Claire Fullerton's Blog: A Writing Life, page 5

Review: Memphis Movie by Corey Mesler

That Memphis Movie drops the reader smack in the middle of this one-of-a-kind story by opening with an interview of indie film maker, Eric Warberg, was a stroke of genius. It set the stage, mood, and tone for this down-on-his-heels filmmaker’s background and tells the reader that the stakes are high in this modern-day story. The book comes out swinging, with dialogue so engagingly sardonic it transcends any necessity for knowledge of a film’s production. And yet, in Memphis Movie the reader receives the minutia of what goes into making a movie, and as this fabulous story unfurls, the savvy reader can’t help but think the chaos is a lot like any other line of work taking over someone’s life. Eric Warberg’s identity is at issue. He’s a washed-up fish-out-of-water dragging his tail in the pond he comes from, trying to pull himself up by his bootstraps but not convinced he can. His is the voice of reason, while one of the more cacophonous cast of characters ever assembled spins out around him, each delightfully drawn player with their own agenda. If there’s any prayer of cohesiveness in this dysfunctional crew, it’s all in Eric’s shaky hands. Sisyphus had an easier time of it, and this is what makes this character intensive story so funny. The book speaks in jargon so spot-on it lends ambience, and the characters sputter and sway in a setting only the infinitely hip know of in Memphis. They are all likable underdogs looking for a center. They are scratching around in the underbelly of an historic southern town, trying to make this thing work. Memphis Movie is a blend of satire, humor, and irony driven by sheer intelligence. Only a gifted writer can peg the nuances of human nature to the point where the reader says of each character, “I know that guy!” All praise author Corey Mesler. I’m so atwitter over Memphis Movie, I’m telling all my friends that this book about the making of an indie film is so good, it should be made into its own movie!

Launching A Book is Like A Wheel

It seems to me the release of a novel is like a wheel with its own life span. Though the elements that get a book out in the world happen in linear fashion, it feels as if they happen at once. This is what readers might not know as they read a book. There is a lot that goes into a book release. Within the time frame of getting my third novel, Mourning Dove, signed until its publication, it seemed every move I made was urgent, even though I knew, when I signed the contract, that Mourning Dove’s release was a year and a half away.
It all begins with a book’s contract negotiation. Promotion starts immediately, once the writer signs the contract. There is the business of sharing the news that a contract has been signed on social media to garner interest that the book is coming, that it will be winding its way from draft to print. And it is a winding way. What made Mourning Dove different for me is that when I signed the publishing contract, I had a literary agent. Because this wasn’t the case with my first two books, I didn’t know what to expect.
From the onset, my agent got to work. We talked about Mourning Dove’s genre, my brand as an author, whether to hire a publicist, which book festivals to submit to, which contests to enter, my presence on social media—all of this was planned once my editor sent me my publishers’ schedule. Because what a writer is doing pre-release is securing a foundation. A writer must know where they’re going and when. One has to create a launch pad well in advance of a book’s release that matches their publisher’s schedule. After the book has been edited, which in Mourning Dove’s case hinged on my editor’s schedule, and took three rounds, during six weeks, a writer waits for the advance review copy. There are magazines, contests, and online journals to submit to, each with their own schedule. A writer has to create their own schedule to keep track of what’s happening and when.
Once I had the advance review copy of Mourning Dove, I sent it to four well-known authors and two prestigious book magazines, in pursuit of book blurbs to appear on the finished book. Next came the selection of Mourning Dove’s book cover, which began with my written vision and went to my publisher’s art department and ended with the final version.
Once I had Mourning Dove’s book cover, I got to work in preparation for marketing. I had business cards printed with my website and contacts, post cards and bookmarks made with Mourning Dove’s cover and description. I created a glossy “one-sheet” with the book’s cover, its ISBN, Mourning Dove’s release date, my author bio, three book blurbs, and sent it to endless independent book stores, telling them that Mourning Dove was available for pre-order, and that it would be distributed through Ingrams. I joined the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance in tandem with my publisher, since Mourning Dove is set in the South, and my brand is that I am a Southern writer, being, as it is, that I grew up in Memphis.
As Mourning Dove’s launch date drew near, I reached out to more magazines and book bloggers, then scheduled a book launch event. I sent invitations to the launch, and word to my local newspaper requesting they send a photographer out for coverage. Once Mourning Dove was out in the world, I continued to distribute my one sheet, and still do, as time allows. I remain engaged in social media daily about Mourning Dove, and as I do, I support other authors.
Mourning Dove was released one month ago today, and I continue to promote it daily. I will be travelling to book events starting next month, with an eye toward doing as much in person as possible. I am reaching out to book clubs and speakers’ organizations. I believe eye-to-eye contact with readers makes a difference, and it is my sincere honor and privilege to speak with any I meet. My travel schedule has already taken me into 2019, and I have Mourning Dove submitted to 2019 book festivals, from whom I am waiting to hear. There are book award contests I’ve entered that announce awards for books published in 2018, in the year 2019.
In the meantime, I have another release coming on November 1st of this year. Currently the wheel is turning for this. It is a novella; one of four novellas in a book titled A Southern Season—each novella set in the South, and promotion began six months ago.
When you hear writers say that writing is a full-time job, it’s because it is. Each release has its own life-span, which begins with a sense of urgency and continues as long as the author is willing to work it. But the good news is if an author has a backlist, all effort put into each release aids and abets the life of the backlist. In my mind, each release is an independent wheel that helps drive a writer’s career forward.
http://clairefullerton.com

Congratulations to the winners of Mourning Dove's Giveaway!

Nothing is more pleasing to an author with a new book release as seeing the list of their Goodreads Giveaway entrants grow! I wrote my coming of age, Southern family saga, Mourning Dove, with an eye to telling the story of a family dynamic I thought would resonate with everyone. Though family dynamics are peculiar and specific to each family, it is my belief they do have common threads, most of which are rarely discussed outside of the family. But what happens in a family in one’s formative years sets the foundation for the rest of one’s life. In writing Mourning Dove, I had an eye to the concept of cause and effect, and my aim was to portray its arch in a way that the reader will divine their own understanding. Readers are intelligent creatures, and it is for this reason that I wanted to give away ten copies of Mourning Dove. My gratitude to all entrants in this giveaway, which ended on Mourning Dove’s release day, June 29. I am grateful for your interest and hope you all get around to reading the book. Thank you to Goodreads for providing such a delightful, user-friendly forum. Here are the ten winners of an author signed print version of Mourning Dove:



Donna Jordan
Cherie Gravette
Kathy Wiederkehr
Tom Tamir
JAMES LYNAM
Tina M Mol
Heather Ellner
Susan Homan
Cindy Hipolito
Patty Fite

The New Southern Fugitives Review of Mourning Dove

Book review
Mourning Dove
Claire Fullerton
Forthcoming June 29, 2018
Firefly Southern Fiction, 234 pp., $9.95
Parallel universes exist all around us. One person chucks trash for another to call a treasure. Claire Fullerton’s novel Mourning Dove explores this concept with indulgent detail through a cast of characters manifesting such existences like fraternal twins. North meets South. Gritty, lower-income streets cross into rich, well-to-do avenues. The old gives way to youth in an almost forgotten silence. The harsh reality of here and now crashes unforgivingly into wistful nostalgic ideations of what might have been. Fullerton delivers a punch that impacts the reader in a vein similar to To Kill a Mockingbird—even the coming-of-age protagonists and titles align to a degree.
Told through the perspective of Millie, the younger child between she and her wunderkind brother Finley, the novel oscillates between worlds of breathless memory and the tattered edges of the present. Fullerton plops Millie into uptown Memphis, Tennessee during the 60s and 70s. It’s a world away from her native Minnesota and the divorce between Posey, her well-heeled mother, and Sean, her wayward alcoholic father. From there, Millie and Finley are lurched into maturity all too soon, with their environment ever shifting between hopeful wishes and severe thoughts grounded in a cold reality.
Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Mourning Dove examines the social mores of masculinity versus. femininity, rich versus poor, life versus death, and maturity versus youth. Unlike Lee’s classic, Fullerton uses these themes in a painfully intimate way with her central characters unapologetically tasked with navigating between these worlds. Where Scout and Jem experience these from a protected and privileged distance in To Kill a Mockingbird, Millie and Finley are more often than not left to their own devices. The siblings maneuver across both literal and figurative borders with no guidance from the adults in their lives—who admittedly seem less prepared or willing to manage these borders for themselves.
Posey, living the life typical of Southern elites, flits in and out the scene with an elegant remoteness similar to that of a wild bird, present yet untouchable. Sean’s exits and entrances come with a stronger weight until his untimely and lonely death, hermited away in his lower-income apartment. Even Gaga, Millie’s fragile grandmother, exists on her own, separate plane of reality until death. While all characters inhabit the same stage, their performances create a collage of alternate spaces, with each operating in entire separation from the others. The chilled distance between child and adult creates an unnerving atmosphere for the audience watching the protagonists grow up with little guidance.
More to the point, Millie and Finley act more as spectators in their own show. They observe from a distance, save for the here-and-there snippets of conversation with their family members. Their existence is an insular one where their presence is solely delegated by beck and call for strictly Norman Rockwell purposes of creating the perfect, Southern gatherings of “knee-high to a grasshopper” conversations with adults that Posey wishes to impress. As children, they are often the perfect picture of “seen and not heard”conversation starters over cocktails in the card room. The closest, warmest relationship in the book is between Millie and Finley alone.
But even this relationship meets an unfortunate end, and everything the now adult Millie thought was set in stone is turned upside down. Players in the dramatic tragedy switch roles faster than your favorite daytime soap opera. Fullerton beautifully sums up the lessons from this novel with a single line: “Perhaps we’ll discover great meaning as we look back and realize we handled the same history in two different ways.” The single grain of hopeful truth Mourning Dove offers at its bitter end is this: the truth is multidimensional. Even two people with twin experiences will come to forks in the road and separate into paralleled experiences.
Fullerton’s novel will transcend generations for this reason. It speaks to readers across different barriers in the same way that her novel oscillates. North to South. Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial. The hard-learned lessons she captures know no boundaries and have no mercies. Mourning Dove is a novel we not only read, but listen to as we would a teacher filled hard won wisdom.

Why I wrote Mourning Dove

I feel funny writing a review about my own book, and yet I'll take the opportunity to share why I wrote Mourning Dove. Plain and simply, I grew up in Memphis, in an era that I think was run by the last of the great Southern belles. Most of them are gone from the South, now, as am I, for I now live in Malibu, California. I have a conflicted relationship with the South. It's a strange mixture of gratitude for having outgrown it and weepy nostalgia for the place in which I came of age. I can't say if I'm nostalgic for the actual place or if it's nostalgia for the innocence and endless possibilities that one carries in youth, but emotionally, I think they're tied together. It's the people of Memphis I miss the most, and when I think of Memphis, I think of its women. Never was there a cast of more glittering woman than those who populated my youth. They were fun, dynamic, refined, and rarely serious. They walked like queens and spoke in lyrical tones so compelling that I'm offended by other accents to this day. I set Mourning Dove in 1970's and 1980's Memphis because, back then, the particular Southern, social milieu was rife with nuance and tradition anchored by southern matriarchs who ran the social strata. I did not write about the side of the South where people drive pick-up trucks down dirt roads to the family farm while dodging a coon dog or two, I wanted to write about that side of the South that was coiffed and manicured; where people had an innate elegance that mattered. There is much to be drawn in a setting such as this, and what fascinated me most growing up was the cultural way of denial. In the Memphis I knew, they kept things light and airy. If something was unpleasant or unseemly, it simply wasn't discussed. But what of two siblings born up north who come to the Deep South as outsiders? And how can they share the same history yet come to disparate ends? What unhinging happens in the delicate wiring of one but somehow misses the other? Is it nature or nature, and how are we to ever know? In the end, all one is left with is the story. This was my aim in writing Mourning Dove. Always and forever, it will all come down to the story.

Mourning Dove

Reviews are coming in for Mourning Dove, a coming-of-age Southern family saga set in 1970's and 1980's Memphis, which has a release date of June 29, and is now on Amazon for pre-order. Mourning Dove will be available in print, audiobook and e-book. What makes Mourning Dove different is that it is set in the Deep South-- not the shanty side of the South, where people drive pick-up trucks on dirt roads, but the opulent side of the South, the side that's manicured and glitters in illusory gold, where all is not as it seems! Millie Crossan tells the story of growing up with her charismatic brother, Finley. They are outsiders to the South, and therefore their viewpoint is reliable as the siblings find their way to belonging in a nuanced society steeped in tradition and social mores rife with eccentricities. But what hidden variables arise to see the siblings come to such desperate ends?


Here's what author Johnnie Bernhard had to say:

With a strong sense of place and an authentic voice, Claire Fullerton captures the longing and angst of an aristocratic Southern family. The narrator Millie and her brother, Finley will stay with readers long after this novel is read. Mourning Dove is smart, well-written Southern Fiction.

Pat Conroy's assistant editor, Margaret Shinn Evans wrote: "Set against the backdrop of a complicated 1970s South – one both forward-looking and still in love with the past – and seen through the eyes of a Minnesota girl struggling to flourish in Memphis society, ‘Mourning Dove’ is the story of two unforgettable siblings with a bond so strong even death can’t break it. Claire Fullerton has given us a wise, relatable narrator in Millie. Like a trusted friend, she guides us through the confounding tale of her dazzling brother Finley, their beguiling mother Posey, and a town where shiny surfaces often belie reality. Like those surfaces, Fullerton’s prose sparkles even as she leads us into dark places, posing profound questions without any easy answers."

Author Laura Lane McNeal, who wrote the bestseller, Dollbaby says: In Mourning Dove, Claire Fullerton deftly weaves the story of a Memphis family into a fine fabric laden with delicious intricacy and heart. A true Southern storyteller.

Read more on Mourning Dove's Good Reads page.

Whiskey and Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith

The title Whiskey and Ribbons is derived from a toast delivered by Eamon, one of three narrators in this psychological treatment of love spun unexpectedly and repercussively awry. “Women, you are sleek and gorgeous. You hold us together, you’re the ribbons,” Eamon says, yet we hear this speech as his brother, Dalton’s, memory, for the reader learns at the start that the toast maker is dead. Eamon and Dalton have grown up together as brothers, yet the ties that bind are unusual and not honestly revealed for what they are until well into the story. Author Leesa Cross-Smith holds the reader captive in language so creative and au currant that we identify with both well-drawn characters and readily understand why Eamon’s wife, Evangeline, weighs issues of loyalty between the two charismatic young men, though one is alive and the other is dead. That Evangeline is a new mother, having given birth to Eamon’s son after his death as an officer in the line of duty is the dilemma, for who is she to turn to in her prostrate grief but a brother-in-law who equally grieves? Three vantage points are entwined to tell this one story of familial connections, in a seamlessly crafted, roiling momentum that will have you thinking they each have a justifiable point. All praise this spell-binding debut author. Leesa Cross-Smith has penned an uncommon novel in a voice you won’t easily forget.

How We Came to Be by Johnnie Bernhard

How We Came to Be is a triumph of order from chaos as told in the most accessible first-person voice I’ve had the good fortune to come across in ages. I was under narrator Karen Anders’ spell from the first because author Johnnie Bernhard came out swinging by gifting the reader with this engaging novel’s premise by the third page. Karen doesn’t look good on paper. She is a fifty-year-old, high school English teacher living in Houston; a divorced, single mother facing empty-nest syndrome, well aware of her dependency on alcohol, but nowhere near ready to quit. Why should she? Karen’s life is a mess. One would think this is a recipe for a down on its heels story, but the reader is captivated by Karen’s tell-it-as-it-is persona and—dare I say it, identifies when Karen summarizes her circumstances by confessing, “I’m hating every moment, but pretending I’m having the time of my life.” When I got to this line, I knew I was hooked.
We all have that sardonic friend who manages to smile through the egg on her face. This is Karen in a nutshell, and she keeps on keeping on, trying for the upper hand, while her adopted daughter, Tiffany’s first three months away at college become a study in bad choices, of which Karen has no say beyond putting out the fires. Karen’s dilemma is a common one and raises the question of how to be an effective single parent without chasing her daughter away.
In the meantime, back at the empty nest, Karen knows she must forge a life beyond the rat-wheel of predictable sameness centered on her Houston high school’s schedule. In an uncanny act of timing, Karen’s world is widened when she is befriended by WW11 Hungarian refugee, Leona Supak from across the street, and an unlikely alliance is formed that challenges Karen to grow. Having been single for decades and barely hanging on, it probably isn’t the best time for a man to come into Karen’s life, yet when Matt Broussard pursues the surprised Karen in an Austin bar, she thinks, maybe?
How We Came to Be is a brass-tacks, contemporary story without a moment of campy pretention. The events are cause and effect, but the story is what goes on in the likable Karen’s head. She is not so much a victim of circumstances as she is a neophyte at growing into her own. How We Came to Be is the story of a woman drowning in deep waters, who has the sense to learn how to swim.
I applaud author Johnnie Bernhard for her wizardry in crafting this perfectly paced story in a voice so unique and compelling. This is a book to read and return to. It is perfect for book clubs because there is so much in it to discuss!

My Exaggerated Life: Pat Conroy as told to Katherine Clark

Oh, the gift of this delightful book. The thing about Pat Conroy is those who get him really get him and can never get enough. It has been repeatedly written that readers feel as if they know him. That he wrote in the first person was part of what spawned the relationship between Conroy and his readers, the rest of it is that he had an uncanny way of unabashedly calling things by name and spoke for us. And any Conroy devotee knew he was healing his shattered history by veiling it in fiction. We knew it and didn’t care because not only was he charming, he was a master storyteller. Conroy wrote from the center of his sardonic personality. Once he had you, he dove down to universal truth and brought you to your knees. This business of life is not for the meek, he suggested, but there is rhyme to it, poetry, in fact, and in his fiction, he figured out how to survive it.
My Exaggerated Life gives us the man behind the curtain. On its cover is Conroy wearing his infamous flight jacket and Citadel ring, which his fans will recognize as symbols of his personal narrative. Conroy was that kind of writer. His books were mind-altering drugs and his readers were addicts who had to have more. Katherine Clark has given us more in what seems to me a labor of love. That she spent two hundred hours listening to Conroy spill out his life over the telephone to assemble this book makes me jealous, but I’ll overlook that in favor of the resounding result.
What struck me most in reading My Exaggerated Life was the realization that there was no separating the man from his craft. It’s Conroy’s voice that does it. In these pages speaks a storyteller of the highest order telling an incredibly entertaining story, it just so happens to be culled from a series of events in his life. You can intuit the haphazard way he stumbled from cause to effect as his writing career took shape. Reading Conroy’s books always made me feel they were born without effort, so to discover in this riveting book just where the struggle had been hit me as staggering—not because parts were painful to read, but because he framed it in such a human way that readers will think, you too?
At the end of My Exaggerated Life, Katherine Clark shares the speech Pat Conroy delivered spontaneously before a crowd of adoring fans in Beaufort, South Carolina at his 70th birthday celebration. In it, Conroy claims “What I wanted to be as a writer, I wanted to be a complete brave man that I am not in my real life.” He did just this in My Exaggerated Life. In an act of bravery, Pat Conroy told his story, and author Katherine Clark captured it in a book that is one for the archives.

An American Marriage: Book Review

Stark, vivid, real, and gritty, these are the words that spring to mind upon reflecting on An American Marriage. Author Tayari Jones takes the premise of an unjust, nightmarish turn of fate and unfurls a novel length treatise on a budding marriage systematically derailed, when a year and a half into marriage, Roy is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. It is a modern marriage, and newlyweds Roy Jr. and Celestial have promising careers on the rise. Roy is a young business executive, who aspires to setting his artisan wife up in business as the maker of novelty dolls in her own Atlanta shop. The couple is in the exhilarating throes of reconciling their fiercely independent natures with their unified plans for the future. They are ambitious, deeply in love, and navigating their marital positions, when an insignificant tiff arises while on vacation, and their life is irrevocably changed outside their hotel room from their mutually declared, fifteen-minute time-out.
Whether it is the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the suspicions levied on Roy as a black man in the South, justice is not immediately served when Roy is falsely accused of a crime. As time ekes by during Roy’s twelve-year sentence, Celestial gets her career off the ground, while Roy remains stuck behind bars. Issues of commitment and fidelity under duress evolve, as Celestial finds comfort in the arms of her and Roy’s mutual friend, Andre, then reasonable expectations are called to the fore when a love triangle unwittingly grows. When Roy is released five years into his sentence, the three main characters in An American Marriage take stock of their current standing. They are individuals with differing vantage points within the confines of a tribal whole.
With laser sharp insight into human nature, Tayari Jones gifts the reader with three plausible, first person narratives in this intertwined story of cause and effect set upon the fertile ground of modern day black culture. Her language is paradoxically direct and textured as she probes the innerworkings of characters wrestling with issues of appropriate placement, under the weight of delineating sacrificial right from self-serving wrong.
An American Marriage is a gripping story, disquieting in its tenable premise and gripping with tense urgency on every page during its search for apportioned equilibrium. It is a powerfully written, brilliantly crafted novel for the discerning reader, and a thought provoking treasure for book club discussions.