In December I started seeing news stories about the Nine-Month Cruise, run by Royal Caribbean: a 274-day cruise around the world, visiting all seven continents, with an emphasis on visiting World Heritage sites and other major landmarks and cities.
They left December 10. Within a couple of weeks they’d become an Internet sensation–with more than 54.8 MILLION views of the related hashtag “UltimateWorldCruise” by December 22.
The people onboard were posting TikTok and other social media posts, and people back on land were following, and posting themselves with speculations on what they thought likely to happen. This really captured imaginations. (It’s ongoing–search the hashtag or ‘Serenade of the Seas’ to see some of the hoopla.)
So I started thinking about this. A story of one logical consequence of such a situation took hold of me, and I felt I had to write it down. I’m slow–I plan and outline and re-write a lot, so I just submitted the novel yesterday.
The ebook is up. The paperback is supposed to be available Monday, but we shall see. Anyone who is signed in can read a fair amount of the book without charge, and of course people belonging to various Amazon entities (like Prime) can likely read the whole thing.
I’m proud of this one–I think it came out as a fast, entertaining read (312 pages in paperback). The issues underlying the story remain compelling, I think–there are serious unsolved problems relating to social media that I tried to highlight.
I’m always interested in constructive criticism!
I looked up the UK and Australian Amazon pages while still signed in, so I’m not sure these are correct in general:
As for Canada, I’ve been told that it’s common for people to buy from the US site. But if not:
