How My Love of Cruising Led to Cruisy Susy

I have always loved cruising, but not only for the ports or the fact that someone else makes dinner. I love the ship itself.

A cruise ship is a small floating world. The passengers arrive carrying their own expectations, habits, and family stories. The crew members come from many countries and somehow keep this enormous place moving, fed, entertained, and pointed in the right direction.

The more time I spent cruising, the more I noticed the details. There are people who know the daily schedule better than the cruise director. There are passengers who claim the same chair every morning. Crew members remember names, drinks, birthdays, and stories from earlier sailings. Somewhere, someone is always lost even though the elevators contain maps.

The Ship Became a Setting

Those details stayed with me. Eventually I began wondering what ship life would look like through the eyes of a child who did not simply visit a cruise ship but called one home.

That idea became Cruisy Susy, a middle-grade series about eleven-year-old Susy Sailor. Her father is the captain of the SS Funshine, her mother serves as the ship’s “Ship Mom,” and Susy is learning that living at sea is exciting, complicated, funny, and occasionally embarrassing.

Inspired by Ship Life, Not One Particular Ship

The SS Funshine is fictional, and so are its characters. But the feeling of the ship comes from years of watching how cruises actually work.

I notice the crew members who quietly solve problems, the regular guests who become part of the ship’s rhythm, the activities that bring complete strangers together, and the small moments passengers might miss if they only hurry from one event to the next.

Those observations helped create everyone from the cruise director and entertainment staff to the bartenders, photographers, engineers, medical team, and guests who return often enough to feel almost like residents.

Travel Gives Us Stories

The books are adventures, but they are also about belonging, friendship, curiosity, and learning to see the people behind the uniforms and name tags.

Cruising gave me the setting, the details, and plenty of humor. Susy gave me a way to turn all of it into stories for young readers. Now, every time I step onto a ship, part of me is vacationing and another part is quietly taking notes. The Laptop Lady is rarely completely off duty.