Every couple weeks, I’ll be sharing a taste of my fiction. I’m working on a collection of stories about people from vastly different times and places whose lives are shaped by tea. Characters in these stories include the mistress of an Indian tea plantation under British colonial rule and her servant, a man whose career is destroyed by the Boston Tea Party, a sailor shanghai’ed onto a tea-carrying clipper ship, the owners of a gay and lesbian teahouse in mid-1990s Taipei, and more.
Think of this as a tasting menu—a little morsel of something savory, sweet, or spicy to give flavor to your day. 🙂 Enjoy!!
From a story about a man shanghai’ed onto a tea-carrying clipper ship…
It began badly for John Syme: a meager supper, a harsh squabble, an escape to the bar, a drunken sprawl on the nighttime waterfront. He woke with the queasy feeling of water lulling somewhere beneath him, an expanse of wooden surface that filled his bleary vision. White sails stretched above him like wings.
He jerked with recognition. He was on a ship. In a predicament.
