Claire on Melting Clocks and Magical Masquerade

Claire’s short stories and poetry have been published in a number of literary journals and magazines, including The Lonely Crowd and The Ghastling. To date, she has published two middle-grade novels, Magical Masquerade (2017) and its sequel, Phantom Phantasia (2018), for children aged between 8-12 years old.

She has also written a new, standalone children’s novel for the same age group, which will be published in early 2021, and is currently planning her first novel for adults.

In January 2020, along with fellow author, Kelly Creighton, she set up a new community organisation (Sesheta) aimed at showcasing new Northern Irish writing. As part of this, Claire and Kelly are co-editing a Christmas-themed short story anthology Underneath the Tree, which will be published in November. Claire also hosts the Giant’s Causeway Book Club (currently via Zoom) every month on behalf of the National Trust.

Q. What is your favourite song/album and why?

A. My favourite album probably has to be Origin of Symmetry by MUSE. It combines the melancholy rock of their first album with a lot more instrumentals and classical sounds which, along with Matt Bellamy’s falsetto vocals, is just brilliant. This was their second album and it didn’t surprise me to learn later on that Bellamy was heavily inspired by Freddie Mercury and Queen – another of my favourite bands and vocalist. I like the fact that although both bands are generally classed as being rock, they also manage to include various other genres in their music as well. They aren’t afraid of being adventurous and they embody a mixture of styles, while still having their own distinctive sound.

Q. What is your favourite film and why?

A. The film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book, Stardust, (with Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Charlie Cox) is one of my favourite films as it combines adventure, mystery, magic, humour and high stakes, so it has a bit of everything that I enjoy. It also has a great soundtrack. That being said, another favourite film is the cult classic, Withnail & I, with Richard E Grant and Paul McGann. I love everything about it.

Q. What is your favourite piece of classical music and why?

A. Méditation from Thaïs by the French composer Jules Massenet is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. It’s written for solo violin and orchestra and I like it because it’s melancholy and dramatic, very evocative and full of emotion, like all good music should be. It gives me goose-bumps every time I hear it. I play a bit of violin myself and love listening to violin music, so this is a piece that I aspire to play...some day!

Another favourite, also led by violin, is the famous tango piece, Por Una Cabeza, by composer/singer Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Le Pera (lyricist).

Q. Who is your favourite artist (eg van Gogh) and why?

A. I’ve always liked Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky’s abstract artwork, especially his later pieces. I love the mix of (usually bright) colours that he used and the fact that you generally always see something different when you look at a piece of his art. I also like that he referred to them as compositions and that music influenced how he created his art.

Another favourite is the Spanish artist, Salvador Dalí, whose surrealist work I also really like. It’s known for being a bit bizarre and I can’t say I like (or have seen) everything he’s done, but I enjoy a lot of his paintings and was excited to see some of his sculptures at the Art in the Garden exhibition at the Culloden Hotel last summer (2019). It featured the largest ever display of Dalí’s work in Ireland, with sculptures shipped in from the Dalí Universe in Switzerland, including the famous ‘Melting Clocks’ and his ‘Lady Godiva with Butterflies’ piece.

Q. What is your favourite play and why?

A. I have to admit that there are a lot of well-known plays I haven’t actually seen...but one of my favourites is Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. It’s an Elizabethan tragedy and again, seems to fulfil my love of all things magic and tragic! You know things can never end well when Faustus summons Mephastophilis, a devil, so that he can go beyond the knowledge he’s already acquired and learn magic, but you can’t help watching him seal his fate.

A more modern play which I’ve read, but unfortunately haven’t seen performed, is Peter and Alice by John Logan. We actually read it for the GC Book Club last year. It’s very short and is based on a real-life meeting between 80-year-old Alice Liddell (who inspired Alice in Wonderland) and Peter Llewelyn Davies (‘Peter Pan’), then in his thirties, when they met at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in a London bookshop in 1932. The play is an imagination of what they might have said to one another.

Q. What is your favourite musical and why?

A. I’ll choose a classic – The Sound of Music. It still amazes me when I meet people who have never seen this film, as I saw it countless times throughout my childhood and if it’s on TV I’ll usually get sucked in to watching it again. Most of my family has a love of musicals – growing up, when I visited my aunts and maternal grandmother, there would almost always have been a musical on in the background, either a video or on the TV. The Sound of Music has great songs and a compelling story, made all the more fascinating when, as a youngster, you realised it was actually based on truth.

Q. What is your most special moment in the arts and why?

A. I’ve had lots of special moments where I’ve met authors and other artists I admire but I think my most special moment in the arts has to be realising my dream of publishing my own novels. I built up to that over many years and didn’t think I’d ever actually do it, despite it having been an aspiration when I was growing up.

When I became a journalist, it was great to have stories published in newspapers and then I was inspired to start writing fiction again. I got some short stories and poetry published in literary journals, along with Arts Council NI funding support, which all meant a lot, but when I finally published my first children’s novel in 2017 (Magical Masquerade), that was even more special. Particularly when children who had read it then told me how much they enjoyed it.

Q. What ‘classic’ just doesn’t do it for you?

A. The film, It’s a Wonderful Life. I know the message is meant to be uplifting – and it is in the respect that James Stewart’s character is prevented from taking his own life and realises his worth in his family and community but...when I watched it, all I saw was a man who had to give up on his dreams. I found that very sad. From what I remember (as I haven’t watched it since!) Stewart’s character always wanted to travel but he was repeatedly thwarted in his efforts to get away and, eventually, he gave up on this dream.

Q. What have you been reading/watching/listening to/revisiting during the Coronavirus period?

A. I’m a big reader but at the start of lockdown, I found myself distracted and unable to concentrate, so even I found it difficult to focus on reading books! I decided to download the Libby App, which allows you to access audiobooks and e-books from Libraries Northern Ireland. I listened to quite a few audiobooks, including Supper Club by Lara Williams, Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak.

I’ve since migrated back to physical books and have read lots of really good fiction and non-fiction recently – including Diary of a Young Naturalist by Northern Irish teenager, Dara McAnulty.

Things I’ve enjoyed watching during the pandemic have been mostly repeats of programmes I enjoyed in the past, such as the two BBC TV series, Ashes to Ashes and Merlin, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.