A wee announcement...

Ahem. nodbear and I have a wee announcement. Despite the fact that we are really just a pair of disreputable fangirls, astonishingly, we have been commissioned to write a book about the young gentlemen of HMS Indefatigable. Following our presentation at the New Researchers in Maritime History conference earlier this year, we were approached by the academic publisher Boydell and Brewer who expressed an interest in publishing our researcher. We've spent the last six months drawing up a proposal, which has now been approved by an academic reviewer and accepted by the publisher's editorial committee. So this weekend I went down to nodbear's to sign the contract :)

The current title of the book is a bit of a mouthful:

Naval Careers in the Napoleonic Wars - Hornblower's Real-Life Shipmates
The Lives of the Young Gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable
As an academic publisher, Boydell and Brewer's main criteria for their titles is that their subject matter will be immediately obvious to librarians and indexers! Hence the catchy "Naval Careers in the Napoleonic Wars" bit ;) We originally made no mention of Hornblower in our proposal and were surprised and very, very chuffed, when the academic reviewer suggested including Hornblower in the title. It also gives us a legitimate excuse to try and get a picture of Horatio and Archie into the book! :D

We now have two years to complete our research and write the book, and it will probably take another 18 months before it's published. So if we meet all our deadlines, we should be in print by....summer 2016. So don't hold your breath :} Also because we're signed up to an academic publisher, they will produce a vanishingly small hardback print run with an astronomical cover price. There's no such thing as advances in academic publishing, the royalties are minuscule and we have to cover all image licensing and indexing costs ourselves. That aside, we're over the moon about this and still can't quite believe that we've managed to pass ourselves off as "proper" naval historians.

So, huge thanks to everyone here who has already been so encouraging and enthusiastic about our research, we would never have got this far without the support of all you wonderful AoS fans. Wish us luck, in fact, wish us Ned's own luck!

Pirates!

When I got home from nodbear's last night I discovered that daughter had "decorated" her bedroom door with pirate posters in my absence. Luckily we have our naval schooner on blockade duty outside daughter's room ;)


The pirate posters are from a pirate activity pack I picked up for daughter in a second hand book shop so I suppose I have to accept some responsibility :}