A musical cruise makes for a magical cruise!

Unless you have never read our blog, you know we just spent 13 days cruising on the Carnival Conquest. It was our first time on that ship and our umpty-dump time in the ports. That meant scuba diving for Stu and writing for me.

The diving went well, but the writing? Not so much. Mostly due to two issues. First, I had made some domain changes to author website (A New Look) and had a couple of issues pop up - like no one could see my book page and no one could email me. Thank goodness for my laptop and Carnival's internet package. The other major issue was promoting and marketing the novella I had just released, Paradise Down. But the good news is I did fix a couple of plot holes in Almost a Touch that had been bothering me, so not all was lost.

The surprise on the cruise was the music. No, not just the music but the musicians. On our first night of the first cruise (we did 13 days, back to back), I was waiting for Stu to meet me for dinner and I was listening to the band in the lobby. They were doing a variety of tunes from 50's to more recent and doing a great job. After dinner we came back to listen to more.

They called for requests and I asked for both a drum and a sax solo. That was all it took. Over the next thirteen days we became good friends with this motley crew. Most were young enough to be our grandkids, or at least kids. But they were all talented, interesting and fun to be around. We tried to follow them as often as possible.

Here is the line-up for the main group, #sixappeal:

• David - band leader, singer and guitarist
• Jessica - singer
• Federico - guitarist extraordinaire
• Alberto - bass quitar
• Jacob - keyboardist
• Chaz - drums 

Carnival was also testing out a horn section, both on their own as well as doing sets with #sixappeal. They were nicknamed the Hornets.

• Chris - trumpet
• Gordon - trombone
• Steven - saxophone and flute

Separate or together, they were great. You can hear a little in the clip below.

On week two, we also met Norm and Annette from Baltimore. Also a late in life marriage, these two lit up the dance floor. They out-danced us every night! We hope to meet up with them again when we are in Maryland. Wonderful folks. Here is a little sample.



Stu enjoyed his diving, as always, but a few things of note. In Roatan he dived with Chaz from the band and they had a blast. In Grand Cayman, he dived the wreck of the USS Kittiwake, something he would definitely do again. He also met a young couple from Deland, FL on the dives and we hope to connect with them next winter, maybe do some local dives with them. Oh, if anyone is interested in dive videos, contact Stu and he will send you some footage. ;)

One last bonus from the cruise(s) - I now have the plot and characters for the third novella in the Lei Crime Kindle World. Readers are loving Paradise Down, I already had the outline for Paradise Drift and now I have Paradise Dead set. I hope to have them by the end of the year. Oh, by the way, Paradise Down is NUMBER ONE on the Amazon Hot New Release list for Kindle World mysteries! If you haven't read it, maybe you should! ;)

As always, see all our photos in our SmugMug album.

Ciao for now!