The 18th of July!!!

Fun fact: James Hook, supposed pirate and arch-enemy of Peter Pan, shares a birthday with me (February 23). The birthday of his long-awaited memoir, however, will be July 18, 2017.

In Hook’s Tale, to be published by Scribner, Hook tells his own story at last, exposing the lies behind what many people mistake as the true story of Neverland.

THE TRUE STORY

Orphaned at a young age and press-ganged into Her Majesty’s Navy at the age of fourteen, our hero finds a map hidden by his late father which takes him and his shipmates to an odd tropical archipelago where Time (apparently) stands still.

There he befriends a boy named Peter, falls in love with a maiden named Tiger Lily, and hatches a pet crocodile he christens Daisy. But friendships can sometimes fall apart, true love occasionally dies, and nothing is what it seems in this Dickensian tale of transformation and skulduggery.

Everything we thought was history is turned on its ear, and the sympathies we once held for a boy who refused to grow up may now shift to a one-handed fellow who seeks the courage to face death, the original “big adventure”.

I discovered the work in manuscript form, and have acted as an editor of sorts, filling in those gaps in the manuscript that quite literally disintegrated over time or proved too appealing and digestible to book worms.

It’s a story for adults whose hearts long for the adventure tales of youth. Buy it July 18th, pre-order it before then (go to simonandschuster.com and then search under Hook’s Tale, or amazon.com and look under books), and return with it to Neverland.