Nicole: My family planned a trip to Charleston, SC in August of 2012. Tricia: Pirates are the best! What led you to writing about Blackbeard and, more specifically, his pre-pirate life? It’s what Nicole likes to call PRE-PIRATE, which means it’s more Poldark than Pirates of the Caribbean. Faced with an impossible choice, they must decide to chase their dreams and go, or follow their hearts and stay.īLACKHEARTS is a Blackbeard origin story.

Drawn to each other, they’re trapped by society and their own circumstances. How will she ever realize her dream of sailing to Curaçao-where her mother was born-when she’s stuck in England?įrom the moment Teach and Anne meet, they set the world ablaze. Lonely days stretch into weeks, and Anne longs for escape. Though she’s barely worked a day in her life, Anne is forced to take a job as a maid in the home of Master Drummond. There’s just one problem: convincing his father to let him leave and never come back.įollowing her parents’ deaths, Anne Barrett is left penniless and soon to be homeless. Betrothed to a girl he doesn’t love and sick of the high society he was born into, Teach dreams only of returning to the vast ocean he’d begun to call home. Nothing could stop him-until he met the one girl who would change everything.Įdward “Teach” Drummond, son of one of Bristol’s richest merchants, has just returned from a year-long journey on the high seas to find his life in shambles. But once he was just a young man who dreamed of leaving his rigid life behind to chase adventure in faraway lands.

I interviewed fellow YA pirate author, Nicole Castroman, regarding her debut novel, BLACKHEARTS.īlackbeard the pirate was known for striking fear in the hearts of the bravest of sailors.

Blackhearts book nicole castroman