Today I'm pleased to be interviewing Chrissy Anderson, author of the controversial semi-autobiographical trilogy, The Life List. This post is part of her ongoing blog tour. She's giving away a $50 gift certificate to Victoria's Secret as her grand prize. Use the Rafflecopter widget at the end of the post to enter.
Lisabet Sarai: Since
the main character in The
Life List has the same
name as you, I have to ask: how much of this book is real and how
much is fictional? And if at least some of the book is fictional,
why did you choose to name your heroine after yourself?
Chrissy Anderson: First off,
thank you for including me on your blog Lisabet! I sincerely
appreciate the opportunity for your followers to get to know me and
my real-life-love-triangle novel, The Life List! Although I
can’t give you an exact ratio of what’s real and what’s
fiction, I can tell you that this book is based on my true story. But
I suppose, if my life depended on it and I had to come up with a
ratio, I’d go 90% real life, 10% embellishment. What’s sort of
funny (or tragic, depending on how you look at it) is that people
think the real stuff is fictitious and the fictitious stuff is real.
I really did do and say some pretty outrageous things in my attempt
to find happiness, and it still blows my mind at how disturbing and
chaotic my life was for a while. You can all breathe a sigh of
relief, though, because I am in love and happily married to one of
the two men in the novel. Can’t tell ya if it’s Kurt or Leo
because that would just ruin the entire List Trilogy and that would
be plain ‘ol mean.
To call Chrissy a “heroine” is kind
of laughable because most people would say she’s as far from heroic
as one could possibly be. I mean, what she put Kurt and Leo through
was just plain cruel, and most would say unnecessary. But I have a
rebuttal! Until you’ve been forced to choose between love and
obligation you shouldn’t judge. It’s a struggle I don’t wish
on any woman—ever. I’m a real woman with the kind of real
problems that so many women are secretly dealing with and I just
jumped right out there and exposed all of my secrets. That’s what
grabs my readers right off the bat. I think this particular review
left on Amazon does a great job of summing up my effect on readers:
“This
book is a must read. It's brutally honest, well written and inspires
hope. This woman goes from cowardly to courageous. What a roller
coaster ride! I adored every moment of it. You will hate her, you
will love her but what you will NOT be able to do is put this book
down!”
A word of
warning…My writing style is not for romance readers who are used to
following the typical girl-meets-boy-happily-ever-after-format. I’m
mean at times, acerbic, raw and edgy. Don’t get me wrong, the
trilogy ends the way it’s supposed to end with everyone in the
happy place they should be, but The
Life List and the rest of the novels
in the series (The Unexpected List
& The Hope List)
are pretty nitty-gritty. I write about real life sh*t and I swear,
joke, and judge a lot in the process!
LS: Many
readers, at least of romance, dislike books that feature adultery.
Are you worried that your honesty about your character actions will
turn readers off? If not, why not?
CA: Here’s the deal: I was a
good girl—a girl who created a detailed life list at the age of
sixteen and I diligently stuck to it. I worked my ass off to achieve
all of the things I thought I wanted in life and by twenty-eight…I
almost had it all. I sincerely thought I had everything I ever
wanted…the hubby, the home and the career. But then one night a
chance encounter with a stranger made me question my life list and
all that I had accomplished. In one night my entire world was
turned upside down and it scared me to death.
My story is based on my life and it
examines the sanity of blindly following the bucket list we make when
we are young and the impact of changing our minds after we
have checked most things off the list. It’s a dilemma millions of
married women face every day. I wrote my story for those women—the
ones torn between choosing love and obligation. I know their
struggle…I know their heartache. My story isn’t for women who
live in glass houses and can’t accept the fact that mistakes
happen…people change…and sometimes you can be in love with two
men at the same time. My advice to readers who can’t tolerate
adultery is to stay as far away from my work as possible.
LS: It sounds as though there's a moral to The Life List. As a writer, how can you avoid being too heavy handed about the lessons your heroine learns? What did you do to keep readers engrossed in the *story*, without hitting them over the head with the lessons?
CA: No moral and no lessons.
There was no preaching a right way or a wrong way to live in my
books. It’s just my story, plain and simple.
One of the main characters in my book,
therapist, Dr. Maria, doles out a lot of advice and my readers seem
to like a lot of it. One of my favorite pieces of advice she ever
gave me was, “You can’t make choices that you think will hurt
less, you just have to make the right choices. Only then will you be
truly happy.” Doing that is harder for some of us than others.
How I kept readers engrossed? By being
brutally honest. There were times when I thought, “Holy cow! I
can’t admit I did that, or say what I’m really thinking! People
will think I’m certifiable!” But there’s a saying that’s
framed on my desk and it says, “Follow the truths of human
interaction and you will never let your reader down.” Hard as it
was, I committed myself to the truths of human interaction—the
good, the bad, and the ugly of it. I don’t expect everyone to agree
with my choices, but I want everyone to ask themselves, “What would
I do if I were Chrissy?” There’s no way my readers would ask
themselves that question if I avoided the truth with fluff.
LS: I personally never had anything like a life list. I had goals, obviously, but to some extent I've taken life as it comes. Do you know many women who are like your heroine, who envision their ideal lives and then work to make that ideal real?
CA: Not many…until The Life
List was published! Now I get emails every day from women who
tell me, “You’ve written my story! I’m you!” The validation
feels good, but it’s also sad. I knew there were a million
“Chrissy’s” out there, and they’re exactly who I wrote the
book for. But still, I wish more of them were unlike me more than
like me. For some of us, there’s an ideal we attach ourselves to
and for some moronic reason we can’t shake it. Then one day we
wake up and we’re at some kind of f’d-up crossroads. We’ve
come so far down one road, but out of the blue there’s another one
that looks pretty damn good. But how do you un-do a life without
breaking hearts and/or causing confusion? The thing is, most of us
don’t, and who do you think suffers in the end? See where I’m
heading with this? So many of us are living our lives for other
people. Tragic.
I envy the women like you who have
taken life as it comes, or the women who had ideals early on in life
and to this day are happy with them. Smart and lucky! All of you
LS: Your book is obviously targeted at female readers. Do you think a man would get anything out of it?
CA: That would be a HUGE, yes!
Here’s an Amazon review from one very cool dude:
“As a guy, I
wanted to read this book because my girlfriend loves this series.
And, not only is the true life story captivatingly and fascinatingly
written; for me, it was an opportunity to see how the female mind
works. I mean as a guy, I can only try to guess why women do what
they do, how they think, what they want in a guy, what they don't
like in a guy. It's like an instructor's manual on how to be a good
man.
Because it's based on Chrissy's real life story, her real experiences, and her 100% bold, blunt, and flat out honest perception of guys, of love, of commitment, of passion----and her play by play thought process: what a great opportunity to learn, to get insight on how to understand that mysterious female mind, and to work on being the best man I can be.
It's a
definite page turner...and I would love to read the 2nd and 3rd books
in her series.
Way to go Chrissy Anderson!”
Way to go Chrissy Anderson!”
Thank you so much
Lisabet! This has been fun. I hope I hear from you on my website or
facebook page. I’d love to keep in touch!
When she was just sixteen, Chrissy Anderson made a life list…
…The outcome is a dream husband, a
career to envy, and the kind of best friends every girl wants. Then
out of nowhere…an affair. What would you do if you realized the
life you created wasn’t right for you? You think you know the
answer? Think again. Follow Chrissy as she lies and cheats and
ultimately learns to tell the truth to herself and those that she
loves.
At twenty-eight, Chrissy has been
steadily checking off the boxes on her life list as she mocks the
style and life choices of everyone around her. She’s got it all—or
so everyone thinks. Her life begins to fall apart when she
unexpectedly meets a much younger man, Leo, who makes her question
just how perfect her “perfect life” really is. With the help of
her no-nonsense therapist, Dr. Maria, Chrissy learns more about
herself than she anticipates. But it isn’t until she stares an
untimely death in the face that Chrissy is catapulted into an overdue
reality check. Only then does she scramble to correct the mistakes
of her past…trying to figure out if it’s her husband Kurt, her
lover Leo, or both that she has to leave behind to make everything
right.
Women of all kinds will be able to
relate to the pressure of constructing the ideal life, only to fall
short. Not everyone will agree with Chrissy Anderson’s decisions,
but all will pause as they follow along on her journey to ask, “What
would I do if I were her?”
The Life List, book ONE of The List
Trilogy, will take you on a roller coaster of emotional highs and
lows as Chrissy makes mistakes on her bumpy road to happiness. Come
along for the ride and you’ll be left breathless and ready to find
out what she does next in book TWO, The Unexpected List.
Three Snippets from The Life
List:
And then out of nowhere I turn into
Heather Locklear. No, Tawny Kitaen! No wait…I’m one of those
smokin’ hot chicks on a Budweiser poster who’s licking the side
of a dripping wet beer bottle! Whoever the hell I am, I’m NOT
Chrissy Anderson. She would never have the guts to look deep into a
beautiful stranger’s eyes and say, “Do you want to kiss me?”
****
I just made it official. I’m a
twenty-eight year old married woman with a twenty-two year old
boyfriend who lives twenty minutes from a husband who he doesn’t
know exists. That God I started believing in a few minutes ago is
sending me straight to Hell.
****
I look like I should be begging for
food and, in a way, it feels like I am. But as hungry as I am for
him, he’ll never find me. He has no idea where I live and even if
he knew the city, he would never guess this neighborhood. Only
married people live here.
Author
Bio
CHRISSY ANDERSON spends her life doing exactly what she always wanted: doting on those she loves. A former fashion executive, she is a writer, wife, and mother whose own life events inspired The Life List. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with the love of her life and her beautiful daughter.
