As I mentioned earlier, I am trying to get published in Shimmer Magazine’s, The Pirate Issue. I have what I think is a pretty good idea for a story and have been taking a few notes. In the meantime, I have been on wikipedia (I know it’s not totally accurate, but I need a crash course not an education) researching piracy. This led me to Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Embarrassingly, I have never read this classic, so I decided to check it out on Project Gutenberg. After reading a few pages at lunch, I was hooked.
In a perfect world, I would be able to download the book to my PDA or Sony Reader and read it without having to be sitting in front of my computer. Unfortunately, I have neither of these devices. So, I was going to have to buy a hard copy of the book. I immediately hopped on Amazon to see how much a copy of Treasure Island would set me back. The cheapest copy (not used) was something like $3.99. Since I didn’t want to wait for the book to ship in the mail, I went out to the local bookstore, hoping to find this edition.
Perusing the fiction books, I saw they had only one copy of Treasure Island, and it was $5.99. Again, this was pretty cheap for a book, but I have such trouble spending money on myself, especially this close to Christmas. Reluctantly, I decided to buy the book anyhow, figuring I would have paid the extra money for shipping anyhow. I handed the book to the cashier and she rang it up and said “$2.62”. “Sweet,” I thought to myself. The book was 50% off, but hadn’t been marked.
So, to summarize, I picked up one of the real classics, Treasure Island for less money than the average comic book costs these days. Now, I just have to plow through the boo, hoping to get some inspiration. Maybe some of the talent will rub off on me.