|
Alexander Woyte
and the Pirates (and Goblins) how Alex became a prentice pirate unable
to phone home by
Zsolt Kerekes
|
A
much afeared Portsmouth pirate ship, frozen in an arctic storm 300 years ago,
has melted free from the iceberg which entrapped it and is now running amok.
In
this swash-buckling, comedy saga, a legendary Portsmouth pirate ship, frozen
in an iceberg by an arctic storm, thaws out due to global warming and sets sail
once more, unaware how much the world has changed since the 1700s. |
 |
Meanwhile, young
Alexander who lives in the quiet village of
Privett in Hampshire,
where nothing ever happens, disappears along with the goblin minders from the
Old Book Shop in Petersfield, who were supposed to be looking after him. As
Alexander's mum embarks on a quest to find her son and the missing goblins, she
unravels a fantastical adventure that intertwines pirates, goblins, and the
unlikeliest of heroes.
Dive into this whimsical tale where humor and
magic collide in a world of wonder and technology.
Book 2 in the
Alexander
goblinsearch stories can be enjoyed
without reading book 1.
| |
| |
|
. |
 |
. |
If you've seen the cover
you may have wondered...
what's an 18th century pirate ship doing
firing cannon balls at an Earl Grey class nuclear sub?
Put that thought aside for a moment because that's not how it started.
It didn't start with a giant man eating shark either.
Alexander
was too young to have seen Jaws,
Jaws 2, Look at the Teeth on that Fish etc. But even a young lad who's 5 (nearly
6) knows he's got a bit of a problem when he wakes to find a shark nibbling
playfully at the corner of his bunkbed.
And where are those goblins
who were supposed to be looking after him?
They're more terrified than
he is. Because they have seen those shark movies.
Meanwhile
Alexander's Mum - back in their home in the Hampshire village of Privett - is
out of her mind with worry. She hasn't a clue where he is. How on Earth is she
going to find him?
That's where the goblin king Gunnar (who we met in
book 1), a software
wizard called Spellerbyte (who's well known in data storage circles), a useful
app called ScryWare
(which sponsors writers in the naval fantasy genre) and a search engine called
goblinsearch.com - come into the story mix. And that's when the threads of
what's real and what's not really get entangled. Next time you visit Portsmouth
- watch out for the new Captain Feary diversion sign in the Historic Dockyards. | | |
. |
|
. |
phew! -
just in time for Easter |
writer:- April 6, 2023 - The
2nd book in my goblinsearch series - Alexander Woyte and the Pirates
(and Goblins) - was published today in Amazon's kindle store. ...click
here to see it
Anno
Domini 2001
It's modern times (as modern as they ever get) in the
pointy churched sleepy village of Privett in Hampshire, ye Olde England.Until a
year ago no one believed in goblins.
But now they do. Three
goblins live in Privett. Protecting Alexander (who is nearly 6).
The
story of how he was kidnapped according to goblin tradition, rescued by the
hunt, won back in a duel and contracted to be a protected friend of the King of
the Old Wessex Division of Goblins is related in the first book in this series -
Alexander Woyte and the
Goblins. You don't have to read that to enjoy this story. You can always
read it later.
Did anyone mention Pirates? In this rambling,
swash buckling, comedy saga it's not just Alexander who disappears. His minders
and his bunkbed have vanished too.
In the goblinsearch for him we meet
some 18th century pirates melted out of an iceberg, two nuclear subs (one
Russian, one British), the many uses of deadly fire and forget torpedoes, the
correct tripadvisor rating for a Royal Navy destroyer, some anti-nuclear
activists from Greenpeace, a documentary film producer who is not as he claims a
genuine vegetarian, a software wizard who needs help with his business plans,
some billionaires in a round the world balloon race, the features and fittings
in a modern magic carpet, some software writing hedgehogs and a giant man eating
shark.
Scene-wise we loiter for a dip in the arctic seas in which sank
the Titanic, learn about a different type of cloud message and land back safely
in the touristic dockyards of Portsmouth, pausing only for a reality check in
the cellars of an old archive in Southsea.
First published as an 8 part
series on goblinsearch in 2001 to 2003, the story has been rewritten and is now
available for the first time as a proper book.
I hope you enjoy reading
it as much as I enjoyed rereading it (while rewriting it) 20 years later. | | |
. |
|
. |
read a sample
Alexander Woyte and the Pirates (and Goblins)
Chapter 1 - it's thawing out pirates
It was February 2001 in Privett and it was raining. In January
it rained and washed away the first sprinkle of snow.
In December before that - it had rained on New Year's Eve and
made the bonfire go smoky. Alexander's godmother Janet had used her magic skills
to light the fireworks at her farm in Baughurst, so the rockets shrieked up in
the air with a bang, which surprised the brown chickens who slept in the
deernibbled yew hedge by the back door to the kitche.n
These
pernickety chickens - to affirm their free range status - had unanimously voted
for this hedge in preference to sleeping in the empty, antique, waggon-wheeled,
wooden chicken palace (which had been loving restored for them) or sleeping with
their noisy relations in the high rise of the leaning apple tree by the garage.
Winning arguments in favor of hedge quarters being: Location! Location! Closest
to kitchen. And first to be corn fed at breakfast.

On
this damp New Year's Eve party night Alexander had to stand inside the garden
shed out of the rain while the rockets were being aimed, and then dash out to
see the trail of light flashing upwards into the sky. Then back in again to keep
dry. The hedgequarters chickens wondered if it would be all right for them to
temporarily pretend to be battery hens and sneak inside the garden shed with the
humans. But they stayed in their prickly nest, because they were suspicious of
all this dashing about in the dark, and had heard rumors about a barbecue.
In
November, before that, it rained and all the roads got flooded. Then some of the
roads got renamed into rivers. Then some of the rivers got renamed into lakes.
The swans were happy. But Alexander was not.
It seemed like it had been
raining for ages. The last time it didn't rain was nearly a year ago, on the
night when Alexander got kidnapped by the goblin king, Gunnar who lived in
Petersfield. Alexander and the goblin king were friends now, ever since his
father Andrew had come to the rescue and chopped off the king's head.
De-coronation only kills a goblin king if the sword is made of silver, but
that's another story.
A few days ago Alexander asked one of his minders to ask the king if
the magic of the goblins had anything to do with all the rain. The answer came
back this afternoon - a letter - rolled in a damp canvass envelope - written on
foxed parchment and delivered by registered goblin. As it was from the king -
the messenger offered to read it out for him. It said this.
To: Alexander Woyte (Amicus Goblinorum)
Dear Alex
Regarding
all this rain, and your question about whether the goblins have got anything to
do with it....
The answer is.. No!
Yours sincerely
Gunnar,
Rex Goblinorum
PS - I saw a programme on Red Hot Goblin
the other day. They said , it was "global warming". Hope that clears
things up.
PPS - I hope my minions are looking after you. If they
cause any gyp, let me know and I'll feed them to the dogs.
"What does that mean?" said Alexander.
Sleepsalot, one of the minions assigned to look after him, explained.
- "The king doesn't like dogs."
The thought of global warming and the cold wet rain which rattled at
the cottage's bedroom window made Alexander feel chilly. So, a few minutes after
he was tucked up by his mother in the top bunk of his bed, when he was sure she
had gone, he slid out again to put on a warm shooting jacket, his green warm
hat, a pair of gloves and some fur lined boots. Then he climbed back up into his
bed and snuggled in tight, being careful not to step on any goblins on the way
up. Because his goblin minders were allowed to sleep on the lower bunk. That's
not how it started. But if you've ever got a new cat or dog in your house you
know how this goes.
They kept to that part of the bargain, but
sometimes such as on his birthday or Christmas, they did have some "quiet"
midnight parties which none of the grown ups knew about.
"Goodnight
goblins" he said. "Goodnight Alex!" chirped Eatsalot, the fat
little goblin, who was still awake.
"Goodnight Alex
" yawned Sleepsalot, the thin little
goblin who was trying hard to stay awake on guard duty.
"Bonsoir Alex," said Buvealot, a visiting Gallic Goblin who
had done a student exchange with Lancelot the goblin who was visiting his long
lost relations in San Marlo.
Lancelot's family had come over to Hampshire in the middle dark ages
as a squire for the famous human knight known as Lancelot du Lac, when he joined
the court of King Arthur in Camelot (which as all goblins know was actually in
Petersfield, and not in Winchester as most human historians mistakenly think).
Lancelot's singing was nowhere nearly as sweet in real life as you
might think if you'd seen the sing-a-long-a-Lancelot in the 1967 musical
Camelot. This atonal discordance was the root canal cause of the bust up between
King Arthur and his favorite (when fighting out of earshot) French knight -
whose chanting in the bath or supping at the Round Table was worse than a
howling goblin karaoke or the high pitched whining of a dentist's drill. It
simply got on everyone's wick.
A couple of bottles of Vin du Dark Ages
Ordinaire were enough to set him off. Hound dogs have sensitive hearing and they
would be the first to creep out from under the table, make their excuses and
leave. The only way to shut him up was either to give him more to drink (in the
hope he would pass out) or hit him over the head with another bottle (which was
a lot quicker).
Squire Lancelot's heirs in England lost contact with their goblin
cousins in (what later became) France - due to lots of human wars between the
two countries - and a rare genetic tendency towards seasickness, which meant
they avoided voyages if they had any choice in the matter.
Fifteen hundred years later - when the Channel Tunnel opened -
connecting England to France without the use of wobbly boats - contact was
reestablished between the separated goblin families and the modern Lancelot of
Petersfield was welcomed as a long lost nephew by his Gallic cousins. Which was
lucky for him as he avoided getting his feet wet.
That night - back on
the top bunk of his bed - and wrapped up warm in his outdoor clothes - Alexander
dreamed of water
and somehow his dream got mixed up with a strange sight
which was unfurling somewhere far, far away to the north
How far north? Well my map doesn't go that far. It was certainly much
further north from Privett than Basingstoke, further north than the county
(which would rather be a country) of Yorkshire, and even further north than
Scotland, but not quite so far as the North Pole. Somewhere in that cold icy
sea, where the Titanic met her doom nearly a hundred years earlier, global
warming was having a drip, drip dripping effect on a funny looking iceberg.

Drip,
drip splash, drip. It looked like a ship had once been caught in the ice and was
now seeing the dawn sky for the first time in hundreds of years, as icicles hung
from the rigging and then came crashing down like spears sticking in the wooden
deck.
Crash. Shatter. Another one speared the deck, and then shattered.
Captain Feary had been watching these deadly ice shards crashing all
around him through his one good eye (the left one without the patch, for the
past ten minutes). He was wondering if he might be standing right beneath one of
these ice skewers.
Crash, shatter. That one landed close. The trouble is, he was still
frozen stiff and couldn't dodge out of the way. Crash, shatter. A small spike of
ice stuck in the brim of his tricornered hat.
He couldn't remember how long he had been standing here watching the
icicles melting. The last thing he remembered was being chased by those navy
ships which had spotted them in the Irish Sea, and hung on their coat tails all
the way up into the ice pack.
The navy boats gave up there. It was one
thing to stake your chances on the outcome of a cannonade with a pirate ship.
That was glorious fun. But only a foolish navy captain would risk his ship and
reputation on being needlessly mashed into ice cream. So they hung around the
edge of the ice field for a little while shooting off a few broadsides and
starting avalanches all over the place just to show they had been there. And
honor having thus been satisfied, set sail for sunny Portsmouth.
Captain
Feary and his pirate crew had just broken out the rum to have a little
celebration, when an ice storm hit them very suddenly. The alcohol in their
blood had actually helped to preserve them and stopped their blood vessels from
rupturing as they defrosted.
"Brrrr."
Behind him, Captain Feary heard someone shivering. So he was not the
only survivor...
end of this sample
you can read a much
longer
free
sample on Amazon | |
and here's an ad from our sponsor . |
 |