From a newsgroup post dated September 23, 2009:

So I was going to post about a family legend in a discussion of privateering on rec.arts.sf.written, and thought better of it when I realized that it really is just a legend, we can’t document it at all — but then it occurred to me it’d make a pretty good basis for a story.

See, one of my ancestors was allegedly a Welsh privateer, but that may have just been a cover story for smuggling. (He wound up with a French wife, which seems more likely for a smuggler.)

And it only just now sank in that that could be a story set-up.