Hello, 2017! And hello to you, dear Writing Excuses listeners. We’ve already started our new year of episodes, which focuses on the nitty-gritty details of story structure and includes some exciting guest hosts, so check it out. Our other exciting announcement, of course, is the retreat. 2017 will be our fifth Writing Excuses Retreat, and the first that will take place in Europe:

And registration is open now 🙂

The full details are available on the registration page, but here’s a quick overview:

1. We will board in Kiel, Germany, and spend a week at sea, stopping for excursions in Copenhagen, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Tallin. If you’re flying in, the best airport is Hamburg, from which you can take a train to Kiel which is just an hour or so north. The event actually begins the day before we board, in a Kiel hotel, where we’ll register and get to know each other.

2. Prices are Double Occupancy, which means you’ll share your room with another person. If you bring your own roommate, awesome! If not, we’ll put you with another writer from our group. Spouses and significant others who want to come with you but are not writers will get a discounted rate. Children get a hugely discounted rate. Imaginary friends are FREE.

3. If you’ve never done one of our cruises before, they’re a kind of magical mix of class time, writing time, and screwing-around-in-a-cool-place time. We don’t know how it works, but it does, and you’ll love it.

4. We’ll have one or two classes a day, taught by our amazing guest instructors, as well as live Writing Excuses episodes with the hosts of the show. Brandon won’t be joining us this year, but be joined by Wes Chu, Piper Drake, Desiree Burch, John Berlyne, Aliette de Bodard, Jasper Fforde, Ken Liu, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Carsten Polzin, and more. And of course you’ll still have Mary, Dan, and Howard.

5. The classes will be taught in English, but we expect to have a lot of different languages represented, by both our students and instructors, and we will do everything we can to accommodate you.

6. Shore excursions will be scheduled through us. For each stop we’ll pick three “official” Writing Excuses excursions and announce them this Spring, so you can sign up with us for one of those and know that you’ll be with our same group of awesome writers and instructors. If you want to do an excursion that’s not one of our official picks, you can arrange it directly with the cruise.

7. This cruise has been arranged to line up with WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, August 9-13. If you want to attend WorldCon we have two options for the time between events: our travel agents can arrange for you to take a ferry from Kiel to Helsinki, where you can kill a few days in an awesome city, or you can join us for a three-day tour of some cool European castles.

8. As before, we will have a number of scholarships available. This year that number is “3.” The application process will be announced on January 15.

Q: Brandon’s not going to be there? Does he not love us anymore?

A: Brandon is already spending a few weeks in Europe this year on tour, and there was no way for him to do both. In future years, there might be other hosts who can’t make it. You’ll still get an amazing writing conference with a ton of amazing instructors and classes and experiences. Plus, as all of our alumni will tell you, the single biggest benefit of the cruise are the connections you make with the other attendees, and this promises to be one of the best years ever for that. And yes, Brandon loves you with all his heart.

Q: Europe is so expensive! Can’t you just do a local thing?

A: Local is a funny word on the Internet. Writing Excuses has a lot of European listeners, and for them every other event we’ve done has been expensive, and this is the cheap one. If you can’t afford to take a week off and fly to Europe, believe us: we understand. We can’t either, unless it’s for a conference we’re running. Consider this a once-in-a-lifetime getaway or an anniversary trip or something, and if it’s still out of reach, don’t worry: next year we’ll be back in the US again, with a cruise we can’t tell you about yet but we really think you’re going to love.

Q: I’m an introvert who doesn’t do well in big groups of people. Will I survive an event like this?

A: One Of Us! One Of Us! Honestly, most of our attendees are introverts too, including all of the hosts and most of the guest instructors. Some of us are better at faking it than others, but we know where you’re coming from, and we feel your pain. We’ll make sure to have lots of quiet little hidey-holes all over the ship where you can go when it all gets too much. It’s not called a “retreat” for nothing.

Q: You keep saying it, but will I really have time to actually write while on this cruise?

A: You will definitely have time, but it’s up to you how to use it. We give prizes every year for the Most Words Written, and last year the winner had more than 40,000. We also have a proud history of boardgame nights, dancing, karaoke, and impromptu martial arts demonstrations. Whatever you want to do with your free time, you can probably do it at this event.