Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to live and work on a cruise ship? Is it all glamour and exotic locations, or is there a hidden, more challenging side to life at sea?

How do you cope with being away from family for months at a time, and what strange events unfold on these floating cities? In this episode, former cruise ship entertainer Wendy Nugent talks about her journeys and how they inspired her mystery novels.

If you like episodes about the sea/books, check out episode 1 where I talk about my tallship journey from Fiji to Vanuatu, Sailing around the world with Tom Dymond; Tallship sailing in Galveston, Texas, and Sailing the Pacific with Nadine Slavinski.

Wendy spent a decade as part of an award-winning magic act performing on cruise ships all over the world. She traveled from Alaska to Venezuela, Bermuda to Tahiti, and many exotic ports of call in between. Now, Wendy uses her insider knowledge of cruise ship life to write entertaining cozy mystery books set on cruise ships.

• Wendy’s journey from a theater graduate to performing on ships around the globe
• The highs and lows of life at sea, from incredible shore excursions to the challenges of being away from family
• The strict social hierarchy and unique culture on board, with crew members from many different nations
• The weird and wonderful things that happen on cruises—from ship fires to rescuing refugees—that inspire her mystery novels
• Practical tips for potential cruisers on choosing the right itinerary and ship size for their travel style
• How to make a tiny, temporary cabin feel like home, especially when your cabin mate is a performing parrot
• Recommended books

You can find Wendy at WendyNeugent.com.

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Hello, travelers. I’m Jo Frances Penn, and today I’m here with Wendy Neugent. Hi Wendy.

Wendy: Hi Jo. It’s so nice to get to talk to you.

Jo: I’m excited about this. Just a little introduction. Wendy spent a decade as part of an award-winning magic act performing on cruise ships all over the world. She traveled from Alaska to Venezuela, Bermuda to Tahiti, and many exotic ports of call in between. Now, Wendy uses her insider knowledge of cruise ship life to write entertaining cozy mystery books set on cruise ships. I think you’ve got one there as well, haven’t you? One of your books.

Wendy: Yeah, Murder Takes a Bow.

Jo: Fantastic. So this is going to be really interesting. To start off, just tell us —

How did you come to work on cruise ships in the first place? Why did you want to be part of that kind of life?

Wendy: I have a degree in theater, so I had a background in entertaining, but I was actually working at Colonial Williamsburg as a costumed tour guide straight out of college. I had moved there from upstate New York and was excited to be someplace a little warmer. I met someone who was working on cruise ships and they ended up hooking me up with a job working as a youth counselor. So that was my first contract. It was just three and four-day cruises, really quick. It was on the former Disney ship, the Premier Cruises. I ended up working my way up to being part of a review show where I had a section where I would hold up big dance cards and dance around on stage and do silly things like that. 9

And then over the years, I worked into having this magic act with my then-partner and traveled the world. It was a really fun way when I was young and in my twenties and early thirties to get paid pretty well to live on ships and travel the world. So I have no regrets about it. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d want to do it now at this point in my life, but when you’re young and you don’t have any commitments, it’s a really fun way to get to see the world.

Jo: And why did you stop working on cruise ships?

Wendy: I stopped because I was five months pregnant!

Jo: I was going to say, there must be a family in there!

Wendy: Yeah. So that last contract was pretty rough because I was dealing with morning sickness and performing and getting bigger and everything. My last contract ended when I was five months pregnant. And I was definitely done at that point. You get burnt out from all of the travel and constantly being on the go and in a different port every day. It’s a lot. So 10 years was good and I really enjoyed it, but I was definitely ready to leave when I was done.

Jo: Yeah. Well, but it’s interesting because of course you’ve written this series of books set on cruise ships, so there’s definitely this thing in you that is still kind of holding onto that life. So let’s first start with —

What are some of the most amazing things, the highlights that you can remember, that you were like, yes, this is the best job in the world?

Wendy: Oh, definitely. I mean, I hiked to a waterfall in Venezuela with all of the entertainers on board. It was epic. You got done with this out in the middle of Venezuela and you’re thinking, what life am I living? This is incredible.

And when I was in Tahiti, Jean-Michel Cousteau was there and he was leading tours in Fatu Hiva, which is one of the Marquesan islands. I mean, you’re thinking, how is this even possible that I’m getting to do this?

Tahiti was definitely a high point and I was incredibly lucky because I was on the Paul Gauguin, which is a very small cruise line. And a beautiful ship. Very, very high-end cruises, where they had a lot of educational talks and things like that going on.

I lucked out because I was only there for a few weeks, but over that time, the run that I was on, they were going up and they did a special run up into the Marquesas, which are really remote islands that you wouldn’t get to. It would be very difficult if you weren’t on a ship to be able to go to all of these different islands and get to see these places. So Hiva Oa and Fatu Hiva and all these places that are amazing. And because you’re part of a ship, they’re bringing on dance groups and cultural events and things like that. So it was an incredible experience.

Jo: Those things just sound amazing. You did mention a small cruise boat and I’m really interested in this. I have never been on a cruise. I have been on a tall ship, as a passenger on a tour ship, but not like a cruise cruise.

When you say a small cruise ship, what sizes are we talking here?

Wendy: I think that this had about 300 passengers. I’ve been on cruise ships that had 1,500 passengers up to 3,000. So, when we would do a performance, we might have 1,200 or 1,500 people in the audience at a time. So there are some pretty large ships. The smaller ships are pretty unique and there are not very many of them, and they tend to be more expensive because they’re going into very unique ports and things like that. But when I got to do those, they were always my favorite for sure.

Jo: And then again, you said the high points there sounded like they were on the shore leave instead of on the boat. So were there any moments when you were out on the ships that you were like, this is amazing? Or did you just never have the time to kind of stand at the bow doing the Titanic thing?

Wendy: No, I definitely did that. Because I was on ships during that time period when Titanic was a thing.

It was really fun and —

I think the most fun part of working on a cruise ship is that everybody’s there together.

So I was really lucky because I was working as an entertainer, and when you’re doing that, you just do your shows. I didn’t have to do any crew duties. I was on the passenger manifest. So it’s a pretty good life compared to the crew. You have a decent cabin, you have your own private cabin, you’re not stacked in bunk beds like the crew might be.

Because it’s a very, almost a military kind of background of the way that ships work. There’s very much a hierarchy. You have your crew members that live down in the below decks and they’re having to wear uniforms all the time.

They’re very restricted in what they can do during the day, and they work a lot of hours. And then, above crew, you have staff members. The staff members are more the ones that are running the games and, when I was working as a youth counselor, I was on staff. So you have more privileges, but you’re still like a uniform-wearing person that lives in a crew area. And then when you’re an entertainer, and I guess the officers, you know, the officers rule everyone, passengers and crew.

As an entertainer, there aren’t very many of you on board. Even if you have a cast, it will usually be a few people that are singers and dancers that perform. And then there’ll be a few entertainers like I was, where you have your own act and you’re traveling ship to ship to ship, doing your performance. And when you’re doing that, you generally are on as a passenger, you’re on that passenger manifest. So other than performing, I got to read all the time. I got to sit out on the deck in Alaska and watch the eagles fly by and watch the sea otters drift past the ship. So it was a pretty good gig for the time.

But the best part of that is that you meet people from all over the world —

— and you have friends. Because you’re away from your family, you’re away from all your friends and you’re only there maybe for two months or six months. So you bond really quickly because you don’t have anybody else and you’re there for Christmas and you’re there for your birthday.

You get kind of relationships that you might not ever have in day-to-day life working just a normal job. So that’s the most fun. Like my favorite memories are sitting out on the back deck and you’re getting to hang out with the comedians and all of these really funny, entertaining people that are super interesting. And generally the people that work on cruise ships tend to be kind of unique because it’s not a normal thing to do, so they tend to be really fun and funny. The people are what make it so much fun.

Jo: It’s kind of crazy. I mean, you are a writer now and I’m obviously a writer and —

I’m an introvert, and the thought of all those people is way too much!

Now, as a writer, you do spend time alone, so are you an extrovert or how did you deal with all that?

Wendy: No, I’m definitely an introvert and that was the most challenging part because if I left my cabin after I’d had my show, everyone recognized me and it would get exhausting. You would get the same jokes over and over again. Because I was doing a magic show, I had people come up and literally a man lift my shirt up to see why I got cut in half. I mean, the boundary crossing was kind of crazy. So it would get exhausting.

The good thing is you would do a contract and then you’d go home for a few months and you could rest.

The other thing is that when you were on the ship, you had your cabin, you could kind of find little places, or you would come out in the evenings when everybody else was doing something else. Or when you get into port, you would go off. Because you didn’t need to do the touristy things after the first week. You could go find a little place where no one was and kind of build your own little private world within that.  And I always looked forward to if my show was at the end of the cruise, because then I would have just kind of quiet the whole time. Because it did wear me out. It definitely did.

Jo: Yeah, it’s very interesting. Well, let’s talk about some of the challenges. I mean, I guess there, you said you had a decent cabin, so that implies that some of them were pretty bad.

What are some of the biggest challenges of the cruise life?

Wendy: Well, it’s definitely the fact that you are away from everybody and you can be away from your family for every holiday. My grandma passed away a couple of years ago and I got all of her pictures and I’m going through organizing all of her pictures and I’m like all these family events and I’m not in any of them because I wasn’t there for anything.

So that’s kind of challenging that you’re missing out on when someone had a baby or Christmas and people’s birthdays and you just miss all that kind of stuff. So that makes it difficult. My husband’s always laughing at me because if something happened in the nineties, I’m like, I didn’t watch the TV show. I didn’t see that. I’m like, yeah, it’s like all brand new to me because I just missed like a decade.

Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t have any internet. Like if I had to send an email, I would find like an internet cafe someplace and go send an email.But it was very, like, I used payphones and quarters to be able to call people or a card. So you didn’t have the same kind of ease that you would have now where you could just FaceTime your family and be a part of things. So that was definitely difficult. And that was part of me, because I’m close to my family and so I had a hard time with that part.

But at the same time, I’m glad I did it when I was young. In Alaska, I got to go up through Perseverance Trail and I also saw people that were on ships that were finally able to afford to go on these incredible cruises and they weren’t able to do those things because their knees were bothering them or they were on oxygen or something. So I just tried to always be grateful that I was able to do this while I was young and healthy and see the world.  b

Jo:  Yeah. But then I guess a lot of people listening are not going to work as entertainers on the cruise ship!

I mentioned the introvert thing, but I also have this sense of it being really constrained. Where I would, if, say it’s really bad weather and you’re stuck in your cabin, whether or not you are feeling sick or whatever.

The thought of not being able to get off and just walk away is something that brings up — not fear, exactly, but a sort of concern.

I don’t necessarily want to do that. So what would you say to people who have those feelings around cruise ships?

Wendy: So, my husband kind of was like that when we met. He was like, oh boy, I bet I’m going to get stuck on a cruise someday, aren’t I? And he did.

We went, I took a group of my readers in January and he came along and we had a great time. We had a balcony cabin, which I think helped because we could sit outside and just watch Cuba go by and things like that. And it was fun. And he had a better time than he expected. I don’t know if it would be like his number one way of traveling again, but he did enjoy it.

And I think that there are certain itineraries that would just be very difficult to do if you were just trying to, like Alaska for example. There are all these little tiny islands on the inside passage. It is possible to book ferries and maneuver your way up through there. But it’s just, it’s definitely more challenging to do something like that.

Tahiti, the same thing. You’ve got all of these little islands and so you know, it’s an eight-hour flight from the west coast. I’m on the East coast, so it was like a 30-hour flight for me to get there. You could figure out ways to go to all of those different islands, but it would be expensive. It would be exhausting to try to navigate all of the travel arrangements and things like that.

So it’s just, certain destinations I think make sense. Some people just love to cruise. Two of my best friends, like that’s their way they travel. If they go someplace, they go on a cruise. And that’s great.

But if you just love it, like going to the Caribbean or going to the Mediterranean is super fun because just like the experience of being on the ship is part of it for those people. They want to go to Bingo, they want to go on the biggest ship that has some kind of a water slide and things like that.

But you can also find some really interesting itineraries that would maybe go someplace that, like if you wanted to travel in Asia, that is an interesting place to go, but it can be very difficult to maneuver your visas and not being able to read the signs and things. And so you could kind of get a taste of it by going on a cruise. They go all over the place. It’s not just like the big beach destination. So it depends.

I think like a Canada-New England cruise, that was spectacular. And I got to go to, started in Boston and it went up into Bar Harbor, Maine. And I got to go to Prince Edward Island and see the Anne of Green Gables house. And I went to Quebec City and I went to Montreal and that was really cool.

And while you could do that, you can’t drive to all those places, so you’d have to do driving and ferries and cross borders, and it just makes it super simple.

You unpack, once you wake up in the morning, you get off the ship in whatever destination you’re in, and then you move on to the next place.

Jo: Hmm. Well I was thinking about that because I did this tall ship journey from Fiji to Vanuatu and as you said, Fiji is islands, Vanuatu is lots of islands. And so we were stopping at different islands. But it’s funny because I don’t think of that as a cruise. I was on watch, you know, I was still a passenger, but I was on watch duty and there were only, it must have been 20 people maybe.

What would be the difference between passage on a tall ship and a cruise? Is there a point at which a journey on a ship becomes a cruise?

Wendy: So I know there are like river cruises and things that are small. My parents are actually going on a cruise in July up, they’re doing a New England cruise and it’s just got a couple hundred passengers.

But I think that that’s kind of the difference. When you start to have a hundred, 200 people, it’s going to be more considered a cruise. And I think one of the benefits would be if you have seasick issues, a larger ship. They just don’t move around the same way. Like you may feel the movement, but it’s not going to knock you around quite the same way as a smaller one. The smaller the ship is, the more you’re going to start to feel. And I think the modern, especially the modern ships, they’ve got all sorts of things to try to keep people so it almost feels like you’re just in a hotel walking down the hallway.

So I’ve been on some small ones where you walk down the hallway and you like hit, you know, as you were going down, because you were just getting rocked back and forth. On, especially like the Bermuda crossing, crossing the Atlantic to Bermuda. That one I would wake up in the morning and my back would hurt, and my neck would hurt from like holding onto the bed all night because it was bouncing us around. So that wasn’t my favorite run. But it was kind of fun because once we got to Bermuda, we’d be there for three or four days, which usually you’d be there for a few hours to a port. So, yeah, because you could just really enjoy the port.

Jo: Yeah, so I think you are right about thinking about the itinerary, perhaps before, I guess the itinerary and a budget before picking a boat or something because then you can really think about that aspect of it.

I think I would do a smaller one. Like we did some walking in Norway and of course Norway is the same, just lots and lots of fjords and so I did actually look into that. Well, you’ve encouraged me, but I did want to ask you, because of course you write these cruise ship mysteries, so you must have also been inspired by some weird and unusual things. So, I mean, you mentioned that the sort of military hierarchy that must come into it somehow, but —

What are some of the other things you’ve woven into your fiction that is unusual about cruising?

Wendy: So, I was on a cruise ship that, they were parking the boat at the dock and they didn’t do a very good job and they rammed into the dock and it hit so hard that it literally crushed the side of the boat. Like you could have put a Volkswagen bus in the dent on the side of the boat.

I was onboard a shipboard fire on a Cunard ship once. I was in Montreal on that Canada-New England cruise I was telling you about and we had a wave of flu that came through the ship and they ended up quarantining us and we were quarantined for a week. It made national news. So yeah, there’s definitely some interesting things that have happened.

And when you’re on, I was on probably eight or 10 different cruise lines over the years. So there’s always going to be something that happens. I was there during when the Cuban refugee crisis was happening on one ship and we picked up Cuban refugees that were trapped. They were floating on just like this raft that you’re not quite sure how it’s holding them up. And they didn’t have any water and they didn’t have any food.

And everybody’s at like a sail away party and they’re all dancing and music and then you look down and you see that kind of human tragedy and waited with them until the Coast Guard came and picked them up. So, there are some incredible things that have happened.

When I was in Tahiti, I had an accident on stage and I fell and got a concussion. And that makes its way into one of the stories where the sleuth has a concussion and then, how is she going to navigate being on board and having this, because while you have a doctor on the ship, it’s not the same as what it would happen if you were having that here where they would rush you to the emergency room and do all sorts of tests. So it’s definitely a different experience.

I’ve seen people get airlifted off with a helicopter that they had some kind of a medical event. So those kinds of things that you see happen and you’re, you know, that’s definitely the start of a story right there. When I was back on ships, I had the idea for the series, but publishing was different back then and I was off on a ship. I didn’t even have access to anything to even know how, you know what to do or anything.

So I waited until my kids were a little older and then the world had changed and the way publishing had worked had changed, and it was much more attainable to be able to get the information on how to do all that.

Jo: Well, the one show I do watch is Dr. Odyssey on Disney. Have you seen that show?

Wendy: No, I haven’t. I actually took my TV out to put my bookshelf up.

Jo: Well, so I don’t normally watch cruise ship stuff, but you mentioned the doctor there, and it’s about the medical team. I like medical dramas. And this is kind of medical dramas on a cruise ship. And so, but it’s so funny because of course, bigger drama than concussion. Like someone needs some kind of surgery in a storm and things like this.

Wendy: Well, and a lot of people that go on cruises are older and so you’re more apt to have medical issues or they’re doing something that younger people wouldn’t do at home, like they’re on a jet ski or something and they end up hurting themselves and they’ve got to come back to the ship and they’ve got a broken leg or a broken arm or something. So it happens.

They’ve got a pretty incredible setup. And you know, Olivia, my character, she ends up down there all the time because she’s always petted something she shouldn’t pet or doing something she shouldn’t do and ends up in some kind of a jam where she needs her doctor to help her.

Jo: Yeah. Well, one of my many obsessions is this idea of home. And I wondered, like you mentioned there are all these contracts and then you’re moving from boat to boat. So you would arrive on a new cruise ship and you are like, okay, I am here for, let’s say, you said two to six months.

How do you make your cabin into somewhere that you can bear to live for that amount of time? How do you make a little sense of home in that place?

Wendy: So one of the things that I was really lucky because I had a magic show is that I ended up getting pets that could come with me. 

So I was really unique compared to other people. So Olivia, in my book, she has a parrot that is part of her show and he is based on a parrot that I had that would do the act with me. So having him with me, that just made traveling… Now it made the travel much more difficult having to get permits to get in and out of countries, have to have a vet that you have inspect before you leave, and then a vet that inspects when you come back, that has to come to the ship before you can get the bird off the ship. Half the time they wouldn’t even know what type of bird it was and you’re paying them $500 to come to the ship on a Sunday morning.

But always having a pet, because I’m an animal lover. I have a cat, Abraham Lincoln, that is my buddy. So, you know, for me not having a pet was difficult. So those first couple of contracts before I did that, having him, that made a world of difference and being able to travel with him made it much more like home.

But it’s still, you’ve got your little cramped cabin. I mean, because every cabin is small. Unless you’re going on in a suite, you’re not. And that’s not if you work on a ship, you’re not going to have that. So, you take some of the things that make it feel like home for you, but you can’t have candles. You can’t cook in your room. There are many things that would make it easier. So you spend a lot of time meeting at the buffet and it just kind of is what it is. But that was the hard part for me. Now the good part is you get done with a six-month contract and I would have two or three months where I wouldn’t work and I would just be able to be home. So bigger doses.

Jo: Are there animals on cruise ships?

You think of the ship’s cat, for example. Are there animals or is it usually animal-free?

Wendy: Captain Kate, she used to work as a captain on Celebrity and she traveled with her Sphynx cat who recently passed away. 146 But it’s pretty unusual if it’s not. Usually it’s an entertainer if there’s an animal on board. You can bring a service animal on board if you have a service dog. And they have like a grass area for them to be able to go potty and things like that. But that’s really, it’s very unusual to be able to have an animal and if no entertainers have one, there wouldn’t be any onboard.

Jo: Ah, okay. No, that is really interesting. I guess people get to see animals and birds when they’re traveling.

Wendy: When I would go to St. Thomas, there were parrots that I would visit there. I went to see monkeys. I had like everywhere I went, that was kind of my favorite thing to do. Like go to Mexico, I knew that if I went to Xel-Há I could go see the monkeys. So I’d spend the day visiting my monkeys.

Jo: Well and I guess like you mentioned, the itinerary, some of those, like the Galapagos for example, people go on it to see the creatures and things, and I guess there’s scuba diving. I guess I’ve been on some bigger scuba diving liveaboards where there are more people and stuff like that.

Wendy: Really, the Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, you could literally go snorkeling or scuba diving right off the back of the ship. The back of the ship came down like a garage door kind of thing and it could turn into a dock and you could go right off the ship.

And then, yeah, you’d be there and there’d be incredible fish and dolphins swimming right by you. I remember being out in Alaska and standing watching as we were pulling into Juneau and this huge whale just breached. And you think how huge those ships are. I mean, they’re like a floating hotel. You have 3,000 people, but then there’s 1,500 crew to keep that whole thing running. And the whale breaches and the entire ship just rocks from the whale.

Jo: That’s so cool.

Wendy: It is very cool.

Jo: I’ve definitely learned this from our chat is that, decide what you want to see and do and then find a cruise that matches that. 159 Because I mean, my husband knows someone who likes heavy metal music, and there’s a tour, like a cruise ship that is for metalheads, and I’m like, I can’t think of anything worse really than a cruise ship full of like heavy metal music all the time.

Wendy: I was on, I worked on a cruise once where they had a nudist cruise charter ship. And they’re like, you have the option if you would like. And we’re like, no, thank you.

Jo: Well actually, that’s what this Dr. Odyssey does too, on the show. Every week is a different theme.

So like, they might have gambling week and that kind of thing, and there are people listening like, why don’t you know about this? I’m like, it’s just something I haven’t done.

But the other thing that’s interesting to me is you mentioned that it’s like this floating city and there’s crew. You’ve said at one point, in your pitch to me, with crew members from 60-plus nations. When you think about that, all these different cultures, obviously people, different religions, there’s, and there’s political stuff going on that presumably makes people kind of hate each other in some way, and then they have to do this kind of service culture. Right?

How does the culture of the cruise ship work when people come from so many different places?

Or is it just like it is cruise ship culture where you don’t do all the other stuff?

Wendy: I definitely think that that is part of it, is that when you’re on the ship, there are just expectations that you are going to be kind to everyone. 166 You’re going to be in service to everyone, whether they’re crew, staff.

That’s, you want to make everybody’s experience pleasant because you are living in this tiny little place together.

But there are like, a lot of times the officers, they will all be like all Greek or all Turkish or all British. And so I think that some of that is because the cultures are very different. A lot of the officers have military backgrounds and they’re very strict, very regimented in the way things are. 171 It’s not always, you know, not everyone that comes up has been in the military, but it is pretty common, especially for the navigation officers and the ones, that’s how they’ve learned how to drive these huge ships and things like that.

But like you would be on one ship and it would just literally be everybody there would be Greek and then you’d go on a different ship and all the officers would be Turkish and they don’t necessarily go back and forth.

But it was, I mean, for me, I loved it. I made friends with, there was a girl that worked in the casino that was from the Ukraine, and I got to learn about what her life was like back home and why she was, what it meant to her to be able to come on the ship. The money she was able to make as a crew member, she was able to send back to her family. She was able to use that money to be able to build a better life for herself. A lot of the people, they have young children and their parents might be raising their children while they’re on a contract and their contracts can be long, they can be nine months or a year, and they may do two or three of those. But when they’re done, they’re able to buy a home or they’re able to do things in their country because the money, while it may not be like for us working as a cabin steward, it may not, you feel like, I can’t believe the hours they’re working for how much money they’re making, but for Indonesia or for a country like that, that money can go a lot further when they take it back home. So there are some definite benefits depending on where you are. For the entertainers, it’s one of the best-paying gigs that you can get without doing something like a casino in Vegas or Atlantic City or something like that.

Jo: Yeah. And as you say, if it’s like, and obviously all those officers, they have to get their experience and maybe they’ve been in the navies or whatever, but then that also helps because I guess the discipline of the crew and the staff has to be, well, this is the ship. It’s not your country. No, it’s not your religion over here or whatever. It’s like, this is our ship and we all have to play the game, I guess, for a certain period, and then you can leave.

Wendy: Right. And they’re really good about like making, like they would have in the crew mess, there would be Indonesian food and Filipino food and, so that they have some of that at least a few times a week where it would feel like home to them where they would have things that they could bring. Because the different crew members work in all the different departments. So I think everybody’s in the same boat, literally. So everybody wants to make that home for everybody else too.

So, yeah, there’s definitely culture more than like, yeah, everyone brings their own history and their own interests and things like that when they come, but I think everybody kind of comes together and then you are a Celebrity or you are a Princess, and that’s kind of your identity, that you know you’re very proud of the ship that you’re working on.

Jo: Oh, wait, wait. When you said you are a Celebrity or you are a Princess? That’s the cruise line?

Wendy: The cruise line. Sorry. Yes. The cruise line.

Jo: It’s not like I can pretend to be a princess. 

Wendy: I mean, you could. That’s the other thing. If you go on a cruise, you are never going to see anybody again. So you can be whoever you want to be.

Jo: I don’t know. Don’t people love it so much? And they’re like, oh, I’ll see you this time next year.

Wendy: Definitely. I mean, the people who love cruising, they love cruising, and they’ll find the cruise line that like fits them because there are different, each cruise line will have a different clientele that kind of navigates to them with age and you know how much it costs to do that, or the types of itineraries they go to.

And so yeah, there are people who are like, they’re part of the Celebrity club. They go on just Celebrity ships and they’ve been on 27 cruises over the years, and then there are people who, you know, they’ve gone on one and they’re like, that’s just not for me. 193 It depends on what you’re interested in. Like, I’m not a gambler. You know, going into the bars and things like that wasn’t that interesting for me. So I enjoyed it. Working on it. It’s not necessarily the way I would travel all the time for vacations.

Jo: Well, maybe some people listening can leave us some comments about their favorite cruise lines. I’m certainly interested. Okay. So, this is the Books and Travel podcast. So apart from your own books obviously —

What are a few books that you would recommend around cruising and boats?

Wendy: So if you’re looking to like pick itineraries, Lonely Planet has some wonderful books that are like a Caribbean itinerary or going to Alaska that you can kind of get some information about what those ports are and it’ll help you to pick. I definitely would like to go to Ketchikan and so I want to look for one that has that because our Sitka or whatever your interest is. So for just guides, those are interesting ones. And they tend to be kind of surface level for the different ports because you’re usually only there for a day. But it can kind of give you an idea of like, I’m only going to be in Juneau for six hours. What should I do while I’m there? So they’re kind of interesting. 

As far as fiction, if you’re a mystery lover like I am, Mary and Carol Higgins Clark wrote a very light, very fluffy mystery called The Santa Cruise. That’s very silly. And it’s like after Christmas and all of these Santas are on this ship. It’s goofy and silly, but if you’re just looking for something light and fun, that is a fun one.

And then what I read a lot when I was working on ships is not necessarily cruise related, but I love James Michener. He had a lot of books that like, if you want to know about the formations of the shells in French Polynesia, like he is your guy. And so I would feel like I really knew the places from his book and when I got there, I had the history of it. I had so much information from his books. I just think they’re amazing. And I had plenty of time on ships to read one of his, you know. Door stops.

Jo: Yes. Serious doorstop books. James Michener. I’m thinking, and actually, when you go on a cruise, I guess if you take a physical book, I mean, a lot of people now read on their phone or a device, a Kobo or whatever.

Wendy: I didn’t have, there were no eBooks. So yeah, the ships usually have a library. So you can usually get some books on ships. They sometimes will sell some in the gift shop. And then, for me there, I would go into port and I would just load up books and then the next week I would take them off and get the next round of books when I would hit the States and could go to a bookstore.

Jo: That’s so funny. You reminded me then, when I was backpacking as well in the late nineties and 2000, and you’d carry a book to the next place and then you’d take it to like a book swap. And basically it was whatever was there. I remember reading in Australia in the Outback, there was this only this one book about giant spiders invading a site, and I was like, I shouldn’t be reading this in Australia!

Wendy: I mean like every library everywhere. If they had a, if they had like a book exchange or a, because I couldn’t, I couldn’t get a library card because I’d only be there for a few weeks. But usually they would have like a little book sale at the front or something like that. And I would bring my books and donate and then I would buy my next stack of books.

Jo: That is awesome.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Wendy: My books are available wide. They’re available in all the major bookstores. You can get them on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, wherever you read books. I also have a website, wendyneugentbooks.com. 

If you want to come and see me there, I’ve got pictures from back when I worked on ships, and I’ve got a free travel guide for cruises. If you’re interested in getting some more information about like packing and those kinds of things, you can get that there.

Jo: Brilliant. And show us the book one more time. So down backwards. There you go. Murder Takes a Bow. Looks great. If you want a cruise ship mystery. There you go. So thanks so much for your time, Wendy. That was great.

Wendy: Oh, thanks Jo. It was really a pleasure to be here.

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