Some books are written to be read aloud and The Dread Crew definitely fits. A rollicking, rowdy hoot of a book ... there are identifiable characters for both boys and girls, and humor akin to Roald Dahl at his most satirically anti-establishment.

I went to tear out a sheet for a grocery list and found the birth of a Dread Crew scene, written while curled up on the high side of a starboard tack because for a while, I had to write everywhere. So I did. In waiting rooms, on long drives, on the boat.

Two weeks since the manuscript. The first draft is in her hands but it's got holes and dubious underpinnings and while I've obeyed the stay-away order in principle, I've reorganized and rewritten the story fourteen times in my head.

“It's a world filled with secret documents, maps, and mysterious totems. Kate has made a world where there is still adventure in the woods... the pirates of the backwoods will not disappoint even the most unruly jackanape under your roof."

The next book turns its attention to Missy, you might already know. She travels the world and meets new and strange pirate crews, and becomes a spy herself, and encounters a mystery — in that order. We'll still have Dreads, and Eric and Joe feature too.

Missy is unimpressed. She’s not one for fussing, nor for waiting. She wants to crash a flying beast and engage in illegal sabotage and write to Eric on coded postcards and it’s all stuck at the bottleneck of me. She tries to help, but I'm thick as bricks.

"The Dread Crew is a children's book, but like all the best children's books, that means that adults can ostensibly buy it for someone else and read it themselves on the sly. The book as a whole was.. I find it hard to pinpoint the correct word. 'Entrancing' is closest.”

Cast them as far as I could. Had no idea one of them would end up in Tasmania, but it did, didn't it? And Queens, New York. And London and Wisconsin and Paris and Palo Alto and on from there. Be good, words. Earn that hard-won Canadian pulp.

“Do you think pirates get a bad press? Have you ever made someone walk the plank? Do you like Gretchen? Do you know the rhyme Solomon Grundy? Do your maggots have names? How do you pickle a herring? If you are such a good strategist, do you play chess?”

“What is it like to be a pirate? I have so many questions to ask you about being a pirate. What is your favourite hobby? Do you go to school ever? Do you have children? Are you guys crazy?  How is your life being a pirate?“

The Dread Crew: Pirates of the Backwoods is my book and Sydney is polishing the illustrations right now and then it hits the presses and it'll be shipping in mid-October and here's the cover and check out the maggots wriggling in Vince's beard.

Hey Eric, I whispered. Not so loud. We don’t want them to hear us, because, you know, we’d be totally crushed. His breath escaped in a cloud that hung in the air around his face. Who? And I said the pirates.