Hi everyone!
On this lovely Tuesday I'm delighted to be a part of Mourning Dove's blog tour which is hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours. Today, we'll be featuring an interview with author Claire Fullerton along with a Tour Giveaway for an audiobook of Mourning Dove (US only).
Be sure to visit their page for the full blog tour schedule!
About the Book
Title: Mourning Dove Author: Claire Fullerton Publisher: Firefly Southern Fiction Release Date: June 29, 2018 Genre: Southern Fiction, Family Life
"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: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository
Interview with Claire Fullerton
1) Are there certain themes you like to present in your works?
Yes, there are, I think themes are important because their subtleties give the reader the gift of interpretation. I am fascinated in the personal searches we all have as individuals. In many ways, we are all in a process of becoming as we create our lives. The search for place, the search for meaning and the search for identity are favorites of mine, as is the overarching search for God, as in trying to understand who is in charge.
2) How did you go about selecting the names for your characters?
In Mourning Dove, I decided upon southern names passed down in families. It’s the rare southerner whose name isn’t from a family line.
3) What inspires you to write?
It’s always knowing I have a story that makes a point about this business of living. Usually there is the path to a significant episode, then that episode's repercussion and how the characters choose to handle the situation. Our lives are built upon choices, which are individual responses to what comes our way. I like to write about the responses characters have to the vagaries of life, and make it plain how each character arrived at a particular choice.
4) Which was your favorite scene to write in MOURNING DOVE?
The scene in Kensington Park’s kitchen, where Millie, Posey, and Ella banter back and forth about the peculiarities of the Colonel. Each character has a separate understanding of who the colonel is, and to hear them compare notes gave me the opportunity to employ comedy in a way so scathing that the truth of the colonel’s looming influence became apparent.
5) Is there a character you found yourself connecting with the most?
Mille Crossan, as the observer and chronicler of the family history.
6) Would you like to add anything about MOURNING DOVE or yourself?
I believe that in every family, there is a dynamic that explains our individual wiring. Our personality and view of the world comes from our family’s foundation. Whether easy or difficult, our early family experience helps shape us, and when seen in a certain light, any childhood has the makings of a good story.
BLOG TOUR GIVEAWAY
Claire Fullerton is giving away:
1 audiobook of Mourning Dove (US only)
Enter via the Rafflecopter giveaway below.
Giveaway will begin at midnight August 21, 2018 and last through 11:59pm August 28, 2018. US only.
Winners will be notified within a week of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
About the Author
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 those 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, A Southern Season, with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, to be published in November 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction.
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