Frequently Asked Questions

What do you mean by ‘real time’?

I mean that if the pirates attack at dawn, the tweet is sent at dawn. If nothing is happening (eg the pirates are asleep), there are no tweets until they wake up/do something interesting. It also means that some tweets will happen at odd hours of the night.

But. . . the time is wrong. Why?

The time zone is set to Jakarta – including sunrise, sunset, and weather. I live in Canberra (which is Jakarta plus three hours – making “dawn” 9:00am), but the setting of the story is a tropical island world much like Indonesia, where people are dark-skinned with black hair, and there’s no Winter (because it’s MY fantasy world). So it makes sense to make the real-world connection in Indonesia.

Who is the narrator?

The narrator’s name is Ulandin. He is a teenage ex-slave. His interview is here in this blog.

So he’s a guy then?

Yep.

Can I get the story on my phone?

Australian twitter doesn’t allow you to receive SMSes. But if you email your mobile number to me at fellissimo[at]hotmail.com, with the subject, “Phone Tweets”, then I will send them to your phone at the same time I release them on twitter. I can also send them to you in real-time via email if you email me with the subject, “Email Tweets”.

Why do you have two names?

It’s a crude ratings system – if a story is written by Louise Curtis, it’s PG or G. If it’s written by Felicity Bloomfield, it probably isn’t. Felicity Bloomfield is my main online personality, and my blog (mainly about the writing process and being mentally ill) is at felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com. This blog is all about the story.

How are you getting paid for this story?

I’m not. The whole idea is to get better-known as an author.

Have you been published?

I’ve sold about thirty short stories around the world (including some online), and sold one book (which I’m fairly sure was never produced). I am working on a number of books at the moment, most of which involve pirates.

What is it with you and pirates?

I wrote pirates into my young adult book “Stormhunter” and then realised I knew nothing about sailing. So I decided to “research” tall ships by travelling on the Young Endeavour sail training vessel. I’ve written an entire children’s trilogy since then, all with pirates in.

What’s the deal with the flashmob?

Because it’s a twitter “novel” (of about 3000 words) I had a book launch – of sorts. Instead of speeches and wine, we gathered at some local shops, then for half an hour whipped off our normal-person disguises and looked like pirates. You can see 1.30minutes of highlights by watching “Pirate Flashmob Canberra” on Youtube.com

*Add your questions in comments, and if I think they’re common enough I’ll edit them into the main post.