About:
Claire embraces all the arts from painting and design to literature. She’s an award-winning author, artist, designer and all-around creative. Her love of writing allows her to build the complicated worlds she envisions as well as create the emotional story layers and characters that crowd her dreams. Influences flow from her coastal life and travels from California to New York, across Europe and the far East, and up to the Pacific Northwest where she now reside. Beaches, mountains, rolling hills. If the air she breathes has a spray of salt or a waft of pine, she’s in her happy place. Her heart also loves a city, new or old. Spare time adventures include traveling, following Formula 1 racing new and classic, walking, yoga, meditation, and swimming. A gifted intuitive and clairvoyant, she is adept at astrology and tarot. She’s an ENFP, a rebellious big picture Aquarian sun, a mama bear Cancer rising and a fired-up Aries moon. Writing poetry and gardening soothes her soul. Despite difficult side roads through auto-immune disease, cancer, PTSD and TBI, she is currently thriving on her journey through life. She lives near Seattle with her two wonder kittens, Lio and Luna, who have momentarily stunted her tendency to wander and travel for inspiration. Her human babies are now grown and just as fearless and open to life as their adventurous mother.
Bio:
Claire studied for her BA at the University of Washington majoring in apparel design and costume studies with a minor in English and followed up with an AAS in fashion design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. While attending FIT, she was chosen for the exclusive Design Studio and won awards for her designs through both school competitions and industry contests. She is a current and past member of SCBWI, PNWA, WFWA, SIWC, Manuscript Academy, Creative Academy and Hugo House. She was a 2018 PNWA winner for her co-written YA dystopian fantasy trilogy. As a fine artist, she creates watercolor, monoprint, and oil paintings on commission. Her award-winning work has been showcased in galleries, juried competitions and art shows over the years. Her careers have included fashion designer, wardrobe and costumer for print and movies, interior designer, stylist, brand designer, home stager, fine artist, printmaker, and most importantly—mom. Let’s just say she makes a bad ass Halloween costume.
Favorites:
Movies and TV: Schitt’s Creek, Ted Lasso, Sex Education, Drive to Survive, Formula 1, Emily in Paris, The Last of Us, Lost, Younger, Fleabag, Sound of Music, Stranger Things, Only Murders in the Building, GOT, Mandalorian, The Office, The Thing, Blade Runner, Rear Window, anything Greta Gerwig or Phoebe Waller Bridges touches.
Literature: Station 11, The Midnight Library, Ordinary People, Lonesome Dove, Jane Austen, Gone Girl, Kiley Reid, Gregory Maguire, Gillian McAllister, Lucy Foley, Erin Morgenstern, HG Wells, The Wizard of Oz, The Light We Lost, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Ruth Ware, Mary Doria Russell, Tana French, Louisa Mae Alcott, Phillip Pullman, Lewis Carroll.
A memoirish fictional story set in 1984
That Summer in Monaco
When memories of a fated love affair with an Italian Formula 1 driver are triggered, a young clairvoyant fashion designer channels the source of her grief and faces the trauma that derailed her life and career—a past her family wants her to forget.
1987
I must have stuffed the anguish—any thoughts of you—far away beneath the cage of my ribs, buried deep within the layers of my pathetically hopeless being. Your impeccable well-bred manners, the fine character that held you together, the nervous way you incessantly talked. How your accent trilled over my name, like a warm caress, every time you said it. Your serene intelligence, your unique complexity, the smoky sunbaked smell of you, that achingly beautiful gaze. Those incredible lips. Oh my god those lips. Please.
The way your body moved the moment you heard any kind of music and your complete obsession with Supertramp. How your Latin temper would explode for all the right reasons and the fact that your friends and even enemies couldn’t help but adore you. Your laugh. Those dimples. The swoosh of hair that wouldn’t stay put. Even the stump of your birdy flip finger, under a dirty band-aid, you always kept hidden.
All the perfectly brilliant and wonderfully flawed parts.
Deeper still lies the feel of the warm Cote d’Azur sun, the pebbly sand, and how the outside of your toe felt as it slid up my ankle. An abrasive stroke that made my pores want to break open and absorb all the bits of you into my blood. The indented place between your shoulder blades, a slip of taut bone and sleek sinew that appeared when you leaned forward toward the deep aqua bay. On the beach Hercules carved and left for us.
And at the core, an imprint, an infusion of your heat that enlivened my soul and quickened my heart. Somehow, my tricky brain must have told me it was just a small moment in time. Over before it began. Not worth the recall. This is my unwinding, the lost threads, the moment in time when our twin souls collided that summer and the story of how I came to forget.
What People Are Saying
“This breathtaking story delves deep into the complexities of love, loss, and the indomitable human spirit. With its raw honesty and heartfelt characters, it’s a journey that will leave you both shattered and uplifted, reminding you of the profound beauty found in life’s greatest challenges.”
— Robyn Dabney author of The Ascenditure
“I actually reread the whole book while I was at the Grand Prix Montreal to get into the glam headspace—I’m not kidding when I say I loved it even more the second time!”
— Riley Girmann F1 content creator and TG1F Creative Director
“That Summer in Monaco cracks open the liminal, aching space between forgetting and remembering. This story of a life interrupted reveals heartbreaking truths and a soul-stirring connection. The fragile, yet indomitable love lingers long after reading the final page.”
— Jill Murry author of The Glimmering Sea
