Claire Fullerton, author of A Portal in Time was my guest, sharing a little background to Dancing to an Irish Reel… and looks at a question Stuart and I are often asked about our books… just how much is true?
I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Now that my book, ‘’Dancing to Irish Reel” is out, I’m being asked the inevitable question, “How much of the story is true?” Everyone who knows me personally knows I picked up and moved to the west coast of Ireland without much of a plan, and that I stayed for a year. Add that to the fact that the book is written in the first person, that the narrator’s interior monologues in the story are unabashedly confessional to the point of unnecessary risk. I’ve been told the book reads like a memoir, and for that, I can only say I’m glad because this was my intention. I can see why readers might think the entire story is true.
But writers make a choice in how to lay out a story, and in my case, I wrote the book based on the kind of books I like to read. I’m a one-trick pony kind of a reader. I want an intimate narrator’s voice with which I can connect. I want to know exactly whom I’m listening to so that I can align with a premise that makes the story’s swinging pendulum of cause and effect plausible. The way I see it, there are always bread crumbs along the path to the chaotic predicaments people find themselves in, and although many are blind to their own contributions, when I read a book, I want to be the one who divines how the character got there.
What fascinates me about people are their backstories. Oh, people will tell you their highlights, alright, but they rarely reveal their churning cauldron of attendant emotions; they rarely confess to carrying acquired fears. We all want to appear bigger than our own confusion, and the key word here is “appear,” because when it comes to faces, most people like to save theirs. This is the point I wanted to make in the story, but I also wanted “Dancing to an Irish Reel,” to be about discovery, so I started with a narrator who is a fish out of water: a twenty-five year old American ensconced in a specific culture she uncovers like the dance of seven veils. In the midst of this there enters an Irish traditional musician named Liam Hennessey. He is from the region, of the region, and therefore it can only be said he is because of the region in a way that is emblematic. From a writer’s point of view, the supposition offers the gift of built-in conflict, most poignantly being the clash of the male-female dynamic set upon the stage of differing cultures trying to find a bridge. And I can think of no better culture clash than America and Ireland. I say this because I happen to know to the Irish, we Americans are a bit brazen, we have the annoying habit of being direct. But the Irish are a discreet lot, culled from a set of delicate social manners that seem to dance around everything, leaving an American such as I with much guesswork.
No matter how they shake it, writers write about what they know, even if it has to be extracted from varying quadrants that have no good reason for being congealed. “Dancing to an Irish Reel” is a good example of this: it came to me as a strategy for commenting on the complexities of human beings inherent longing to connect—the way we do and say things that are at variance with how we really feel in the interest of appearances, and how this quandary sometimes dictates how we handle opportunities in life. In my opinion, there is no better playing field on which to illustrate this point than the arena of new found attraction. I’m convinced the ambiguity of new love is a universal experience, and since the universe is a big wide place, and since ‘”Dancing to an Irish Reel” has something to say about hope and fear and the uncertainty of attraction, it occurred to me that I might as well make my point set upon the verdant fields of Ireland because everything about the land fascinated me, and I wanted to take every reader that would have me to the region I experienced as cacophonous and proud: that mysterious, constant, quirky, soul-infused island that lays in the middle of the Atlantic, covered in a blanket of green, misty velvet.
Connect with Claire on her Amazon author page, through her blog and via Facebook, Twitter @cfullerton3 and Goodreads.
Claire Fullerton is the author of “Dancing to an Irish Reel” (Literary Fiction) and “A Portal in Time,” (Paranormal Mystery), both from Vinspire Publishing. She is an award winning essayist, a contributor to magazines, a five time contributor to the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book series, and a former newspaper columnist. Claire grew up in Memphis, TN, once lived in Connemara, Ireland, and now lives in Malibu, CA with her husband, two German shepherds and one black cat. Currently, she is writing her third novel.
On sabbatical from her job in the LA record business, Hailey takes a trip to Ireland for the vacation of a lifetime. What she finds is a job offer too good to turn down.
Her new job comes with one major complication—Liam Hennessey. He’s a famous Irish musician whose entire live has revolved around performing. And Hailey falls in love with him. Although Liam’s not so sure love is in the cards for him, he’s not willing to push her away completely.
And so begins Hailey’s journey to a colorful land that changes her life, unites her with friends more colorful than the Irish landscape, and gives her a chance at happiness she’s never found before.
Available via Amazon UK and Amazon.com
When we are inexplicably drawn to love and a particular place, is it coincidence, or have we loved before?
Enigmatic and spirited Anna Lucera is gifted with an uncanny sixth-sense and is intrigued by all things mystical. When her green, cat-eyes and long, black hair capture the attention of a young lawyer named Kevin Townsend, a romance ensues which leads them to the hauntingly beautiful region of California’s Carmel-By-The-Sea where Anna is intuitively drawn to the Madiera Hotel. Everything about the hotel and Carmel-By-The-Sea heightens her senses and speaks to Anna as if she had been there before. As Anna’s memory unravels the puzzle, she is drawn into a past that’s eerily familiar and a life she just may have lived before.
Available via Amazon UK and Amazon.com
Pingback: Truth In Fiction – Guest post by Claire Fullerton | Writing Notes
I so love how Claire “dances” around how much of her book is real or not. 😉 Also after reading this my interview with her seems so much less for the simplicity of in depth and language. The girl’s got literary chops. (It’s after midnight here, meds aren’t kicking in, and I’ve been doing a poetry review for several hours, so excuse the nonsense. But I’m leaving it anyway because it’s the truth.) And Dancing to an Irish Reel is in my top 2 favorite books I’ve read and reviewed this year. (At least from the ones I can remember. I have short term memory problems. Her book could be really bad and I’m just trusting what she tells me I said. Muahahahaha.)
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A girl has to keep her secrets, Ron, after all 😉 You can’t blame her …:) Thanks for reblogging too 🙂
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I almost asked in my interview if it was based on reality, but I used the hammer on my fingers so I couldn’t type the question. Then I had to use other things to click send the email. (Don’t ask.)
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The mysteries of the pen must be preserved 😉
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The pair of you are cracking me up! This banter is making my day!
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Us? We are behaving! 😉 *runs after fallen halo…*
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Reblogged this on and commented:
Find out more about Claire Fullerton and her writing of Dancing to an Irish Reel, which is my 5 Star Review and one of my favorite Interviews ever.
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And this insightful, erudite man writes a review with the best of them!
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He does 🙂
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Ah, the storyteller proving her ability to tell a tale.
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Both of Claire;s books sound interesting, especially “Dancing to an Irish Reel.” Best wishes to her continued success with her writing career. Thanks, Sue, for this good review. 🙂
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I was very happy to have Claire as a guest today 🙂
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And I am honored to be your guest!
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You’re welcome back any time, Claire 🙂
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Thanks you, Suzanne Joshi! How nice of you to comment!
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Fascinating interviewee, Sue. The ever present question…
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Impossible to separate the author from the work sometimes, isn’t it?
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A really interesting post. I’m putting Dancing to an Irish Reel on my wish list.
On the subject of what is true and not true: I was invited to a book group which had read No More Mulberries. One person arrived very late, saying, “Don’t mind me. I’ll catch up. I’m assuming we’ve covered you going to Afghanistan and marrying an Afghan doctor.” It took a wee while to convince her I was not married to an Afghan and that the character in the book who was, was entirely fictional.
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It’s a fine line, isn’t it? We draw from life and experience, even in the wildest fantasy… there is always some truth in what we write. And when much of a book is factual, with a fictional thread binding it together, it gets even more difficult to tease the two apart…. though I’m not sure why we feel the need to do so.
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Reblogged this on oshriradhekrishnabole.
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Reblogged this on BART Station Bard and commented:
A different perspective reveals a different facet of the truth.
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Pingback: Truth In Fiction – Guest post by Claire Fullerton | KENYONA R. COPELAND
Thanks for sharing some insight about Claire and her books here Sue. I love that Claire shared her insights about how and why she wrote about the topics in her books, yet remained elusive to the question of whether it is fictionalized writing or not. Now, I’m dashing off to add some new books to my TBR! Book reviews are like damned chocolate – you see your favorite flavor in the box, and you just have to have it! (Hmm, I think I’ll have to coin that phrase, lol. 🙂
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It’s the only addiction I would hate to break 🙂
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🙂
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Dancing to an Irish Reel was wonderful! So, it seems Claire isn’t going to give up how much of Hailey’s story is real. A Portal in Time sounds interesting, so I will be adding it to the ole’ tumbling TBR.
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No… she’s holding her cards close on that one 🙂
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