Please enjoy this short excerpt from the soon to be completed novel "Children of Orleans" written by my very talented and creative friend, Mike Zapata of ANTIBOOKCLUB. Mike is the hairy one in the picture above.
“The Pope is diseased,” said the old, mad pirate to boy on one of their walks. “Pope John XXIII, who was Pope from 1410-1415, and who was also a pirate, was particularly diseased. He had a disease where he thought he was Pope. All Popes, as it turns out, have the same disease. Poets are also diseased. Most of them have syphilis, which is a sex disease that drives men to dementia. During the Sino-Japanese War, I met a famous Japanese poet who had syphilis. It was said that he hadn’t
