Diane Rapp's Blog: She's a Mystery and Science Fiction Writer! - Posts Tagged "cruising"
High Seas Mystery Writer
When my daughter, Laura got tired of working as a cruise ship purser, she submitted eleven proposal packets to publishers and got a contract. Since I love to write, Laura and I decided to write the book together. We scheduled three months for the research trip.
It sounded like a vacation, sipping cocktails on the veranda each evening after gathering details for the book. Wrong! We visited eleven islands and spent three days on each, running ourselves into the ground. Writing a factual guidebook became really hard work.
Don’t get me wrong; I loved the scent of exotic flowers, the sounds of string bands playing Christmas carols, and the feel of gentle ocean breezes on my sunburned skin (I am a redhead). I road a community taxi across St. Martin and tried to decipher the patois spoken by locals. My daughter and I floated over coral reefs filled with neon-colored tropical fish and felt "champagne bubbles" from hot springs in the ocean. We ate weird and wonderful cuisine. Unfortunately, we couldn't properly convey the ambiance of the islands in a factual guide book.
After the guidebook was published, Laura began writing a mystery novel set in the Caribbean. She hated writing fiction and gave the book idea to me.
Writing a mystery novel takes planning, especially when I wanted the heroine, Kayla, to visit real tourist attractions in the Caribbean. I invented a cruise ship company and a complex docking schedule. Kayla explores the islands while she tries to solve the murder of her philandering ex-boyfriend. She also falls in love again.
MURDER CARIBBEAN-STYLE is the first book in a High Seas Mystery series. It might be fun for cruise ship passengers to read this book while visiting the most popular islands that cruise ships visit. Take a voyage with Kayla and her friends and solve a mystery along the way.
It sounded like a vacation, sipping cocktails on the veranda each evening after gathering details for the book. Wrong! We visited eleven islands and spent three days on each, running ourselves into the ground. Writing a factual guidebook became really hard work.
Don’t get me wrong; I loved the scent of exotic flowers, the sounds of string bands playing Christmas carols, and the feel of gentle ocean breezes on my sunburned skin (I am a redhead). I road a community taxi across St. Martin and tried to decipher the patois spoken by locals. My daughter and I floated over coral reefs filled with neon-colored tropical fish and felt "champagne bubbles" from hot springs in the ocean. We ate weird and wonderful cuisine. Unfortunately, we couldn't properly convey the ambiance of the islands in a factual guide book.
After the guidebook was published, Laura began writing a mystery novel set in the Caribbean. She hated writing fiction and gave the book idea to me.
Writing a mystery novel takes planning, especially when I wanted the heroine, Kayla, to visit real tourist attractions in the Caribbean. I invented a cruise ship company and a complex docking schedule. Kayla explores the islands while she tries to solve the murder of her philandering ex-boyfriend. She also falls in love again.
MURDER CARIBBEAN-STYLE is the first book in a High Seas Mystery series. It might be fun for cruise ship passengers to read this book while visiting the most popular islands that cruise ships visit. Take a voyage with Kayla and her friends and solve a mystery along the way.
She's a Mystery and Science Fiction Writer!
You've heard of split personalities, well, Diane Rapp spends part of her time sailing the high seas to solve mysteries. When she feels seasick, she travels to the planet Drako to check in with her fri
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