andy cannon

Great hook! I am so looking forward to reading this series!

"Yes,” Sylvie said. “And we ended something that was murdering people inside your borders. I didn’t see your jets in the sky.” Bitch-slap. Mic drop.

Wow! Fantastic chapter!

A great chapter packed with character highlighted by the scene with Lord Baron in the bath. This was a provocative exchange since I would have thought by this age that Byron had liaisons with any number of males, and knew what to do almost as well as Granger, “Have you been with another man like this?” Granger asked. “No,” he said despondently, as if he were supposed to know what to do.

A very hot chapter. Too cool that the guys got an ego boost AND the auction proceeds!

I am all too aware of their shortcomings compared to the escapades of Granger and Company, but in their defense there was a passage (many chapters ago) where Jamie heard the other midshipmen coupling in the dark. It's just these two that are getting a daily helping of saltpeter.

My understanding is that a court-martial would require 3 or more captains or officers of a higher rank, so once the ship is in port or joins a fleet, that would be the way to go. As Huxley points out, this is a preliminary step that allows him to exercise his authority to temporarily sideline Vane until the more formal procedure can be convened.

I worked with a woman who had been posted to the oil fields in Venezuela for a couple of years. After rotating Stateside, she eventually developed a severe recurring fever that left her debilitated for months on end, Doctor after doctor, test after test, no resolution. Eventually she ended up at a practice with a new physician who had trained in Cuba. He listened to her symptoms, thought for a bit, and asked if she had traveled in tropical Latin America. When he heard the connection to Venezuela, he responded, "Oh, yeah, you have..." and named some tropical disease that I have forgotten. Cleared it up in a few months.

That the crux of my struggle with writing this story. I know that discretion and secrecy are necessary, but my 21st century sensibility creeps in, and I inadvertantly give in to my need to provide Jamie with a confidant. I can only hope that Mr. Turner will keep our secret.

This isn't explicit in the text, so a reader is free to interpret Adams' motives ad lib. It is probably spelled out in the letter that Jamie Blake hand delivered, something along the lines of, "this young man is bright, trustworthy and courageous. He can learn much from you, but once you find out he is 'one of us', you may be tempted to boink him, but please don't fuck with his heart the way you did with mine." Something about Adams' honesty in that letter terrified Pitt.

... keeping guard on the biscuits.

Every hero needs a good villain. I recently read that of the 20 or more novels in the Sharpe series, only 4 or 5 featured Sgt, Obadiah Hakeswill as the antagonist, a fact that Bernard Cornwell lamented for years as he struggled to create an equally depraved foil.

As much as any conflict of the last century, that one stripped away the last vestiges of war as a glorious institution.

Maybe this is an easy sortie that even that sot can't turn into a clusterfuck?

I think that Jamie remembers that Vane is so well connected that he couldn't be disciplined for ineffectual leadership after the Belle Therese fight. His patron in the Admiralty would see the official ship's log from the incident at the ruins of the sugar mill and perhaps look for a scapegoat. Jamie was vulnerable to a rumor campaign as much as any actual charge of wrong doing.