Watersong

Captain Jason Achilles is captain, owner and operator of the Emmanuelle, a small trading ketch in the Caribbean islands. He is 32, tall, strong and independent to a fault. The jungle had long accepted Jason as it accepted everyone else, on its own terms, both fair and brutal. The year is 1939, and he has settled into a hard but steady life carrying small cargos to shallow water places where the large coasting schooners cannot not or will not go. He had had a few scrapes, but when folks learned of his honesty, a rarity in the trade, he had more business than he could handle. Lucienne Beaumont, the daughter of a plantation owner, turns his world upside down. Strikingly beautiful, with angular features, strong curves and an even stronger beautiful mind, she blindsides his world and captivates his heart. But there are dark forces at work with war on the horizon, and he finds he must fight to keep the love of his life. 

R. M. Byrd lives in North Carolina with his wife and two cats, as well as wild deer, hummingbirds and, appropriately, the odd nuthatch. He worked for more years than he’d like to remember in a shipyard building character (so they say) and spent 6 years in Europe unable to believe he actually lived there. He has been writing since before he can reliably recall. Though he has great trouble writing short, his short fiction has appeared in the literary journals The Iconoclast, Litsnack, Full of Crow, the literary collection of Main Street Rag and Offshoots, the literary collection of the Geneva Writer’s Group of Geneva Switzerland.