Photos of Rayne's House!

For those of you who are fans of Deep Blue Secret, you might enjoy the new photos I posted on my website today. You can even catch a glimpse of Rayne's house! Some of us are probably even wishing we were there with him right now, celebrating Valentine's Day. What can I say, he's an amazing guy! A lot of exciting moments also take place there in the second book, Rogue Wave (maybe even some kisses...wink wink).

You can view the photos here or follow this link to my website which allows you to view larger images in the photo viewer.
http://christieanderson.org/playlist--photos.html

This is the tunnel which leads under Coast Hwy to Crystal Cove, the place Sadie falls off the rock and is rescued by Rayne.

Crystal Cove is the beach where Sadie and Rayne first meet!

The tide pools Sadie wanted to visit are down past the small orange umbrella at the end. There are a lot of big rocks out in the middle of the water for her to climb. (Or fall off of)

Sadie's rock, where she falls and hits her head. This was taken at low tide so the water level looks low, but during high tide the rock is surrounded by water. Don't slip! Unless you want to be rescued by a mysterious hot boy :)

This is the bench at the shuttle stop where Sadie and Rayne almost kiss!

That shuttle driver has terrible timing! Who knows if Sadie and Rayne will ever get to finish that kiss now. Boo hoo!

Rayne's house! I walked by this house every day when I stayed in Newport Beach while writing Deep Blue Secret. It became the inspiration for how I pictured Rayne's house in the story.

Can you see the quaint white door hidden behind all the bushes? A lot of magical moments are shared at this doorstep between Sadie and Rayne!

Do you wish Rayne really lived here just as much as I do? Maybe if we wait long enough, that SUV parked out front will turn into a Range Rover... ha ha

You can't see it, but this house even has a real intercom with a call button, just like Rayne's. Of course, Rayne's is more high-tech with all kinds of video surveillance and such, because he's just cool like that.

The hospital where Sadie's mom, Leena works.

Can you picture Rayne sneaking Sadie up to the hospital roof in the middle of the night?

The view from the roof of the hospital during daylight. The roof is not accessible to the public, but I have connections... tee hee hee

Another view from the hospital roof

The intersection across the street from "Inspiration Point" in Corona Del Mar, where Sadie takes Rayne so they can talk after she passes out at school.

The small grassy area at Inspiration Point. This was a really gray day. I hope Sadie brought her raincoat.

This isn't where Sadie and Rayne stopped to talk. They walked farther down the path to the lookout platform.

Looking down over the edge, you can now see the platform below where Rayne tells Sadie about her Watermark and she runs off down that path to the edge of the sand.

Here's the platform where they talked. You can see the view of the rock jetty at the end of Newport Harbor on the left and the beach where Sadie runs off alone on the right. Can't you just picture Rayne running to the edge and hopping over the rail with one easy jump?!

Poor Rayne had to run back up the ramp when he heard his car alarm. He had to chase Voss instead of following after Sadie to the beach.

Now we're way over on the opposite side of the beach, on the rock jetty. This was a much sunnier day! If you look in the bottom right corner, you will see the ramp leading down to the sand where Sadie ran down.

This was taken in the summer, so the lot is packed. But when Heather came to pick up Sadie after getting rained on, this place was practically empty.

Official Cover - Book 2!

Sorry if I'm a big dork on the video post. Tee Hee... I hope you all like the new cover for book 2 in The Water Keepers. Yay!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Memories

Many of you who own my book Deep Blue Secret, may have come across my dedication at the front of the book to my brother and sister who have passed on. I was just thinking about my family today after looking through a bunch of old photos and decided to post one of my favorite pictures of the two of them together, along with a few Christmas memories. Miss you guys!!! I hope your Christmas is glorious in Heaven this year!

"Nightmare Before Christmas"
at the Haunted Mansion

A Christmas sandwich with Grandpa

Living. Breathing. Characters.

People often ask if an author based his or her characters on real life people or on true events. For me, and I’m guessing many other writers, the answer is definitely yes…and of course, no.

Me & my sweetheart at
Disney's California Adventure last summer.

I don’t think I would ever take the characteristics of one single person and mimic them one hundred percent, probably not even eighty percent. No one enjoys a crazy ex-boyfriend running around the media, or even your hometown, shouting, “She’s purposely slandering my name out of bitter, woman vengeance!” And even worse, you could run the risk of offending someone you actually like and care about. Plus, it’s much more fun to create a new and exciting personality than it is to copy someone.

My brother and niece keepin' life fun on Halloween

It may be difficult to completely avoid your friends and family wondering in the back of their minds, “Was that person or part of the story based on me? There was that one time when I slipped while holding a goldfish and accidentally swallowed it…” I think it’s okay to let them wonder a little bit though. Writing can be tough work. We need to dig up the bits of humor and fun wherever we can find them. 


However, making up a completely new person out of thin air would be impossible, at least for me. When I write, I feel it. I feel emotions and excitement and frustration. Every single character has a piece of me inside them, whether it’s obvious or not. I love to live inside their heads and really get a sense of what is driving them forward.

Me & my BFF in High School.
She was a major social butterfly!

In Deep Blue Secret, the first book of my Water Keepers series, Sadie James is basically the lovable girl next door. I’d like to think of myself as somewhat lovable too; at least I hope we have that in common. We both love music, tacos, and the ocean. But she’s a social butterfly with an outgoing, charming personality that everyone adores. I’ve tried to embrace that hidden side of me over the years, but this definitely was not my strong point at her age, and it’s probably still not. I was incredibly shy as a teenager. 

Me & my big sisters back in the day.
Aren't they beautiful?!

The outgoing part of Sadie comes from my two older sisters, my best friend, and all of the other beautiful, smart, talented girls I grew up with in California that I always wished I could be more like. I put some of this jealous, insecure side of me in Heather, Sadie’s best friend. Although, she’s not even a little bit shy.

Me & my dad at college graduation.
My hero!

Even the “villain” in my story, Voss, holds pieces of my own      life inside him. I may not be so cold and convoluted that I would threaten to shoot another human being like he would, but I’ve experienced pain, betrayal and anger during the rough patches in my life, just as he has.

Me pretending to smooch
my cute brother.

There is pain in life. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I wouldn’t have felt the aching drive to create stories and fill them with characters I can look up to, that give me hope; like Rayne, Sadie’s protector, who would choose his own suffering rather than let the slightest harm come upon her, or Sadie’s mother, Leena, who always wears a smile to cheer up those around her and make them feel welcomed. 

I drew a portrait of my Grandma for Mother's Day one year.
When you bring tears to your mom's eyes,
you know you did good!

Special occasion, my mom's 40th birthday.
I have such great memories with my family!!!

Every one of my characters has some of the good, and of course the bad (because nobody’s perfect), from all of the joy and learning and amazing people that I’ve met in my life. This is what makes my characters real. This is what gives me the drive to live with them inside my head each day. And when they all come together to experience it all in one big, intriguing, fictional world…well that’s when you know you have a story worth sharing.

The Heebie-Jeebies

Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls have been on the mind this week (and chocolate of course), so I’ve chosen THE HEEBIE-JEEBIES as the topic for today. There are plenty of things out there that can make our skin crawl. If you watched the Halloween episode of THE OFFICE this week, you know that this can be anything from snakes, the fear of dying alone, being buried alive, mummies, or even Jim Halpert himself. So what gives you the heebie-jeebies?

Along with all things that go bump in the night, the word FEAR comes to mind. I loved Halloween growing up. What isn’t fun about dressing up as your favorite character and running around with friends gathering candy? But there is a side of this particular holiday I always turn and run from…horror movies, haunted houses, large men with scary masks or chainsaws… Call me a coward or a wuss if you must, I just don’t enjoy being scared. I typically try to avoid that feeling at all costs. And yet, if I’m not careful, that feeling can follow me around on a regular basis, not just on the night of All-Hallows-Eve.

Even just this week, I’ve seen fear take its hold on my heart a time or two. And I haven’t been anywhere near a haunted house. I’m well aware that fear can bring me down if I let it. The trick of course is not to let it. Easier said than done, right? I think most things we worry about each day come from fear. Will my husband come home safe tonight? (Fear of losing a loved-one). Will my book sales crash and burn? (Fear of failure). Will my piece-of-junk car break down on the freeway? (Fear of facing hardships). Does the person I’m talking to think I’m an idiot? (Fear of rejection). Will people be so bored with my blog post they won’t even finish reading it? (Fear of failure AND rejection).

Okay, you get the idea and I’m sure your specific concerns are different than mine, but what should we do? Should I stop writing books because my sales went down a little this month or I got a bad review? No. Should someone drop out of school because they didn’t do well on one test? No. That would be letting our fears control our choices. I say, take control. Focus on the positive. I’m not writing this because I’m an expert. I’m writing this because I need to remind myself this week to do better at it. When I look at all the good things I’ve experienced this month, they far out-weigh the bad. For one, I’ve already sold over 5600 copies of my book. Yay!! But sometimes the good stuff isn’t as obvious. Sometimes it feels like the bad stuff is taking over.

When my husband and I first moved into student housing over three years ago, our water heater broke in the dead of winter. Yikes! Not fun! I was boiling water on the stove to take sponge baths for over a week. As soon as the heater was fixed, the first thing I did, of course, was take a hot shower. And it was the best shower I’d ever had in my life. Why? Because I suddenly knew what it was like not to have one. It also helped me remember that there are people in the world who don’t have regular hot showers, or any shower at all. But I do. Ever since then, this has been one little thing I use to focus on the positive. At least I can say I’ve enjoyed a hot shower. I do feel like a lot of things happen to us in life. Things we can’t control. It doesn't always come easy. My character, Sadie, experiences this quite a bit in my book, Deep Blue Secret. But she doesn't let it ruin her life. We as humans can be very resilient…if we choose to be. All we can do is choose how we will react to them and move forward. Why live our lives in constant worry when we don’t have to? Especially when there are so many possibilities all around us. So decide right now. Choose to push out the fear. We are in control of our own happiness. Did you enjoy your “hot shower” today?

To quote another popular saying that originated with Franklin D. Roosevelt: 

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Happy halloween!

Clichés, Idioms, & Sayings

I've wanted to be on the blog more lately, but always seem to suffer from writers block as soon as I open the page. I just can’t figure out what to write about when I’m not writing my book. (I’m currently working on book 2 in the Water Keepers series). I came up with an idea recently that I thought could help. Just for fun, I’d like to start a theme among some of my future blog posts using clichés, idioms, and common sayings to help me find topics to write about. In doing research to become a better writer, I’ve come across many sources that suggest avoiding clichés or common overused phrases. I have no idea if I overuse clichés, but chances are I probably do. Quite often these phrases have become such a common part of our language we don’t even realize we’re using them. For once in my life I’m going to be a rebel! I’m going to use every cliché in the book!

The lists of clichés, idioms, and sayings are endless. Here are just a few fun ones I came across today. Who knows, maybe one of them will be a topic of conversation on my blog in the near future…

Cut to the chase

Down the tubes

Face the music

Fifteen minutes of fame

Flavor of the month

Fly off the handle

Get your foot in the door

Hold your horses

Lose your marbles

Virtual Book Tour Calendar: Deep Blue Secret

Visit my new author interview at 'A Cup of Coffee and a Good Book...' Author Interview

Several wonderful book bloggers have agreed to feature my book this month! There will be a book excerpt and guest post by me, but the majority of the posts will be reviews. Hopefully they will be nice to me :p

Oct 1	My Life in a Laptop
Oct 5	Chasing After the Stars
Oct 11	Uniquely Moi Books
Oct 11	The Book Bag
Oct 13	The Reading Geek
Oct 14	A Writer's Ramblings
Oct 15	Pretending to be Crafty
Oct 17	Minding Spot
Oct 19	Eva's Sanctuary
Oct 20	Lisa Asunama
Oct 21	A Casual Reader’s Blog
Oct 24	Debbie's Inkspectations
Oct 26	Author Elizabeth Mueller
Oct 28	The Bookish Snob (Excerpt)
Oct 29	Best Authors Read
Oct 30	Queen of Chaos
Dates TBA	The Book Whisperer
	Bee’s Knees Reviews (Guest blog)
	Chasing Dreams