Corporate Heavyweight to Pirate Author

As a corporate marketing expert, Kevin C Smith was rubbing shoulders with superstars like Michael Jackson and George Lucas. That’s the kind of power you have when you control a $1.5 billion dollar budget for industry giant Kellogg.

Smith was the guy responsible for putting those toys that kids couldn’t resist into the bottom of cereal boxes. "Yeah, they were a big deal,” Smith said. "We always put them in the bottom of the box so that the kid will dump at least half out. There's only one. So, if in a family of two, three, four, they're going to have to go for another box. We wanted collectability. We wanted it to be fun. What they were putting in when I first came in were stickers and little books. I said, ‘Kids don't care about that. Let's put toys in.' And I said, what we need is some flash to the toys. Something to make them different. So, I said, let's hook up with Sesame Street. Let's hook up with Disney. Let's hook up with the studios that are doing the animation out on the West Coast. That's what we did. We tied in with Star Wars, Spider-Man, Sesame Street, Disney—all their characters. I've been to Pixar, I've been to Sony, I've been to Disney, I've been to Universal. I've been to every agency out there. And I've met a lot of neat people. I don't know how many toys we put out, but it's in the billions. Only McDonald's probably put out more toys than I did in my lifetime.”

Perhaps Smith’s creative bent came from his childhood spent watching the adventures of Peter Pan and all of the films of the Golden Age of pirate movies. Whatever the reason, Smith, 73, still has a fascination with pirates. Today, Smith is attacking his work as a novelist with the same gusto that put those billions of toys into the hands of billions of kids.

"My job was all the promotions we ran,” he said, "all the advertising, all the tie-ins with all the partners, be it Disney, Michael Jackson or the Statue of Liberty. I had a lot of power. I had a billion and a half dollars in budget. When I was at Kellogg’s, I told them what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and let's do it. I had 150 professionals running and doing it with about 50 agencies.”

He sounds like a bit of a pirate himself, doesn’t he? But life changed quickly for Smith after stepping away from Kellogg.

“Once you walk out of a job, that power strips off pretty quick,” he said wistfully. "And that's okay.”

The work now finds Smith on Marco Island, a location he describes as the best place in the world, effectively trading a corporate office for a high-rise condominium in Gulfview overlooking Marco Beach.

"I told my brother Brian, ‘I've got to find something to do to keep me busy about 20-25 percent of the time,” Smith said. "I don't want to be full on. I told him I was thinking about writing. He said, ‘Well, you've never written anything in your life.' I said, 'I wrote some of the copy on the side and back panels of cereal boxes.' He said, ‘That doesn't count.' I decided to give it a try. I've got nothing to lose. I've never taken a creative writing course. I've never read a book on how to do a novel. I thought it best to go in naive. Because if somebody gives me a structured bunch of rules, I'm the kind of guy that's not going to follow rules. I'd of been terrible in the military."

Smith has already written four pirate books and says he’s about to crank out three more in his Bilge Rat: Pirate Adventurer series that he hopes will be picked up by Netflix or Showtime. He pours his creative energy into thinking up the next adventure for his protagonist, Echo Eden, an orphan from the streets of London who becomes Captain William Eden, a pirate with a unique talent for throwing his voice. It’s a skill that gets him out of sticky situations. 

“Echo’s smart as a whip,” Smith said, “a good leader of men. He has this ability to throw his voice, and only he knows it. Nobody else. It's a secret. I wanted to have a superhero, but I didn't want to do any of that crap. You know, being able to fly or being able to levitate. This is natural. This can happen. I wanted to be realistic.”

Smith doesn’t necessarily see himself as being super creative.

“They say I am,” Smith said, shrugging his shoulders, "but how the heck do you know? I have no idea. Obviously, I can write and I never had before. I can see things.”

Like the brilliantly illustrated covers for his four books.

"I have a lady friend who used to do a lot of work for us,” Smith said, "so I would tell her what I was looking for on the covers. I’m looking for a skull, and I need a tarantula on top of it. I'm looking for a demon. I want to see that fork tongue coming out. And I need a patch. And then I need a pirate. It's got to be mean. Mean. The first time I saw the pirate I said, ‘You know what? Let's do sharpened teeth. I'll just put sharpened teeth into the book."

"I wrote the first three as a trilogy. I had a good friend, the guy that introduced me to Michael Jackson, as a promoter. He had bought a publishing house, Journey Publications. He said, ‘What kind of book is it?' I said, it's historical fiction. Pirates. He said, ‘Send it to me and let me look at it.' He looked at it, and he said, ‘Yeah, let's do this.' And so we did."

"I wanted to write about pirates. The first time I saw Disney's Peter Pan I absolutely fell in love with pirates. So, I have been doing research over the years, but it's kind of interesting when you research pirates, it's almost like a plagiarism deal. Almost every story is the same, almost word for word."

Smith has studied pirates his entire life. He's literally studied anything he could get his hands on. Initially, pirates were like heroes to him.

“Since I was a kid, I've read every pirate book,” he said. "I don't know how many books. I kept files and records. Just mounds of books and visuals. For the most part, the silver screen portrayed them as Robin Hood, as dashing, daring. I thought they were heroes because I went to the movies like we all did. And we had two movies going on. One was always either Samson or Hercules, and the other one was a pirate movie. It was double feature time. So yeah, they were heroes, whether it was the Tyrone Power or Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or any of them.”

Smith’s extensive research reveals a much different reality. 

“What I started out to do," he said, “was write a book that really tells the truth but fills in the gaps of what these animals were really like. They were drunken psychopaths. They drank all the time. When the booze ran out the captain would get voted out. Captain's out. Next one's in. On we go. But they drank morning to night because nobody stopped them. They didn't wash too much. Maybe twice a year, if not once a year, took a bath. Talk about smell.”

Smith says the pirates’ heyday was brief.

"The golden age of piracy runs, they say, from about 1695 to 1725,” he said. "So that’s really just 30 years.”

Given their short reign, Smith finds it fascinating that pirates have maintained their intrigue.

“You watch Halloween costumes,” Smith said. "There's a heck of a lot of pirate costumes. There's a fascination with them. I think the silver screen has a lot to do with it.”

Smith is hoping the Starz series Black Sails will help to bring about a pirate renaissance in Hollywood. If so, he’s ready for them.

“I'm hoping Black Sails moves to Netflix," he said.

He thinks that could open the door for his Bilge Rat: Pirate Adventurer books to become a series on Netflix or Showtime. 

“They need content,” he said. "I'm hoping that Black Sails hooks some interest and people start looking for another pirate series. Because Hollywood copies. They’re good at copying. They see something that works, and they're all going to run like lemmings to it. Every one of them. So, I'm hoping. I've got my fingers crossed.”

Smith’s Bilge Rat: Pirate Adventurer series “Remarkable Rasal,” “Black Tarantula,” “Demon Pirate,” and “Viking Pirate” are available on Amazon.com.