By Marsha Volgyi 

Isn’t it interesting that when someone might ask you, “what is it like to be a crewmember?” that your response isn't easily explainable? I have been asked that question hundreds of times and in each case I hesitated because there is no one response. Even after explaining, the person might have gotten the gist, yet that interviewer still does not fully understand the unique, strange, twisted, fulfilling, and surprising work environment many of us have lived within for tens of contracts. 

Due to the nature of the mystery and inexplicableness of the answer to that question—“what is it like to be a crewmember?”—it was time to write my memories in literary form. Oddly enough, it wasn’t difficult at all. Actually, it brought back wonderful times that I truly miss. However, the writing process also brought back horrific instances which I had to relive while I typed. Could you guess what the most difficult part of writing The Crewmember was? It was how to decide what to include from my twelve-years of memories into a 250-page novel. Initially, I wrote it all as I recalled it—the good and the despicable. Yet, the forum of fiction is a medium in which I could blend together the truth and the way I wish things might have turned out—the effect became a gray area of entertaining literature. In a sense, I have divulged it all. Overall, the finished product was just how I envisioned years ago—a newbie protagonist who learns how to figure out how to survive, the sassy friends along the way, the below-deck romances, and the shenanigans that the head office and onboard officers have in common. Need I say more. 

The Crewmember is more compelling as fiction. As many of us know, not all contracts are exciting. Some contracts are the same s^it, different ship. However, the novel’s focus was to capture the experiences that I can remember vividly after over a decade. It is not often one might remember their fifteenth crewmember boyfriend or girlfriend. Yet usually we can remember their nationality and their position onboard, situations of what was my roommate’s name that drove me insane, which ship did the captain try to outrun a hurricane, and how did I make it through all those wacky contracts was just the tip of combing through those inner files. 

The Crewmember can clearly be enjoyed and understood by former crewmembers, guests who have sailed, those that are thinking about working on a cruise ship, and voyeurs who want to know the truest answer of “what is it like to be a crewmember?” Get The Crewmember and you’ll discover even more than you knew before.

The Crewmember is an e-book available at: 

EXTASYBOOKS and AMAZON

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Email: marsha.volgyi@yahoo.com

The Crewmember synopsis

Lana, a professional dancer, decides to perform on a cruise ship and encounters more than the ship’s movement.

When twenty-four-year-old Lana Kramer accepts a six-month crewmember contract to perform as a dancer on a cruise ship, the experience is far from anything she could have imagined. The surreal vibe of being trapped between two worlds—rigid Navy-type crewmember rules on the one hand, dancing in sparkling costumes beneath bright lights on the other—causes confusion for Lana. From below-decks affairs to treacherous shipboard politics and the occasional rough seas, Lana soon discovers cruise life is not for the faint of heart. Gradually it becomes clear that as one of the few female crewmembers, all that glitters aboard a cruise ship is within her grasp—but at what cost? In this unusual environment, far from familiar territory, she discovers a hidden resourcefulness and learns to navigate this city at sea without throwing her scruples overboard. As Lana develops her own unwritten crewmember survival guide, she chooses to redefine the crew-life rules, and in the process, redefine herself.

The Crewmember Chapter 

Lana finally entered the hallway where her room was located. The narrow passage had the same distorted feel as the corridors in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Ah! Here it is Two-thousand-seven-hundred-forty-five. My floating abode for the next six months. She slipped her key card in the slot and opened the door. Her jaw dropped as she saw the tiniest room imaginable…and the position her roommate was in. 

Lana’s roommate had been bent over, holding onto the bunk bed railing while getting rammed by a massive muscled guy. Lana’s sudden arrival startled them so much they both bounced around the room like the balls in a pinball machine. 

“Relax! It’s not like I haven’t seen any of this before—except I expected it to be much bigger,” Lana said laughingly, eyeing both the tiny room and her roommate’s gentleman’s southward attachment.  

The two lovebirds didn’t seem as comfortable as Lana was with the hilarity of the situation. The guy jumped into the bathroom as her new roommate grabbed a sheet from the top bunk to cover herself. 

“If I’d known you were busy, I would have called first, but I’m lucky I even found the room in this ship’s maze. I’m Lana, by the way,” Lana said in a joking way. 

“Mind waiting outside for two minutes?”

“Sure.”

Her roommate’s visitor soon exited, never looking Lana in the eye. Once he cleared out, she dragged both pieces of her luggage into the cabin. “For the future, we should make a system of some sort, because I know you don’t wanna see me in action either,” Lana joked. 

“I’m Charlotte. I have the top bunk,” the girl blurted, not laughing along with her. “The other dancer before you was dating an officer and was never here, so I just expected the next dancer to already have a boyfriend onboard, too.”

“Oh. Well, I’m new here, so I don’t have a boyfriend yet. Come to think of it, maybe I don’t really want a boyfriend while I’m here. Maybe what I really need is to just let loose after my last disastrous relationship. But you never know—maybe I’ll meet my greatest love.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Good luck with that.” 

“Anyway, I’d love to stay longer and unpack and girl-chat, but I gotta go to the Welcome Aboard training now. Before I run, though, I gotta ask you something.”

Charlotte’s brows rose as she waited. 

“First, how do two people live in a room the size of a tuna can? And second, how do two people have sex…in a tuna can?” 

Finally Lana observed Charlotte having an emotional reaction—she laughed right on cue at the question. 

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re a dancer. You’ll figure out how it works soon enough.” 

I guess my next skill will be mastering the cruise ship Kama Sutra. How many ways can you have sex in the tiniest cabin on earth?