Claire Fullerton - Writer
Claire Fullerton
Author
Claire Fullerton hails from Memphis, TN. and now lives in Malibu, California. She is the multiple award-winning author of four, traditionally published novels and one novella. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including Southern Writers Magazine and Celtic Life International . She is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Literary Agency.
BOOKS
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Little Tea
One phone call from Renny to come home and “see about” the capricious Ava and Celia Wakefield decides to overlook her distressful past in the name of friendship.
For three reflective days at Renny’s lake house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, the three childhood friends reunite and examine life, love, marriage, and the ties that bind, even though Celia’s personal story has yet to be healed.
When the past arrives at the lake house door in the form of her old boyfriend, Celia revisits the life she’d tried to outrun.
As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family’s ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years.
Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if friendship can triumph over history.
Awards in 2020:
1st Place Outstanding Literary/General Fiction The Independent Authors Network
2nd place Book of the Year: The Independent Authors Network
Gold Medal Winner in Southern Fiction: Readers' Favorite
1st Place in the Chanticleer Reviews Somerset Awards for Literary Fiction
The Pulpwood Queens August Book Club Selection
Deep South Magazine's 2020 Summer Reading list
Featured in Mississippi Magazine
Finalist in the International Book Awards
Finalist in the 2020 Kindle Book Awards.
"Finley fascinated me. I used to study him—the way he walked, the way he talked, the way the air changed around him. He was absolutely something. But here’s what bothers me -Finley’s in heaven, and I don’t know why. "
Millie Crossan loves Finley, her golden, blue-eyed brother who hung the moon. What she can't understand, however, is why he died so young.
Reminiscing on a fractured childhood that began in Minnesota and dovetailed into Memphis, Millie ponders how she and Finley navigated the social mores of their mother’s native land as outsiders in a singing milieu that glittered in the south’s cultural nuance. In this manicured world, little is as it seems, yet Finley is so gifted with charisma and insight that together, brother and sister find their way to belonging.
But what mysterious elements shape fate into a life? And how can siblings share a history, yet come to such disparate ends?
Mourning Dove
Dancing to an Irish Reel
Dancing to an Irish Reel is contemporary fiction and tells the story of twenty five year old Hailey Crossan, who takes a trip to Ireland during her sabbatical from the Los Angeles record business. While on the trip, she is unexpectedly offered a job in the Irish music business that is too good to turn down, so Hailey stays.
Although Hailey works in Galway City, she lives in the rural area of Connemara, a land steeped in history as well as an area famous for its Irish traditional music. When Hailey meets a famous Irish traditional musician named Liam Hennessey, a confusing relationship begins, which Hailey thinks may be the result of differing cultural nuances, for Liam is married to the music, and so unbalanced at the prospect of love, that he won't come closer nor completely go away. And so begins the push and pull of an attraction that Hailey struggles to decipher. Thankfully, a handful of local friends come to her aid, and Hailey comes to love and understand a land and its people with more charm than she ever imagined.
Claire Fullerton’s second novel, Dancing to an Irish Reel, set in Connemara, Ireland tells thestory of 25 year old American, Hailey Crossan, who leaves the record business in Los Angeles and relocates to the beautiful west of Ireland, where she is befriended by a lively cast of Irish locals who help her navigate her budding romance with a famous Irish musician, who won’t come closer, nor completely go away.
Claire's novella, Through an Autumn Window, is included as one of four novellas in the book, A Southern Season. The book was released in November 1, 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction.
A Southern Season
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BIO
Claire Fullerton is the author of four novels and one novella. Her southern family saga set in 1970's Memphis, Mourning Dove (Firefly Southern Fiction) was a five-time book award winner and a semi-finalist in the Faulkner Society's 2017 William Wisdom international competition. Claire's novel Dancing to an Irish Reel (Vinspire Publishing) was a 2016 Kindle Books Review winner in cultural fiction and a 2016 Readers' Favorite finalist. She is the author of paranormal mystery, A Portal in Time (Vinspire Publishing) and a contributor to the book A Southern Season, with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, set a southern funeral in Memphis. Her fourth novel, Little Tea, is a 2018 Faulkner Society finalist in the William Wisdom International competition. Her work has appeared in Southern Writers Magazine, Celtic Life International, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Women on Writing and The Glorious Table. Little Tea was released in May 2020.