Welcome Aboard the QM2!

The Queen Mary 2 doesn’t like to be called a cruise ship. Rather, she is an ocean liner,  the world’s only such vessel offering transatlantic crossings. She is known for her high-quality materials, using 40% more steel than a standard cruise ship. Four stabilizing fins can reduce roll by 90%. She has served as the flagship of the Cunard Line since April 2004, and as of 2025, is the only active, purpose-built ocean liner still in service. Queen Mary 2 sails regular transatlantic crossings between Southampton and New York City, and on August 27 of this year I climbed aboard for one.

Rebirth Your Book

How did this come about? I was doomscrolling Facebook one day when three words in a post spoke to me: “Rebirth Your Book.” I started writing a novel during Covid, but now it sat in a box in my closet, 30,000 words of a 60,000 cozy mystery, mired in the muddy middle. I’d been keeping busy for the last two years revising my two cookbooks for a contemporary audience, but the cozy was still in my mind. I loved writing the beginning, developing characters and setting the stage for the murder and investigation. Even now, during the night when something disturbed my sleep (usually my aging bladder), I would lie awake for hours imagining the directions the plot could go. But on the few occasions when I actually pulled out the manuscript and tried to write the next chapter, I felt estranged from the characters, apathetic about the plot.

My story — my book — needed a rebirth.  I needed a rebirth.

According to the Facebook post, the Rebirth Your Book retreat would feature Allison K Williams, promising that she would bring “deep understanding of dramatic structure, sensitivity to voice and theme, technical expertise, and contagious enthusiasm for your work.” The website described these retreats as focusing on “whole-book transformation: from your head to the page, from pile of material to draft, or from draft to finished manuscript,” and promised “substantial editorial feedback and individual coaching.” I’d never heard of Allison, but I was seriously interested.

Writing Retreat Afloat

But wait, there’s more.  This particular Rebirth Your Book retreat would be held on the Queen Mary 2, leaving from Southampton, a port city in Hampshire, southeastern England, and crossing the Atlantic Ocean to New York. And there would be three other instructors on board with us, Jane Friedman, whose workshops about the business of writing I had attended in the past, Dinty W. Moore, whose essays on Brevity I had been reading for years, and an agent who would, for an extra fee, comment on our first pages and/or pitches.

My parents and I immigrated to the US in 1949 on the Queen Elizabeth, the original Queen Mary’s sister ship. I had always wanted to see the New York harbor and the Statue of  Liberty from the ocean the way my parents had, and this voyage would give me that chance.

There was one more reason this retreat appealed to me; I was born in the UK, and had visited my birthplace, Bradford, Yorkshire many times, but not since Covid. In 1995 I had taught early childhood students at Bradford College, and during that term I made several friends whom I now hadn’t seen in donkey’s years. This would be a great way to get myself to England and go on a writing retreat all for the same plane fare. I was hooked, and pressed “Register.”

Fast forward to August and I am speeding down the A34 from Thame in the back of a black limousine on my way to Southampton.  I found my room at the Ibis Hotel, walked a short distance to a restaurant, then took a hot bath and settled down for the night.  A short taxi ride the next day took me to the embarkation terminal where, after offering my passport for inspection, I was able to leave my luggage and walk up the gangway unencumbered.  The next time I saw my bags they were inside the cabin I would be sharing with another retreat participant. What great service! After a week traveling down England, I was seriously over hauling my baggage from one place to another.

View from our balcony on Day 2

Laurianne and I met in our stateroom. We were many years apart in age, and held different cultural views, but we rubbed along just fine. The first few days at sea were bouncy, as the edge of a hurricane stirred up the ocean surrounding us, and walking down long corridors from our stateroom to meals and to our classroom was a real challenge. Within a couple of days, however, we found our sea legs and settled in to our routine of rising early, eating breakfast in one of the buffet restaurants, and walking most of the length of the ship to our classroom.

And She is a She . . .

One theory is superstition. In ancient maritime lore, the ocean was a wild, unpredictable force, and early sailors, mostly men, leaned into feminine personification to both respect and appease it. According to the Imperial War Museum’s website, this tradition expanded to the idea of a female figure such as a mother or goddess guiding and protecting a ship and crew. By the 19th century, female figureheads started showing up on ship bows and gradually became sailors’ staple mascots.

There was also a sentimental layer to giving ships female names. Sailors often spent months (or even years) away from home, so they named their ships after wives, mothers, lovers — whoever they missed most. And one final theory has to do with grammar: Many European languages, including French, Spanish, and German, assign gender to nouns, and ships are often feminine by default. Latin, for instance, uses navis, a feminine noun, for ship.

So, pick your theory.  As far as I am concerned, the QM2 is a fine old lady.

She offered most of the usual cruise amenities  — a health spa, swimming pools, bars, many tables covered with jigsaw puzzles and board games, evening shows — but most of us stuck to attending classes and using whatever time we could find to work on our writing projects.

The classes were well organized and relevant no matter what stage of writing or publishing we were in. Our four instructors had different styles and very different focuses, and they took turns teaching 90 minute sessions. I looked forward to each session and took voluminous notes.

However, at dinner time we left our creative pursuits behind and put on our fancy clothes to eat at the Britannia Restaurant, which had a dress code. According to one reviewer: “On board the Queen Mary 2, guests live and dine exquisitely. Main courses based on fish, poultry or various types of meat are always perfect. The portions are sizable and the desserts are wonderful. Vegetarian options complete the menu. A select but not cheap range of wines accompanies the dishes. Water is served with meals. The service is exemplary.”

In what seemed like no time at all, we were on deck before sunrise to watch our ship approach the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. It was an emotional time for most of us, not just me. After breakfast it was time to disembark for a bus tour of select New York bookstores and lunch with agents as part of an add-on Literary New York tour. By that evening, we had dispersed to airports, freeways, and the pursuit of normal life. But changed, somehow, forever.

And what about my cozy mystery?  It’s back on my desk, back in my thoughts, and back on my laptop.  The Rebirth Your Book writing retreat did as it promised, and I’m back to work on the second half of the book.

Marlene Anne Bumgarner writes primarily about food, family, and traditions. Her 2020 memoir, Back to the Land in Silicon Valley, is about raising children, animals, and vegetables on a rural plot of land in the 1970s.   Organic Cooking for (not-so-organic) Families will be out soon, and she’s working on an update to The Book of Whole Grains while also crafting a cozy mystery, Death on a Sunny Afternoon – a Harriet Palmer Mystery.