my friends by clicking on their underlined names!)
Here we are on Twitter, should you enjoy goofy banter and booktalk:
Wendy Bayne Jeanne Roland Ian Nathaniel Cohen Delton Ramsey and me J.C. Paulson
REAL BOOKS ALREADY WRITTEN AND NOT GOOFY
Being a mystery writer and all, I decided to pull together a bunch of mysteries — cozy, contemporary, that sort of thing — by various authors and put them into a BookFunnel collection.
Apart from a couple of new novels, which is only fair because new, all of these books have solid ratings on Amazon. If mystery is your jam, it’s worth a peeky.
Click on the image or here: THE UNPUTDOWNABLES
My own Adam’s Witness and Broken Through, the first two in the Adam and Grace Series, are in the group, and Adam’s Witness is on for .99. For a limited time.
Some of the other books are also on special, just FYI.
Happy mysterious suspenseful thrilling reading.
This is what I love about Twitter! Amazing post, as always, Jo!