Cruise Away from…Everything {#Author Guest Post: Christi Barth}

It always confused me when department stores showcased bathing suits in January.  I grew up in Los Angeles, but we didn’t use our fully heated pool in the middle of winter.  My mom explained that, to the rest of the country, winter is cruise season.  It didn’t compute.  Why would anyone lucky enough to have snow in the winter want to leave it behind for palm trees and sun?

After a few years in Minneapolis and Chicago, I began to understand.  It wasn’t about ignoring winter, merely escaping it for a week.  I still disagreed, because I relish all four seasons.  Baltimore just had its first snow (a mere smattering) this week, and I’m craving more.  When I celebrated a milestone birthday and took my last cruise (see the pretty ship to the right?  Meet the Celebrity Solstice, which is everything you’d ever want in a cruise ship, and then some), we went in January to avoid hurricane season.  It felt weird to shed my coat and squeeze into a bikini three days into the new year.

But as I read travel spotlights about cruise season in every magazine and newspaper, is it just the promise of warmer climes which lures people on cruises?  Heck, no!  A cruise is an escapist fantasy come to life.  The minute you step foot on board, you leave your troubles, your deadlines, your real life behind, even in today’s uber-connected world (especially when using the ship’s internet costs $1/minute).  It’s sort of like entering a very happy bubble for seven days.

In the middle of the ocean, surrounded by thousands of miles of water and hundreds of people you 1) don’t know and 2) won’t ever see again, you can be anyone.  Cautious people who won’t even take the stairs two at a time find themselves swimming with sting rays.  You don’t have to be the responsible mom, or the multi-tasker extraordinaire.  No expectations, no accountability, and no diet!  The breakfast buffet had 3 different types of eggs benedict every single day.  So yummy.  Above all else – even if you weren’t raised on The Love Boat like me – a cruise is romantic.

Books are every bit as much an escape.  More so, because they don’t cost thousands of dollars and require a passport!  So let me take you on a vicarious trip to the Caribbean.  In my book Cruising Toward Love, being cooped up on a cruise ship (no matter how lavish) for a week forces two people to escape their past and rediscover their love for each other.  Yes, they kiss on deck, and get snuggly in a hot tub and I can’t even mention the things they do on their balcony!  Get your feet wet with this blurb:Warm, salty breezes, twinkling stars, the steady beat of calypso drums and free flowing rum punch all put you in a sexy frame of mind.  Every physicality is sensuous: the silky sand beneath your toes, the warm kiss of the sun sizzling the coconut scented sunscreen on your skin, even the air touching body parts that have been hidden under wool and fleece since Halloween.  Ooh, and they put chocolates on your pillow every night!  Love feels possible, attainable.  You can take a reckless shot, aim Cupid’s arrow at someone out of your league, because you’ve got nothing to lose in this floating fantasy world.

Can an unexplained breakup and ten years of heartache be cured by the romance – and endless buffets – of a tropical cruise?  When her sister is left at the altar, small town librarian Zoe Balis jumps at the chance to take the bride’s unused ticket for the honeymoon cruise.  But she didn’t count on sharing a cabin with the man who broke her heart ten years ago!

Army medic Nate Hyatt never told Zoe goodbye when he enlisted – or the real reason why he dumped her on prom night after a year as high school sweethearts.  And he never stopped dreaming about the girl he left behind.  Could this voyage be his chance to fix the worst mistake he ever made?  After all, a Caribbean cruise should be romantic… if he can convince her to move past ten years of bitterness and hurt.

Once aboard the luxury liner, Zoe befriends a bored Internet mogul with more heart than tact.  Nate vents his problems to a ship’s photographer battling PTSD.  The four team up on an island hopping treasure hunt.  The stakes grow higher with each of Zoe’s mysterious brushes with death.  They race to discover why she’s a target and who’s behind it, while still competing in the treasure hunt. Zoe’s never gotten over her first love, and is tempted to let Nate back into her life.  But she already lost him once.  She’s not willing to risk loving a man whose career keeps him in a combat zone.  Can Nate breach her defenses and suture her broken heart?  Grab a deck chair and see if they survive the stormy relationship seas as they cruise toward love!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Christi Barth spent years performing in musicals, singing about love and giving people a happy ending in every performance.  Then as a wedding planner she spent every day immersed in romance.  Now she writes it!  Cruising Toward Love is her third book.  While the cruise depicted in this book is wholly fictional, she does love to float around the Caribbean, eating and drinking and relaxing…while safely shaded under a huge hat and wearing SPF 50.  Christi lives in Maryland with the absolutely best husband in the world (sorry ladies, but it’s true!).