Christie Maurer

1937 - 2016

Christie Maurer
Mar. 5, 1937 - Apr. 4, 2016
Scotts Valley, CA
Christie Elisabeth Maurer passed away on April 4 after a prolonged illness. She was 79 years old. Christie was born in New Hampshire, the only child of Willard and Clarissa McKinstry. Her father was a Unitarian minister. Due to challenging health conditions, Christie spent most of her childhood alone, escaping into the world of fiction books. She joined the Rainbow Girls after her mother passed away.
Christie graduated from Goddard College with a BA in Creative Writing. An adventurer at heart, she left the East Coast and moved to Los Angeles where she found work at UCLA and USC. Christie traveled to Mexico and overseas, eventually migrating north to work at UC Santa Cruz. After UCSC, she was hired by Santa Cruz County where she worked as a high-level administrative assistant for over twenty years. She particularly enjoyed working with Betsy McCarty in the Public Health department. In 1985, Christie married Peter Maurer and they resided in Scotts Valley. The couple enjoyed traveling to Switzerland to visit Peter's family whenever they could.
Writing was a vital part of Christie's life and she continually developed her fiction writing, achieving an MA from Cal State Hayward. The Starbucks on Scotts Valley Drive was her preferred creative locale and she rode her wheelchair there on an almost daily basis to work on her laptop. She was a member of Broad Universe - a group for women writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror; she also served as newsletter editor for Monterey Bay Chapter of Romance Writers of America and Monterey Bay Fiction Writers. Christie won first prize in the WIN-WIN Conference 2004 Persie contest for best first chapter of a novel, "Masquerade". Her alternate fairytale short stories, "A Maiden's Heart" (2003) and "Gormlo the Green" (2005) appeared in www.mytholog.com. Her short story "Heritage" came out in the Fall 2012 issue of White Cat Magazine.
In 2013, she published a fantasy novel, "The Dark Lady's Stone", about the quest of troubadour Loriano to destroy Death's standing stone on the deadly shores of Lake Illia in the far north. (currently available on Amazon). Christie was working on several additional books in this series at the time of her death. She was also a fine artist and designed covers for her forthcoming books.
Services are being planned by her spiritual community, Subud Center, 3800 Old San Jose Rd, Soquel. The memorial will be Sunday, June 12th at 3pm. She is survived by her husband Peter, her two stepsons Daniel and Stefan, as well as her grandsons Kevin and Philip and many family members in Switzerland.


View the online memorial for Christie Maurer