Lisette Brodey's author website

Hello, Friends:

I thought I would share some recent photos from a beautiful, albeit quick, trip down the California coast. As I didn’t plan to blog at the time, I’m sorry that I don’t have a location to offer for every spot pictured. But I hope you’ll enjoy the photos and share in the delight of our surprise find at the end!

As a note: italicized captions for photos will be on the bottom of the photos.

Here are some photos from Fort Bragg, CA where we spent the night.

This was the view from the patio of our room.

Some old boat fenders for decoration

A calming view of the ocean

Looks interesting, but seemed unwise to investigate!

Walking under the pier at Fort Bragg

The glass is long gone at Glass Beach. It has been for many years.

We left Fort Bragg and headed south to our next stop, Carmel-by-the-Sea on California’s Monterey Peninsula. A charming beach city with approximately eighty art galleries, fairytale cottages, superb restaurants, museums, libraries, and much more.

As the sign says, this is the Tuck Box.

A gorgeous Spanish-tiled staircase

Carmel has many tasty delights like this shop offers. Luckily, I’m able to resist! Though that carrot cake looks quite tempting.

Another of Carmel’s fairytale cottages

I just loved this house.

One of several galleries we spent time visiting

Another view of the town

Carmel’s Church of the Wayfarer

A charming old door which I believe opened into a garden at a private home.

What the street signs look like in Carmel-by-the-Sea

Spent a little bit of time on Carmel’s beach before getting ready to make our way down the coast. These (above) are the last photos of Carmel.

One of the first vista points after getting on the road again

One of my very favorite vistas. Love the swirls in the sand. Below, is a close up of the same scene.

So pretty! Wish we could have spent more time here.

A car driving south on Route 1. This photo is typical of what you might see.

A photo from the east side of the road. Almost looks like a shot of the Earth. Sort of?

Route 1 curves a lot. Sometimes, going south, you’ll be right at the ocean’s edge as in this shot.

One of my personal favorites. Light hitting the Pacific Ocean. Very serene and spiritual.

I love the color of the water in this area.

As we continued to drive, it was getting closer to sunset. We had planned to stay on the scenic route until it got dark. There wasn’t much time to stop, but when we got to this last, huge vista site, we wondered what so many cars (and people, of course) were doing there. Naturally, we had to check it out.

Okay, so you’d think that when I saw this sign, I was prepared for what would be on the beach. But for some reason, I just thought it was a random sign about wildlife in the area. So, I was absolutely shocked when I finally caught sight of what was on the beach below.

At first, I didn’t think there were so many.

To my surprise, there were thousands of elephant seals on the beach … and it was mating season!

Worn out from all of the fun!

Here are a couple of the signs posted to teach visitors more about elephant seals.

To give you a bit more information, the males can grow up to 5,000 lbs (2300 kg) and 16 ft (5 m) long. Friends of the Elephant Seal News tells us that in the December-through-February mating season, males contest for breeding rights for up to 100 days without food or water.

The female seals grow to as much as 1,800 lbs (800 kg) and 12 ft (4 m). In an average of 34 days, the female loses 40% of her weight while she births, nurses, weans her pup, and breeds before returning to the sea.

I’m sorry that the video I took isn’t better quality, but you can imagine my surprise to see this activity on the beach below. At first, the e-seals looked like fictional creatures to me … the first thing that came to mind were heffalumps from Winnie the Pooh.

That’s about all. Except to tell you that you can learn more about elephant seals at Friends of the Elephant Seal. Their website has lots of great information, ways to help the e-seals, fantastic souvenirs,, an ESeal live cam, and much more.

One of the last photos I took from Route 1 as the sun was setting on our day.

Thanks for sharing my trip with me!

Best wishes to all,

Lisette

Greetings!

Nice to see you here.

I’m super excited about the publication of Mystical High, the first novel in my YA paranormal trilogy, The Desert Series. While I’m not exclusively a YA author, my first-written novel, Squalor, New Mexico, is a coming-of-age story, and I’ve been eager to return to the genre again—but in a very different way.

Having a lifelong interest in unexplained phenomena, I wanted to write a novel that deals with many issues that teens face in everyday life, but with a paranormal element being an integral part of the story. As my first three novels are all set in the eastern United States, where I’m originally from, I wanted to write a novel set in California, where I live now. I decided that the Southern California desert would be a great locale.

As in all of my novels, if I write about small towns or specific areas, I fictionalize them, but when I describe big cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles, the descriptions are always from firsthand experience. My descriptions of small towns are usually a hybrid of similar places but are never exact duplications. I’m a fiction writer, after all.

What I never expected to be, however, was the author of a series. I just didn’t see it in the cards. So how did I end up deciding to write a series? Well, I don’t think I did. As I was finishing the writing of Mystical High and falling in love with the characters and the story, the book itself simply told me: “Hey, you’re not quite through with me yet. Not even close. Guess what? You’re going to write a series.”

“Really? I’m going to write a series? But—”

“But nothing. Just get to work.”

And here I am, publishing the first book in a trilogy and happy to say that I’ve already written 25,000 words of number 2 and am over-the-moon excited about it.

Every novel in The Desert Series will be able to be read as a standalone novel. However, the secrets and revelations will be even juicier to those who have read the previous novels.

Now, let me tell you about Mystical High.

In Mystekal, a small, dying town in the Southern California desert, only 75 students attend the old, sometimes creepy high school dubbed “Mystical High,” where strange things have been known to happen. Jessie Dalworth and Jinxsy Patterson are juniors and lifelong best friends. At home, Jessie deals with the pain of an absentee mother who has abandoned the family for the lure of Hollywood; Jinxsy contends with a 17th “birthday present” she never wanted or expected.

Meanwhile, at school, the unexplained activity begins to escalate when Jinxsy keeps seeing a long-haired guy in the hallway checking her out. Jessie can’t see him, but her younger brother, River, can.

Then, in English class, a stapler mysteriously flies off teacher Eve Carrow’s desk, hitting a student in the face who has just mouthed off to her. The beloved teacher is in the unenviable position of having her brute of a father as principal, so she hates sending any student to his office. As Principal Ernest Carrow begins to terrorize Eve and others more openly, something or someone unseen decides that it’s payback time.

School is getting stranger, and Jinxsy and Jessie are faced with mind-boggling changes in their home lives that complicate everything. When a string of shocking events expose explosive secrets, decades-long mysteries are finally revealed.

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK and E-BOOK EDITIONS

Amazon U.S.

Amazon Kindle U.K.

Amazon Paperback U.K.

B&N

My official book tour will begin November 11th and run through December 6th. As soon as I have the schedule, I’ll be posting it here.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Lisette Brodey's author website

Author of character-driven novels

Tag Archives: California

A RIDE DOWN THE CALIFORNIA COAST … and a big surprise!

MYSTICAL HIGH IS HERE! Book #1 in The Desert Series

Photos copyright of Lisette Brodey, 2013