Through the Elements

Feb 22

Posted by

Ruth Finnegan Author Interview

Fire Pearl follows a woman who must face her utmost fears on the path to rekindling a lost love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

It is the fourth installment of a series that arrived like the others at night, in that liminal space when you’re neither awake nor asleep yet both, and that we call, for short, dreaming. Having travelled with/as Kate through the elements of earth, air, and water now it is time to test her with fire. The other drive/parable/ inspiration was an African tale that I recorded many years ago in Sierra Leone.

Do you have a favorite scene in Fire Pearl? One that was especially enjoyable to craft?

I can’t remember “crafting” it, it was just there, but the first scene that comes to mind is when she/I am on a solid strong wooden boat, knowing that it’s a sure firm steadfast way to get away on the sea from the fire, forever reliable, and then I begin to feel the solid wood of the boat below me warm and I realise that that, too, is the fire (a parable for sure of one aspect of our lives)

Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?

YES – the agonising regret while still chained ( not unhappily) to where I was, the realisation that I was other than I had had always thought I was, and then the failure to recognise him when I had found him.

Can fans look forward to a fifth installment in this series? Where will it take readers?

YES, the next volume in the Kate-Pearl epic series: always the same story / myth of Kate rejecting her offered love and realising her mistake, searching for him through all the elements of the universe; next, having gone through fire for him she faces the fifth element (in Chinese philosophy), wood – in Kate’s experience it is trees (“Pearl in the deep wood”) – I’ll leave you to find the scintillating swaying swerving details.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon

On a stormy Irish strand, Kate runs in panic from from her would-be lover’s kiss ( “I am too young!”). Years later she hears a terrifying African story about a girl leaping into a fire to save her beloved from death, and realises she had rejected the one man she deeply loved and must seek him through heaven and earth or die in the attempt. She is accompanied in her search – sometimes helped, sometimes threateningly challenged – by the multiple flickering flames of Fire that surround her. She knows her love is on the other side of a hotly burning forest fire but whatever route she tries – around the forest, up through the stars, swimming through the ocean that circles the earth and the hidden archive in its bottomless depths – she cannot reach him, Finally, having at last sufficiently tested her love, The Flames direct her to go on a terrifying route down down down through the countless aeons of geologic time to the deep, hidden, fire that energises the earth, and that is at the same time the central spark of her own being. There she finds Vulcan and his smiths working with molten iron on their red-hot anvil. There too is the eternally scorching fire into which she must plunge to find Him. Fire Pearl is the fourth volume in the literary, poetic-prose, Kate-Pearl epic series: The Black Inked Pearl, The Helix Pearl (as told by the wine-dark garrulous sea), Pearl of the Wind (in preparation), and the fairytale prequel The Fijian Pearl; two more volumes are planned (coming, like the others, in dreams) but not yet written. All tell basically the same mythic tale but from different perspectives. A mythical story of two lovers whose connection transcends space and time [that] weaves together biblical allusions, fantasy, and details of the modern day (KIRKUS Review of “The Black Inked Pearl” )

Posted on February 22, 2025, in Interviews and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.