Today on Writer Wednesday we welcome Claire Fullerton, author of Mourning Dove.
Enter below for a chance to win a copy of Mourning Dove! Congratulations to Sarah Taylor who won Kathy Herman’s A Treacherous Mix! Please e-mail my assistant (hello{at}triciagoyer{dot}com) to claim your prize! Note: This post contains affiliate links.
Sacred Space
In my writing room are personally appointed emblems that reflect this experience or that sacred image that gives me a sense of place. Many images hang on the wall over my desk that inspires me.
Five prints that I acquired at an artists’ street fair in the 17th-century courtyard of St. Nicholas’s Church, in Galway, Ireland are spaced evenly between a large print of the gold and orange book cover of my recent release, Mourning Dove. Below them is a painting in oil I acquired in Charleston, South Carolina to remind me of the weekend I spent celebrating my favorite writer of all time’s, Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday. I have an 8×10 photograph in a muted gold frame of Conroy signing my copy of The Prince of Tides, standing in the upper, right corner of my desk. Above the photograph is a desk lamp whose brass stand is crowned by a feminine, light-gold shade, with hand-beaded leaves of shimmering rose-colored crystals. The leash of my dearly departed German shepherd, whom I named Secret, is draped from the desk lamp. I put it there the afternoon that eleven-and-a-half-year-old, magnificent creature died to remind me there are unconditional love and loyalty in this world. On my cherry-wood writing desk is a keyboard the size of a grand piano, with a 27-inch monitor rising behind it. I like the size of this monitor, for the more I can see of my working-in-progress scrolled before me, the better.
The question anyone would ask when they see my writing room is why my desk doesn’t face the unobstructed view of the ocean. After all, I live by the sea, in Malibu, California, and everyone knows the Pacific Ocean is the draw in this beach-side community. My reasoning is I’d rather look at those images above my desk that ground me into being a writer. In moments of contemplating what I’m writing, I am in the habit of pacing the room. Shifting my gaze from my monitor to the ocean gives me an aerial view that lends a larger perspective.
And did I mention I have a cat? Boy, do I have a cat. She is seventeen years old, black as nightfall, with an unstoppable, ever-youthful personality. La Chatte understands complete paragraphs in the English language and is in the habit of taking up residency to the right of my keyboard because she is attracted to the orange-glow of my desk salt-lamp.
I think a writer’s space should suggest a sense of identity within the greater context of a sense of place. It should be comfortable and meaningful, and every item within hand-selected that makes it a sacred space.
More about Mourning Dove
“An accurate and heart-wrenching picture of the sensibilities of the American South.” Kirkus Book Reviews
The heart has a home when it has an ally.
If Millie Crossan doesn’t know anything else, she knows this one truth simply because her brother Finley grew up beside her. Charismatic Finley, eighteen months her senior, becomes Millie’s guide when their mother Posey leaves their father and moves her children from Minnesota to Memphis shortly after Millie’s tenth birthday.
Memphis is a world foreign to Millie and Finley. This is the 1970s Memphis, the genteel world of their mother’s upbringing and vastly different from anything they’ve ever known. Here they are the outsiders. Here, they only have each other. And here, as the years fold over themselves, they mature in a manicured Southern culture where they learn firsthand that much of what glitters isn’t gold. Nuance, tradition, and Southern eccentrics flavor Millie and Finley’s world as they find their way to belonging.
But what hidden variables take their shared history to leave both brother and sister at such disparate ends?
Purchase a copy of Mourning Dove
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | ClaireFullerton.com
Claire Fullerton grew up in Memphis, TN and now lives in Malibu, CA. She is the author of contemporary fiction, Dancing to an Irish Reel, set in Connemara, Ireland, where she once lived. Dancing to an Irish Reel is a finalist in the 2016 Kindle Book Review Awards, and a 2016 Readers’ Favorite. Claire is the author of A Portal in Time, a paranormal mystery that unfolds in two time periods, set on California’s hauntingly beautiful Monterey Peninsula, in a village called Carmel-by-the-Sea. Both of Claire’s novels are published by Vinspire Publishing. Her third novel, Mourning Dove, is a Southern family saga, published in June, 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction. She is one of four contributors to the book, Southern Seasons, with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, to be published in November 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction. Claire is represented by Julie Gwinn, of The Seymour Literary Agency.
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