Advance Praise Jose and the Pirate Captain Toledano by Arnon Z. Shorr

Winner of the PJ Our Way Author Incentive Award

Praise The Pirate Captain Toledano Film

“Despite its brevity this movie was extremely well done, emotionally very moving, realistic, and genuine.”-Anne, Amazon

“I’ve definitely never seen this version of pirate storytelling, or even knew about their existence historically until now, but it’s SO fascinating to think about what these pirates could have been like. The score, the acting, and the storyline flows so well and definitely makes you want to keep watching what happens with the stowaway. I’d love to see this made into a feature one day.”-Milagros Ortiz, Amazon

“Filled with suspense and genuine emotion. I was moved by the story and very impressed.”- Philip W, Amazon

IndieFEST Film Awards Winner: Award of Excellence

Near Nazareth Film Festival Winner: Jury Award

Interview with Arnon Z. Shorr and Joshua Edelglass’

TR: Please tell us something about ‘Jose and the Pirate Captain Toledano’ that is not in the summary.  (About the book, character you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)

AS: This book isn’t the first time I’ve explored the world Captain Toledano and his pirates. In fact, “José and the Pirate Captain Toledano” expands on a story I first told in a short film that premiered exactly five years ago (on 5/2/2017)! That film is just ten minutes long, and it tells the story of a Jewish refugee from the Spanish Inquisition who stows away on a pirate ship and comes face-to-face with the intimidating Captain Toledano. The film did really well on the festival circuit, and was an excellent launch-pad for the book’s much-expanded story. Usually, you get a book before you get a movie, so I recommend reading the book first. In this case, I’m not sure – should you read the book first or see the movie first? What are the ‘rules’ when a movie inspired the book? The film is available on some streaming platforms, and on Amazon.

JE: As soon as I saw Arnon’s wonderful short film, I was filled with excitement at the prospect of expanding that story into a full-length graphic novel! I couldn’t wait to start drawing! Arnon’s short film did a beautiful job of establishing a visual “feel” for the characters and the setting. It was a special opportunity to be able to use the film as the seed for what would become the epic story of the graphic novel. I enjoyed being able to bring some characters from the short film to life on the comic book page (such as the Pirate Captain Toledano himself!) and also to introduce so many new characters and settings. There are a lot of similarities between film and comics, but also many differences too; it was a fun challenge to take everything Arnon and I loved about the short film while, also opening up the story to take full advantage of everything the medium of comics has to offer.

TR: What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?

AS: It’s hard to pick just one! But I think my favorite scene in the book is a sort of ‘Spartacus’ moment near the end. Since it’s near the end, I don’t want to say too much about it – but it’s a moment when a whole lot of secrets get revealed, and – to me – it’s the moment that symbolizes what this book is really about: standing up for our own uniqueness – and for each other’s.

JE: I love José’s first encounter with the Pirate Captain Toledano.

TR: What draws you to the graphic novel genre?

AS: I’ve been a filmmaker since I was a kid. I suppose I’ve always been interested in telling stories through pictures. Graphic novels tell picture-stories in a similar way to movies, and as such, they’ve always intrigued me, too. But this is the first time I’ve ever tried to actually write one. And I found the experience extremely rewarding creatively. Even though I didn’t illustrate the book, I felt that this form of storytelling still gave me an opportunity to craft a narrative that would be told – primarily – through images.

JE: I have loved comics for my whole life!! As a kid I was captivated by the ongoing sagas of (mostly) Marvel super-heroes. I voraciously followed Spider-Man, the Avengers, and of course Chris Claremont’s X-Men. (Claremont’s collaboration with Alan Davis on Excalibur was a high-water-mark for me in those early days of reading comics.) As I got older, I was delighted to discover the vast possibilities of comics and graphic novels through such thrilling and challenging works as Alan Moore & David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, Dave Sim & Gerhard’s Cerebus, Will Eisner’s The Contract with God trilogy, Joe Kubert’s Fax from Sarajevo, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Jeff Smith’s Bone, Sergio Aragones & Mark Evanier’s Groo… and so many more! (I could fill pages writing about the many comics and graphic novels that I have loved over the years!) I am still deeply in love with the medium of comics and graphic novels. I believe there is unlimited potential within comics to tell so many different kinds of story, from the epic to the deeply personal. There’s a unique power possible with this combination of words and pictures. I love many different types of art, but comics and graphic novels will always be #1 for me.

TR: I never heard of Jewish pirates before, can you tell us how you find out about them and what compelled you to write about them?

AS: Years ago, a friend of mine lent me a book called “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” by Ed Kritzler. It’s a fascinating and unusual historical study of Jews – predominantly refugees from the Inquisition and their descendants – who took to the high seas to escape the Inquisition, and who took to piracy (or privateering) as both a means of survival and as a way to strike back against the nation that oppressed them. There were so many great stories in that book! But the thing that struck me the most was that the history offered an entirely new way to look at fictional pirates. If I could come up with a pirate story where the pirates were Jewish, I could create an entirely new and different pirate story – a story where the pirates are driven by something more noble than greed.

JE: My first encounter with Jewish pirates was that first phone conversation with Arnon, in which he told me about his short film and started talking about his ideas for the larger story he wanted to tell. His excitement was contagious, and I couldn’t wait to dive into this world of Jewish pirates and their adventures!

TR: How much time and effort went into your research for the book?

AS: The research for the book happened in stages. I had already done a great deal of research for the short film that inspired the book – including getting some dialogue translated into Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) and digging up the oldest Sephardic liturgical melodies that I could find. The melodies didn’t make it into the book, of course, but the Ladino did. But since the story in the book is much bigger than in the film, I also had to research a much broader swath of the 16^th century Caribbean. I used Google Maps to prowl the streets of Santo Domingo, looking for remnants of the old Spanish town. I reached out to descendants of the island’s Taino people to make sure my depictions were accurate and sensitive. I read other swashbucklers (notably, the first of the “Master and Commander” books by Patrick O’Brian) and watched pirate movies. I wanted to make sure I got the history right, but I also felt it important to get the ‘genre’ right – to tell a great pirate story.

JE: All of the research that Arnon had already done was extraordinarily valuable to me, as was the work that he and his collaborators had done in establishing the visual look of the short film. As Arnon and I began the process of creating our graphic novel, we found there was so much more for us to learn about and explore as we brought new characters and settings into the story. We tried to be as historically accurate as we could, while at the same time being open to our own creativity and imagination.

TR: I always enjoy looking at the names that authors choose to give their characters. Where do you derive the names of your characters?  Are they based on real people you knew or now know in real life? How do you create names for your characters?

AR: José’s name is an echo of my son’s middle name: Joseph. My son, in turn, was named to connect him to one of our earliest known ancestors, the 12^th century scholar Rabbi Joseph ‘Bechor Shor’ – a Tosafist from Orleans, France whose nickname became our family’s name. He’s the first in a line of Rabbis that lasted nearly a millennium, before the upheavals of the 20^th century caused his descendant – my grandfather – to drift away from his ancestral traditions. I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to find ways to re-connect to the heritage and traditions of my ancestors – the ones that got lost when the generational ‘chain’ was cut. In that way, José’s search for his ancestral heritage is a reflection of my own. So I wanted to connect him both to my son and to my ancestral grandfather – the deep past and the hope for the future.

TR: Where did you get the inspiration for your cover?

AS: For this I’ll turn the interview over to the book’s masterful illustrator, Joshua M. Edelglass:

JE: Arnon and I started talking about the cover to the book about a year before I actually drew it! I did a lot of sketches before we – working in close concert with the great team at Kar-Ben – were able to find a design we were all happy with. We knew we wanted to convey certain key aspects of the story: that it was a pirate adventure, that it had a young protagonist, and that there was a Jewish aspect to the tale. We liked the idea of a movie-poster-style montage that would introduce a potential reader to the main characters they’d meet in the story. We tried to come up with a design that looked fun and exciting and that would make one want to open that cover up and read the story!

TR: Describe the room you are sitting in as though it was a scene in one of your books.

AS: When I write a graphic novel, I don’t illustrate it – but I do describe to the illustrator what should appear in the panel. So if I were to describe my room to Josh, it would go something like this:

PANEL 1: A narrow room, quite small, well-stuffed, but tidy. At one end, a large wood desk, elegant, rounded edges, no drawers. On that desk – two large computer monitors and a three-foot-long LED goose-neck desk lamp that casts a cool blue light in a pool over the black keyboard. The cool light from the lamp and the computer screens contrasts with the warm tones of the wood desk and two wood bookshelves that flank it. Above the desk: a massive TV screen, black, off, waiting.

Across from the desk (perhaps visible in a second panel? Not sure you could squeeze this into just one) an inviting wood futon, blue fabric with a southwestern print – perhaps Navajo? Perhaps simply someone’s imitation of what “indian” should look like. A few film awards and one screenplay cover are framed and hanging on the wall behind the futon, on either side of a large, curtained window. Again, blue fabric and brown furniture provide a warm/cool contrast.

JE: As I sit at my computer typing this answer, if I look to my left, I’ll see my drawing table. I keep my room very neat, but my drawing table is covered with ideas for future projects and remnants of previous ones. (Look, there’s a sketch of the pattern on José’s pants, still sitting on the corner of my table!) Various pencils, pens, bottles of ink, rulers, a triangle, and other tools are scattered around my table.

Looking further to my left, I see my closet filled with boxes of comic books. Looking to my right, I see shelves filled with art supplies and stacks of bristol board pages from previous projects… not to mention other fun stuff such as photo albums, projects my daughters have made for me, a box of cassette tapes (that I’m not sure I any longer have the means to play), photos, etc…

TR: What do you do when you are not writing?

AS: I have three wonderful children who take up much of my free time and attention. We recently moved into a house, so I’m learning how to tend to the lawn and the garden – it turns out I quite enjoy yard work! And of course, I try to watch a lot of movies.

JE: I’m the Assistant Director of Camp Ramah New England, an overnight Jewish summer camp located in Palmer, MA. I get to spend my summers at camp each year!! It’s one of the best jobs in the world. And, like Arnon, I have my wonderful family – in my case, my wife and twin daughters.

TR: What are you currently working on?

AS: As a matter of fact, I just finished writing a pilot screenplay based on “José and the Pirate Captain Toledano”. If you love the book and tell all your friends to buy it, hopefully the sales numbers will convince Hollywood to consider adapting it as a limited series… If that happens, I’m ready with the script!

JE: Arnon and I are also developing several different ideas for graphic novels – hopefully, one of them will be our next project together!

TR: Are there any questions that you would have liked me or another blogger to ask but didn’t? Please ask and answer.

AS: Q: Jewish characters, a storyline deeply rooted in Jewish history and tradition, and all from a publisher that focuses on Jewish kids’ books… Is this book just for Jewish kids?

AS: I understand where that question is coming from! We like to categorize our world – and especially the media that we buy (this is especially true with movies, where we pay for them before we see them). But to me “José and the Pirate Captain Toledano” is first and foremost a swashbuckling pirate adventure story – the sort of book that my 9-year-old would love, and that his septuagenarian grandmother would love, too – albeit for different reasons. And although the central characters are Jewish, I wrote the story for a much broader audience. You don’t need to be a Jedi to enjoy “Star Wars”, right? Same idea here.

About Arnon Z. Shorr

Arnon Z. Shorr is an author, screenwriter and filmmaker of character-driven adventures and thrillers, where heroes grapple with the extraordinary, and in doing so, learn important truths about themselves.

Arnon spent most of his childhood between worlds: a Hebrew speaker in America, a private school kid in a rented two-bedroom apartment. Whenever he’d set foot in one world, his other foot would betray him as different. For that reason, he tells stories that embrace the peculiar, where encounters with the unexpected reveal who we are.

Website: https://www.arnonshorr.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shorr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArnonShorr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arnonshorr/

About Joshua Edelglass’

Joshua Edelglass is a freelance illustrator from Massachusetts. He is also the Assistant Director of Camp Ramah New England. At Brown University, Josh wrote and drew the political cartoon, WorldView for The Brown Daily Herald. That experience gave him the bug for cartooning, a passion that has never left him.

Josh’s work has appeared in a variety of exhibitions, including Pow! Jewish Comics Art and Influence that ran at the Brooklyn Jewish Art Museum in Spring 2018. Josh was included in the Jewish Comix Anthology, published in 2014 by Alternative History Press. Josh was also included in SCI: The Jewish Comics Anthology vol. 2, which was published in the fall of 2018.

Website: www.motionpicturescomics.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshua_edelglass/

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Giveaway Jose and the Pirate Captain Toledano by Arnon Z. Shorr

This giveaway is for 2 print copies One for each of 2 winners. This giveaway is open to the U.S. only and ends on July 1, 2022 midnight, pacific time.  Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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