Stubby is the high-spirited cabin boy in the first two books of my trilogy. He was pivotal in both stories. In the first book, he was vital to the plot. But in A Captain and a Rogue, he was more important to me. I deleted most of his scenes after I finished the manuscript but I saved them in a file.
In that deleted file, I tell of his life on shore and how he'd once discovered that women would notice him if he stood, bedraggled, in front of a confectionary shop. He would end up with more food than he could eat. The shop owner wouldn't scare the boy away because the lad was good for business.
I also had to delete how the captain was a bit envious of the heroine's attention to the cabin boy. Stubby asked the heroine to marry him, but she refused. And because he was not a faint-hearted lad, he then asked the other sister if she might marry him. Since he thought she was a mermaid, Stubby planned to build her a house by the sea. He said he would bring her minnows on a regular basis. But she refused him too.
At almost the last minute of the edits, I left the cabin boy character in England while the ship he'd worked on sailed away. I did that so I could possibly work him into another story, and he could be reunited with the mother who'd had to give him away so he could have a better life.
His character helped me enjoy writing A Captain and a Rogue.
In that deleted file, I tell of his life on shore and how he'd once discovered that women would notice him if he stood, bedraggled, in front of a confectionary shop. He would end up with more food than he could eat. The shop owner wouldn't scare the boy away because the lad was good for business.
I also had to delete how the captain was a bit envious of the heroine's attention to the cabin boy. Stubby asked the heroine to marry him, but she refused. And because he was not a faint-hearted lad, he then asked the other sister if she might marry him. Since he thought she was a mermaid, Stubby planned to build her a house by the sea. He said he would bring her minnows on a regular basis. But she refused him too.
At almost the last minute of the edits, I left the cabin boy character in England while the ship he'd worked on sailed away. I did that so I could possibly work him into another story, and he could be reunited with the mother who'd had to give him away so he could have a better life.
His character helped me enjoy writing A Captain and a Rogue.
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