Pick up a FREE book today!
Today
Feb 3 Cruise Quarters - A novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships will be
free at Amazon.com. It is the # 1 cruise ship and the #1 casino novel at
the Kindle store. It was chosen as 'Read of the Week' at Tripatini.com.
The
Review Girl blog raves, "Cruise Quarters is an amazing travel novel
which is as much about romance as it is about travel (the novel is based
on their real-life love story)."
Please
help us celebrate the anniversary of the day we met by downloading a
copy. I hope you have as much fun reading it as we did writing it. Cara
and Ray Bertoia
The link to our book at Amazon is:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004NIFUUU United States
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004NIFUUU United Kingdom
Product Description
Cruise
Quarters - A novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships is the # 1 cruise
ship and the #1 casino novel at the Kindle store. It was chosen as 'Read
of the Week' at Tripatini.com.
The
Review Girl blog raves, "Cruise Quarters is an amazing travel novel
which is as much about romance as it is about travel (the novel is based
on their real-life love story)."
It
is a fun, fast paced tale of working in the casino aboard a Regal
Cruises cruise-ship. It is based on a true story and was written by
authors who have decades of experience working on luxury cruise ships
and in casinos across the globe. The crew of the Regal Star resemble a
mini United Nations, hiring people from all over the world. But unlike
the UN, Regal Cruise's employees present a united front above decks as
they attend to their passenger's every needs. Sarah Seldon is a croupier
on the luxury liner. After many unhappy endings, and burnt out on
shipboard romance, she is determined to forget about men and concentrate
on becoming a casino manager. On land women face a dearth of GOOD men
but on a ship giving up men would take willpower. The mostly male crew
exist to serve her every need. Handsome Italian waiters bring her food,
the Filipino steward cleans her room, English officers play poker with
her and the Welsh plumber fixes her sink. She leads a cushy life,
sleeping 'til noon , eating gourmet food, and the topper - she gets to
wake up in beautiful new place everyday. All because she works in a
casino, a place so bad it has SIN in the middle. Book a cruise and
travel with Sarah and the crew as they work, play, feast, and fall in
and out of love, all while the ship sails around the globe, stopping at
exotic ports of call. Along the way, from Venice to Barcelona sight-see
in the Med, shop in St. Martin , take an eco-cruise down the Amazon, and
feast in Glasgow . Let the crew tell you their own stories as they sit
in the hallway in the wee hours of the morning. While the ship travels
to new destinations, tired and tipsy they share tales of love and
betrayal. Excerpt from Chapter One: When people sat down at Sarah
Seldon’s blackjack game, they always wanted to talk about The
Book. “Should I double down? Should I hit? Dealer, I know you’re a
gambler; you could let me win if you wanted to. What does the book say?”
She had never read this book, this mythical Bible for gamblers. The
truth is there are 2256 books, each teaching its own foolproof winning
system. But Sarah had been in the casino business long enough to think
with a gambler’s mind. Gamblers knew they could follow all the rules of
basic strategy, utilize money management and still lose if they weren’t
dealt the right cards. The allure and curse of gambling was that there
were no sure things. In the end it all came down to luck; gamblers
prayed that Lady Luck would show up and that she would stick around for
awhile. On that particular day, Sarah perched on a chair to get a better
view through her salt-stained porthole onto the dock, filled with
people busying themselves with the activities necessary to supply a huge
cruise ship. Port activities in Hong Kong
demonstrated a model of modern efficiency. Even though the ship had
been docked for under an hour, already the crew had begun to perform the
necessary safety checks. At the same time operators steered forklifts,
moving wooden pallets filled with provisions into the hold. Like a
patient hooked up to life support, long, fat hoses attached to the side
of the ship fed water and gas into tanks, providing nutrients for the
upcoming voyage. You can find out more about Cara and Ray at Author
Central and please check out their blog: casinosandcruiseships.blogspot.com
About the Author
Growing
up in a straight laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with
casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North
Carolina , I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake
Tahoe . My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place
so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I succumbed to pressure
from the family and returned east to take a high-tech job in Boston . I
also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. I wanted to write
the first realistic novel about casino life from the perspective of an
experienced table games dealer. I am always amazed that normal and
sometimes quite intelligent players become absolutely clueless in the
casino. They repeat superstitious nonsense and no amount of logic can
change their position. On a whim I submitted an article to The
Boston Tab, about trying to find a rent control apartment. To my
amazement they published it and I even received my first piece of fan
mail. Spurred on by that success, the next week, after a few glasses of
wine at lunch, I called the editor of the Brighton Allston Journal and
told him I should write a humor column. While in Boston I was offered
the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. Jumping at the
chance, I spent the next five years circling the globe. Sometimes life
exceeds your dreams. I was awed by the wonders of Venice, the fjords of
Norway, and the Northern Lights in Leningrad but on the downside I also
watched glaciers melt at an alarming rate in Alaska, snorkeled to coral
reefs killed by pollution in the Caribbean, and witnessed the
devastation as the Amazon burned. It was the best education I could ever
have had. Taking advantage of every opportunity to be a tour guide, I
soaked in as much history as I could. I returned from
ships with a very special souvenir, my husband Ray. Besides being a
handsome Glaswegian, he is my co-author. We also produced a movie on
walking the 500-mile "Camino De Santiago," in Spain . The Desert Woman
and the Desert Sun both featured stories about our walk. When we were
researching the Camino we could never find a good practical guide on the
terrain and the trail, the things a person would experience every day,
although there was plenty on the architecture and history. So seeing a
need we made a movie of our journey. It is a thrill to come home and
find orders from such diverse countries as Japan and Denmark . The
address for our movie is: www.caminovideo.com
Amazon links to Cruise Quarters:
United States: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004NIFUUU
United Kindgdom: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004NIFUUU
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004NIFUUU
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