Blog Tour and Giveaway: Tempest Rising

I am pleased to participate in the blog tour for one of the most gorgeous books this year, Tempest Rising by Tracy Deebs. Here are her thoughts on which childhood stories/fairytales/memories influenced the writing of Tempest Rising. For more posts on the tour, visit The Teen Book Scene and check out the links!

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Tempest Maguire wants nothing more than to surf the killer waves near her California home; continue her steady relationship with her boyfriend, Mark; and take care of her brothers and surfer dad. But Tempest is half mermaid, and as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she will have to decide whether to remain on land or give herself to the ocean like her mother. The pull of the water becomes as insistent as her attraction to Kai, a gorgeous surfer whose uncanny abilities hint at an otherworldly identity as well. And when Tempest does finally give in to the water’s temptation and enters a fantastical underwater world, she finds that a larger destiny awaits her—and that the entire ocean’s future hangs in the balance. – Goodreads

Tracy Deebs, author of Tempest Rising

Thanks so much for having me, Tara. I really appreciate the chance to write about what influenced the writing of Tempest Rising. To begin with, I love mermaids. Seriously, love mermaids. When I was little (like three) my mom bought me a VCR tape of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. I watched that video at least once a day for three or four years. My mom swears she still has the dialogue memorized. Of course, this version is different than the Disney version. In this story, the little mermaid does make a bargain with the sea witch so that she can come to land and be with the prince, and it also puts her soul at risk forever. But in the HCA version, her sisters bargain with the sea witch, giving her their beautiful hair in exchange for the little mermaid to have a chance to live. In exchange for their hair, the little mermaid gets three days to live—if in those three days the prince tells her he loves her, then she’ll be free to live her life with him. If he doesn’t fall in love with her, then she must stab him through the heart with a blade from the sea witch or she will die and become sea foam.

At the end of the three days, the prince is in love with someone else and the little mermaid tries to kill him. But she loves him too much to harm him, even to save herself, so she walks out to the beach and ends up as sea foam, floating on the surface of the ocean forever.

It’s a much darker version than the Disney version, but I loved everything about the original Little Mermaid story. The dark appeals to me, and I tried to bring that side of mermaids out when I wrote Tempest Rising.

Other things that influenced Tempest Rising are my own experiences growing up in San Diego. The beaches that Tempest surfs are the same beaches that I surfed and hung out in when I was young and I drew a lot on my own memories of what it felt like to be there. When I was in high school, there was nothing better than driving out to La Jolla and walking the beach at one or two in the morning. It felt like the loneliest, most desolate place on earth and yet completely amazing. The power of the ocean, the sound and smell and taste of it as it crashed against the water, completely awed me. Even then I wanted to write a book where I could pay homage to that feeling, that power. In Tempest Rising, I finally got my chance :)

Giveaway

Walking the beach is still one of my favorite things to do. What do you enjoy doing? Leave a comment and be entered to win a Victoria’s Secret lipgloss.