Thomson, Keith

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Thomson, Keith

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Columbia College (Columbia, NH), graduated, 1987; attended Stanford University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Publicity Department, St. Martin's Press, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Writer and director.

AWARDS, HONORS: Napor Award, for film Cupidity.

WRITINGS:

Pirates of Pensacola (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Writer and director of short film Cupidity. Also screenwriter for films produced by Tri-Star, Paramount, and Disney.

SIDELIGHTS: Keith Thomson is a screenwriter and director who has worked writing feature films for TriStar, Disney, and Paramount. His first novel, Pirates of Pensacola, is a "beguiling, energetic debut," according to one Publishers Weekly contributor. In the story, Morgan Baker is a thirty-six-year-old accountant with Vail & Co. He is a low-key and unadventurous—some would even call him boring—nerd until a surprise reunion with his father, Isaac, jolts him out of his uneventful existence. Newly released from prison, Isaac has returned to find his son and take him on a pirate's adventure on the briny seas. He is in search of more than forty million dollars worth of gold ingots he had stolen from his rivals, the Hood family, decades earlier. The gold is stashed on an uncharted island in the Caribbean. Morgan finds the story hard to believe, but when Isaac steals the Vail & Co. yacht, he reluctantly accompanies his father on the search. When he finally realizes that the treasure is real, Morgan's reluctance rapidly melts away. Pirating, it seems, must run in the blood; Morgan's real last name is Cooke, and he and Isaac are direct descendants of the notorious Cooke family of pirates. Unfortunately for them, Morgan's bosses at Vail & Co. are also descended of a long line of pirates, the Hoods, who are long-time rivals of the Cookes. The Cookes and the Hoods set out in a swashbuckling search for the treasure, accompanied by a deckload of scruffy seadogs, a tattooed manicurist who wields a cutlass as easily as a nail file, and an alcoholic parrot. The Cookes' battle the Hoods and a variety of other enemies, including a pair of revenge-hungry brothers named after another pirate of note, Lafitte, sailing through pristine Caribbean settings and pirate haunts aplenty.

The novel is a "fantastic read," asserted a reviewer on Bilgemunky.com. "Brilliantly clever and funny, Keith Thomson has done a remarkable job creating a world that will ring familiar to many pirate enthusiasts." A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that the book offers a "dizzying plot served up with tankards of disarming deadpan humor, a smattering of actual pirate history and characters just engaging enough to have us swallow it all." Thomson's novel, "crowned with buccaneer vernacular, plenty of colorful extras and a feel-good ending," is "a vivid adventure tale befitting the high seas of Hollywood," remarked the Publishers Weekly reviewer. "Fun, entertaining, and light," according to Pam Johnson in School Library Journal, "the story produces lots of smiles and more than a few laughs."