The Wait is Over! My Biggest Project Yet – Revealed!

I’ve been working on a project for the last two years, and it is finally time to share it with you.

I am so excited but this journey hasn’t been easy at all. There were plenty of people that told me that this wouldn’t work – but their reasons were just crazy to me – so I’ve done it anyway.

I launched my YouTube channel way back in 2017 and in 2021 I met a man called Jerome onboard the Queen Mary 2.

Jerome is an author who was onboard doing some research about cruising. He’s worked on lots of interesting projects.

He suggested to me way back in 2021, that we could think about creating cruise books around my mascot, Captain Hudson.

At the time, I just dismissed it and thought “sure that would be nice” – but I had no idea if anybody would be interested in the Captain Hudson idea.

At this point, Captain Hudson was just a logo and a nickname for my real cat, Hudson, who used to join us on the live streams I do on my channel. 

The Captain Hudson idea never left my mind though. I was curious but wanted a way to see if other people would love Captain Hudson as much as I do.

I was listening to a podcast about a charity called Mercy Ships when an idea hit me. We could make toys of Captain Hudson and donate all the profits from these toys to charity.

In total, so far, we’ve raised over £104K for Mercy Ships – and we have no plans to stop anytime soon. The money created from these toys will always benefit a charity of some sort. 

I was absolutely blown away by the fact that so many people loved Captain Hudson as much as me.

Seeing everybody take these toys on their cruises, giving Hudson adventures and sending me pictures and drawings of him opened my eyes to how much more Captain Hudson could be. 

He was already having these experiences it made sense – to me anyway – to write them down. I knew absolutely nothing about books, nothing at all, but I remembered Jerome and his crazy idea that he had had years ago.

Jerome is the kind of person who takes and runs with an idea. He thought that it was a great idea. Jerome loves Captain Hudson as much as me and it felt as though he understood him.

I didn’t want to trust anybody with the mascot so many of us had grown to know and love, but I knew that Jerome would make sure Captain Hudson was always kind and smart, funny too. 

I took the idea to multiple people in the publishing industry. I was told that “we’re not convinced about the crossover between kids and cruising, we don’t think it would work”

I was given the chance to pitch the ideas if I wanted to, but I was told it would be very difficult to convince publishers that there’s a market for something like this. They just weren’t sure that kids were interested in cruises.

It was very tempting to show them the statistics – that over 6 million under 18s cruise a year. There is also the fact that adults can also read the books we were planning to make – but it felt like a lost cause, and honestly, it was pretty depressing. 

They also said it would take well over a year to get the first book launched and I thought “No way!”

I live in the internet world I want things done soon. We had so many ideas and wanted a way to share them with the world. 

The worst part was that the publishers also said they might want to change Captain Hudson in some way!

Maybe they would make him a dog or change his name to Bertie, I had no idea but knew I didn’t want to take the risk. That was the final straw so we decided to go it alone. 

Jerome and I have spent the last couple of years working on the book series, travelling to see each other to share ideas and to write the books.

Jerome would come down to the seaside to see me, I’d go up to his office, and we’d take Captain Hudson out too.

I honestly had no idea how much goes into writing books, but luckily, Jerome had all the technical knowledge, and I had the crazy, crazy ideas.

The first book is the origin story about how a cat called Hudson became captain of a cruise ship. A cruise ship that is entirely staffed by different animals and where children are the only guests.

They of course get up to all sorts of interesting things and Captain Hudson is always there to make sure everybody has a great cruise. The second book is about his adventures in Alaska and the third is a guide to cruising for kids. 

My hope is that if you or your kids have a cruise coming up, Captain Hudson’s adventures will get you excited for the trip.

If your kids have never cruised before I hope it’ll be a good tool to prepare them, although real cruise ships aren’t staffed by animals of course. Usually humans!

Maybe one day, Captain Hudson will be there for kids to meet on cruise ships. Maybe the kids’ clubs could be on Captain Hudson’s ship… I’m getting ahead of myself here, of course, but I love the whole thing so much. 

We decided on paper to make the books for people eight and older because books are meant to have an age range, or so I’m told. I say eight and older because even if you are an adult, I think these are fantastic, I’ve read them so many times and they still make me laugh.

People younger than eight can read them too of course, they might just need some help with some of the words. The real Hudson is eleven but he still can’t read the books, I can read them to him though, and he has very much been involved in the process. 

When we had the first drafts of the stories put together our next task was finding an illustrator. In total, I hired 32 people to create our Captain Hudson before we found the one that we thought was perfect. 

Lots of the drawings made Hudson look a little bit sad and pathetic.

Captain Hudson is a kitten in the first book, but even still, he is like a superhero. He’s cool and calm and always kind. He’s definitely not scary or sad like some of the pictures make him look. 

After about a million rounds of editing and squashing what Jerome likes to call “book virms” we are ready to publish these books ourselves.

We’re taking a risk here, but we think it’s worth it and hope you’ll agree! 

By the time you see this, at least three of the books will be ready and perhaps more. We have books planned about the Caribbean, Norway, a Christmas book, and more. I hope that Captain Hudson will bring you as much joy as he brings me. 

Head to EmmaCruises.com/books to get your copies – or just search “Captain Hudson” on Amazon. 

The idea for creating Hudson books came when I met Jerome onboard Queen Mary 2. He was researching to write another book at the time.

Queen Mary 2 is a wonderful ship, the last Ocean Liner in service. She belongs to Cunard, one of the most formal cruise lines – if not the MOST formal – cruiseline around.

Find out what I thought of the ship and the strict dress codes here:

Before You Go

Ocean Liners have a very different design and purpose than cruise ships. Find out more about that here:

Ocean Liners, They Still Exist: Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Find out about the six cruise rules you should never break here:

6 Cruise Rules You Should Never Ever Break!