Set Sail for a Romantic Read with Drama on Deck

If you’re stuck in the winter doldrums and are looking for an escape, take a cruise to exotic ports of call without leaving the comfort of your couch with a new book that also spills behind-the-scenes tea on the cruise industry and serves up a boatload of romance, drama and fun.

Drama on Deck is the debut novel from artist and author Brian Smith, writing under the pen name B. Joseph Smithson. Using his own 10-year experience in the cruise industry, he tells the tale of Breanne (Bree) Bradley, who embarks on a career in the cruise industry, working for the on-board art gallery. While learning the ropes, she encounters a diverse cast of characters, from sexy officers to bitchy bosses, each with their own hidden agendas and secrets.

The book reveals secrets of the cruise industry as well, from crew parties, bizarre ship rules, and dating for benefits. And if you’re a romance fan, this crew gives The Love Boat a run for its money. Drama on Deck is a refreshing read, as the on-board romances include one between Bree’s BFF, the handsome Bradley “Smitty” Smith and the ship’s star entertainer Dan Holiday. 

We had the chance to speak with Brian about the inspiration behind the story, the trials of being a first-time author and lots more in our exclusive interview.

 How did you get the idea to write the book? 

It basically came from all my real-life experience. When I first moved to LA, it was during the first writer’s strike and the recession. It was such a great time to graduate college in 2007 (laughs). So, I said I was going to do ships for a year and let the economy kind of bounce back and then I just ended up enjoying it so much that I did it for 10 years.

When I finally did retire, and in between breaks and contracts, I’d be telling stories and, of course, my parents were always like asking me about it and telling me “You have to write these down. This is craziness. What happens on there?” And so, last year it was my new year’s resolution to finally sit down and start writing it.

It’s my first book, so I wasn’t really sure exactly how to start it so I kind of just wrote a timeline of all the memories, the fun stuff, the crazy stuff and the sad stuff and then it just kind of evolved from there.

One of the reasons I did write the book is to peel the curtain back and show the fun part of it, you know, the crew parties and the costume parties and the drama between the crew, but then also like the harder part of it where, you know, there isn’t a whole lot of HR. There’s not a whole lot of safety nets. It’s kind of a really sink or swim mentality. And then there’s the mental health side of it. There’s a lot of heartbreak, especially because relationships do develop, they go from like zero to a hundred really quick, because you are just with these people all the time, and it is almost like a fantasy world. You’re in these exotic locations day after day, and it can get almost like a daydream, and then all of a sudden it just ends. The contract’s over and it’s back to reality, whatever your reality is.

Were you the inspiration for Smitty? 

Yeah, that’s me…I mean, all the characters have a touch of me. I’m definitely sprinkled into the four main characters. Smitty and Bree are kind of like early career me and with (the bosses) Georgette and Theobald, you know, in some sense Theobald…if there is a villain, I guess. he’s it. So, there are nuggets of him that were me as well. I mean, I intimidated some people, that’s for sure.

When you become a manager, the head of department, there’s this weird…I don’t want it to call it a divide but there’s like this boundary that you have to put in place that wasn’t there before. You can’t be seen in crew bar as much because if you are, you’re not like taken as seriously as the department head, so you kind of do have to have that boss mentality.

But for the most part, I think Smitty is the attitude I tried to keep through my whole 10 years of having fun and trying to be friends with everybody. And I certainly did date Dan Holiday, so all of that definitely happened. Bree and Smitty are, I guess, the truest parts of me from my 10 years.

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What genre would you classify the book as? It’s a romance novel, it’s a travel book and it’s got LGBTQ+ representation through the relationship between Dan and Smitty. Where does it go on the shelf?

No, that was one of the big things me and the publicist talked about, because I asked him the same question, and I was like, sure, there’s some romance in there, there’s travel in there, there’s LGBTQ things, I mean, I know the main relationship is a straight relationship, but, you know, you’ve got Smitty in there with his boyfriend and everything, but he basically said that romance is a more popular genre so that’s sort of what we are focusing on putting it.

I mean, there’s overall romance, but then it goes into LGBTQ romance and like fictional or contemporary romance or like there’s like 20 different categories under romance, so it’s basically contemporary fiction and young adults romance is kind of where we’re staying but, yes, there is LGBTQ in there.

In the second one, there will definitely be more about Smitty with his relationship and everything. It will be more prominent because that relationship did end very tumultuously and blow up in my face. We indeed did start dating on Valentine’s Day and broke up on Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot of drama there. Since it was my first book, I didn’t want to get up on too many tangents with the characters.

But, I think now that they’re sort of established in the first book, if I do the second one, I will focus more on Smitty. I’ve got a whole bigger storyline for Georgette as well. I mean, the goal, which I would love, is to get it picked up as a TV show like The White Lotus. Season three just started, it’s amazing, but you know, the hotel’s the same, so the ship could stay the same, but it could be in different places. Book one was Hawaii, so season one could be Hawaii. Book two is probably going to be the Mediterranean then book three could be wherever else. So, in that sense, I think it lends itself well. And people love Below Deck on Bravo. They had that show Dr. Odyssey with Joshua Jackson and the whole cruise ship aspect got people interested – cruising is such a huge industry.

If they made a series out of your book, who would you see playing the different characters?

I don’t know, I kind of almost picture like an Anna Kendrick for Bree, somebody in that vein. Smitty, I mean if I didn’t play him, I’m an actor as well. I usually do more background work, but if I got the opportunity, I would totally play him. Or if not, I could picture like an Andrew Rannells, somebody like that, playing Smitty. 

And I don’t know, for Theobald I’d have to give that some thought, but definitely somebody that has that intimidating factor at first, but then once you peel the layers back he’s definitely a…I don’t want to say troubled person but definitely has issues, as you can see, that unfold in the book. That was the one thing, I didn’t want to villainize him too much, so the whole ending of the book was all fiction. That never happened but I was trying to figure a way that villainized him enough and gave Bree’s character the ending that it did. I didn’t want to make the readers hate him too much, because if I do write another one, he is going to come back.

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What were you doing before you got involved in writing? 

Well, when I first moved to LA, I graduated in production design. I started in the theater department and then they opened production design a little over halfway through my four years. So, I graduated in production design and moved out to LA. I got an internship with Ridley Scott’s company and I thought that was going to be my “in” to design and Hollywood and being on sets – and it just really wasn’t, I mean, they hired me as an intern to go get lunch and coffee. Then they did hire me on, but it was an accounting thing. I’m an artist, math is not my strong suit, so it just didn’t work out.

I’ve always been in art. I paint, I sell my paintings. I was that kid with the Disney movies coming out in the 80s, putting the tracing paper up to the TV screen and tracing them. So, when I got the cruise ship gig selling arts, it was interesting because I had always been into art and, painting and sketching and everything, but I’d never tried to sell art and we’ve been in like the business marketing side of it.

That was a whole new world and going through the sales trainings in Miami, like she does in the book, was very intimidating. I’m glad I did it because public speaking is fine with me now, which is I think a really good gift. It’s like the number one fear in the world.  Death second, which I think is crazy.  So, it gave me a lot of things I never thought I would be doing. I was such a shy kid. My mom really wanted me to be in drama classes when I was much younger and I was so shy, I hated it. When I told her I was going to be up on stage doing shows at our art auctions, she just were like, what? It was good. It definitely gives you a lot of confidence and it gives you a tough skin – because ship life definitely isn’t for everybody. There’s definitely a high turnover in terms of whether people can do the job or not, whether they’re meeting their sales goals or just mentally, you know, if they have a lot of ties, a lot of family on land, then ship life definitely really isn’t  for that type of personality because it does get lonely and that’s why so many ship relationships do happen, because people are just lonely, and  that’s when you start getting into attachments, but also you’re with a ship family of people that are from all over the world. Your ship relationships very rarely translate into a real-life land relationship. It does happen, but you really have to make a commitment to somebody. It’s a lot of work. 

What was the coolest thing that happened while you were working in the cruise industry? 

The coolest thing? Well, I mean, traveling for free was really cool and great. That’s kind of why I did it for so long. But I mean, I think the relationships you build is interesting. Living in LA, we’re all obsessed with ourselves and the industry, and it’s really hard to make genuine friends here, so going into a completely different environment, like ships and meeting your ship family was completely different for me.

My second contract was on a Holland America ship and usually contracts are about six months. People are usually burned out by them and want to take a month or so off…but that crew was so great, I ended up extending. I did nine months on that same ship because everybody was so fun and we were a family and the itinerary kept changing. We started in Hawaii, went over to Tahiti, and then we ended up in Norway at the end of the nine months. Waking up in a different port every day is It’s pretty cool, especially when you have a porthole and you wake up and it’s a different view every day like that never got old.

That was also another thing I sort of touched on it in the book. I’m debating whether I’m going to do a second one, but if I do, I definitely want to touch on it more. It’s kind of the Hunger Games for the best cabins by dating people. You’re attracted to them but also it’s like a bond where they have a really nice cabin. Someone would walk into the crew bar and it was like, “Oh, that person’s single and they’re on deck whatever. They’ve got a porthole and they’ve got a balcony.” That was one of the most bizarre things when I first came on the ships. And then when I started dating the main singer, he had a huge cabin compared to mine, so I was like, oh, okay, I totally get this now. 

Do you have other stories that you can write, like, you know, a series of books?

Yeah, definitely. Now that it’s all written and published and everything, a lot of my friends read a chunk of it on a plane or whatever, and they haven’t finished it yet so they’re like, Oh, is this coming up? Or remember when this happens? And I think that I should have put that in. I should have put this in. I have another whole timeline of things. This whole book is set in Hawaii and I alluded that Smitty wants to go to the Mediterranean next which is good, that’s kind of where they ended up positioning me for a long time because I did really well in the Mediterranean market, so there’s a whole ton of stories from there, Italy, France and Portugal, so I definitely want to write another one.

Pick up Drama on Deck wherever you get your books. Follow the book and Brian Smith on Instagram.