Why hasn’t he seen her since their wedding night? Because that night he, a skinny and nervous lad of 17, was freaked the heck out by his older and more sophisticated wife of 20 who tore off her own clothes and bid him to “have at!”. So he goes home to his wife, who he hasn’t seen since their wedding night. Our hero, Griffin, the notorious pirate captain of the Flying Poppy, a ship he named after his wife, returns to land after 14 years to hang up his pirate hat because he’s been injured and knows he’d be dead in six months if he kept pirating. She weaves it into the misunderstandings of the present. But she doesn’t ever just spill it all out on the page. In fact, the backstory is the plot motivator, you could say. In particular, she incorporates some pretty complex backstory into the action of the present. There are so many balls to keep in the air in a short period of time.Įloisa James handles the balls expertly. I get the impression that people think novellas are easier to write than novels, but actually, I think they must be harder. That includes the full character arc and all of the backstory. The trick to a novella is to dilute all of the action of a full plot into a compact story.

That’s actually a huge challenge for someone who writes the way I do. Novellas are, as I understand it, 40,000 words or less. I think this is sort of a cool idea, and in fact it’s made me want to write a few novellas for my Noble Hearts series to cover some of the events that happen after The Courageous Heart ends. Seduced by a Pirate is the companion novella to The Ugly Duchess. A lot of authors, like Eloisa James, are putting out novellas in e-format only as a companion to a larger novel. Now, I’m not as familiar with the novella format, but it seems to be growing in popularity by leaps and bounds. Except that I don’t remember the characters in the novels back then being quite like this.įirst off, Seduced by a Pirate was a novella. I broke my teeth in the romance world by reading pirate romance novels, so this was a blast from the past for me. Seduced by a Pirate, by Eloisa James! You’ve gotta love a title like that. Switching gears entirely from the last book….

Seduced by a Pirate by Eloisa James