Whether you celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day annually on September 19th or every day of the year, you know that good stories about pirates are worth their weight in gold. I’ve come across several myself that have provided more than a few hours of entertainment—they’ve actually altered the direction of the course I’ve been charting for myself as a writer.

In honor of TLAPD, I wanted to share a few of those titles—some of which you may find more familiar than others.

#1. ‘Sunken Treasure’ by Edward Packard

“‘Then if your parents will let you,” he says, “you and I will go sailing for sunken treasure!’”

This was my first-ever introduction to Choose Your Own Adventure books and the wacky, wonderful world of interactive fiction. If you read my blog regularly, you’ve probably read the title a few times by now. If not, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never crossed paths with this book at all.

It’s very much a goofy children’s book, albeit with some slightly dark twists and turns. (I’m not sure, but I’m tempted to blame many years of nightmares about alligators and crocodiles on the countless times I got eaten by them in this book. Then again, that might just be a side effect of growing up in Florida.) It’s not even my favorite CYOA book.

But it was my first, and I never forgot it or the thrill of reading it that first time, curled up against the chill of a December wind in my parents’ front yard while I avoided the crowd inside in favor of a fictional adventure. And what an adventure it was. I might never have written The Harbinger’s Head, or chiaroscuro, or perhaps even The Dragon’s Last Flight were it not for this book and the love of IF games it sparked.

#2. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’

“Wherever we want to go, we’ll go. That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails; that’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is… what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom.”

Surprised to see a movie on my book list? If you knew me back when the franchise first started, you wouldn’t be. I was obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean the moment I saw the trailer in theaters and thought, “Legolas and Ichabod Crane in the same movie? All right, you have my attention.” Like so many other fans, I fell even more deeply in love when I actually got to watch the movie—again, and again, and again.

I’m breaking the rules a bit here (because, after all, pirate), but only a little. After all, I did say “stories” about pirates, not necessarily books—and it’s impossible for me to talk about influential pirate stories without mentioning this one. I’ve watched all the movies, of course, but it was the original that sparked in me a love of swashbuckling epics that will never die.

It’s because of this movie that I’ve seen films like Cutthroat Island, The Pirates of Penzance, and Captain Blood, and read books like Pirates! by Celia Rees and the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer—to say nothing of the various history books I picked up on the subject.

It’s also the story I wrote the most fanfiction about back when I was a teen. (The Lord of the Rings only came in second because it’s so much more daunting trying to match Tolkien’s prose than PotC dialogue.) It’s also because of this movie that I started celebrating TLAPD, and continue to do so to this day.

#3. ‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson

“For thirty years,” he said, “I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views—amen, so be it.”

Here, of course, we have the obvious entry on the list. The king of all pirate stories. Not the first, and certainly not the last, but one of the best. I loved Stevenson’s writing from the moment I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a teenager, but I’d loved Treasure Island long before I even read it.

It’s one of those special stories, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, that has spawned a thousand adaptations—many of them surprisingly good. My first introduction to Treasure Island was almost undoubtedly Muppet Treasure Island, which remains my favorite adaptation to this day. I’m also a big fan of Treasure Planet. But none of that—and many other pirate stories, I suspect—would exist without the original. I’m thankful to live in a reality in which Treasure Island exists.

#4. ‘Bloody Jack’ (series) by L.A. Meyer

“I warn’t never meant to be a lady, I know that now. I got streaks of wildness in me that trip me up every time, and just like streaks in clothes, there’s some dirt that just won’t wash out.”

I hesitated to include this last entry for one very important reason—I don’t know how it ends. I started reading Bloody Jack and its sequels around the early to mid-2000s, and I loved them fiercely. But I’ll tell you a secret: I used to be terrible at keeping up with ongoing book series. 

Why I stopped at My Bonny Light Horseman (the sixth in the series) when the follow-up came out just a year later, I’ll never know. But mark my words: I do intend to go back. Once I make a bigger dent in my current mountain of TBRs.

But, regardless of how I feel about it when I do return to it—and regardless of how it ends—the impact those first six books had on me was undeniable. In protagonist Mary “Jacky” Faber, I found a female pirate lead with real grit, not only under her nails but also in her soul. I’m not immune to the charms of a good “lady rescued by a pirate with a heart of gold” setup. But clever little Jacky was always more relatable—and infinitely more interesting—to me.

She stumbles into trouble often and is a constant jumble of skinned knees and black eyes and singed eyebrows—but she also laughs in the face of death and can play a mad jig when the mood strikes. She is a mess of a human being, but such a beautiful mess. I have no doubt that she’s influenced more than one of the female characters I’ve come up with over the years—and probably me, too.

The Enduring Allure of Stories About Pirates

Real-life pirates were, and still are, a lot less like Captain Jack Sparrow and a whole lot more like Captain Flint or Captain Barbossa (before he acquired a conscience)—scroungy, greedy cutthroats who lived short but brutal lives.

Which is why pirate fiction is so, well, fictionalized. (And, of course, romanticized.) The allure here isn’t really a life of piracy itself, but the freedom we associate with it. The freedom to do what you want, go where you please, and stick it to the man—not to mention the luck and glory of cheating death over and over and getting away with it.

So to those of you, like me, who keep a weather-eye on the horizon and one ear open for the call of the sea—anchors away! Set sail for whatever literary destinations strike your fancy, and never, ever, apologize for them.

There’s no treasure greater than a good story.

(Captain) Kim Berkley is a fantasy author and video game writer who has been known, on more than one occasion, to not only talk like a pirate, but also dress up as one. You can find pirates smugglers honest merchants in several of her works, including The Harbinger’s Head as well as her upcoming interactive fiction novel, Shadow of the Curse-Eater.