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Tag: CF Dunn

  • Forgiveness Fridays: Reconciliation and forgiveness by CF Dunn

    When I consider those who construct fictional worlds seemingly from thin air, I’m in awe. For the stories we read move us, touching us in deep places that perhaps nonfiction cannot reach – or at least in a strikingly different way. Claire Dunn shares how her five-book series explores some of the truths of the heart – including forgiveness.

    And throughout all Eternity
    I forgive you, you forgive me.
    As our dear Redeemer said:
    “This the Wine, and this the Bread.”
    –William Blake

    Fiona Lloyd wrote movingly last week about learning to forgive herself and knowing she is beloved by God with all her human flaws. This is something that has also preoccupied me as a writer as I explore the lives of fictional characters and reflect upon my own.

    The need to forgive touches the very heart of us and is not merely a form of words, but an act of love and understanding. There are many calls on us to forgive: the ill-judged words that unwittingly wound, the book lent and not returned, the thank you letter unwritten – small things in themselves that leave no lasting sting, but still require a ‘sorry’ or a hug. But how can someone forgive a grievous offence, a life-changing event, or a slight intended to destroy?

    This is something explored in The Secret of the Journal series, where young Emma D’Eresby has cocooned herself in her world of work as a historian. She is fleeing from her past and finds refuge in the lives of other people. History cannot hurt you, she says; it is dead and gone. However, detached from the world, she has failed to face the truth about her own past as if by leaving it unvoiced it would somehow be forgotten, and in being forgotten lack the potency to hurt. But, like a festering wound that needs to be scoured, Emma had to examine her relationships with her own history before she can finally heal.

    Emma knows she is redeemed, she understands why, but she does not feel it deep inside, and she has come to rely on her own resources. She has built a fictional world around herself in which she can hide from God and from herself. Or so she thinks. Only when she is shaken from the safety of her bubble by a string of events does she begin to face the truth. Looking the demons of her past in the eye is the first step towards healing inside out, and she forgives those who have hurt her most. Yet, while Emma is able to forgive others, she reserves judgment for herself, for how can she be forgiven when she cannot look at God in case she sees condemnation there? She has missed the point.

    I wrote The Secret of the Journal series as romantic mystery-suspense laced with history, but at its very heart lies a tale of acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

    The act of forgiving is a gift. Forgiveness lies within for how can you absolve another if you have not first forgiven yourself? Love is not our own, but a state of grace bestowed on us by a loving God. Forgiveness is a two-way deal.

    Writing as CF Dunn, Claire Dunn is a Christian novelist writing historical and contemporary suspense fiction for the general market. Her debut novel Mortal Fire – published by Lion Fiction – won the gold medal for adult romance in the Book Of The Year Awards, 2012, and was nominated for Best Novel by CRT in the same year.

    Alongside her first loves of family, history and writing, CF Dunn is passionate about the education and welfare of children with dyslexia, autism and communication difficulties, and runs a special needs school, which she founded in Kent with her husband.

    Book five of The Secret of the Journal series – Fearful Symmetry – was recently released in the UK and USA, bringing the series to a heart-stopping conclusion. She is currently writing the first book in a Medieval suspense trilogy and drinking too much coffee.

  • Grounded by CF Dunn

    No Place Like HomeI love Claire Dunn’s post today, not least because she highlights the truth about home being about people more than places. A poignant reminder to ponder in days of uncertainty.

    Home. Now there’s a funny thing. It’s a word we use with abandon – ‘no place like home’, ‘home is where the heart is’, ‘home-from-home’ – and home is something we tend to take for granted without thinking about it too much.

    Finding balance.
    Finding balance.

    As the offspring of an RAF pilot, I had many homes when growing up. Until the age of eleven, we moved every two and a half years. No sooner had I settled in one house, than my mother would be up to her elbows in newspaper, wrapping up our world to move to the next. As a child, I had no say in the matter, of course, I just went with the flow. My family was my home and my world, and I moved with it.

    Shared memories.
    Shared memories.

    But as a young teen, I became more aware of myself in relation to the world around me – the people, the places, the things – and a growing realisation that I belonged… nowhere. History has always been important to me, perhaps because I felt I had none myself, and a knowledge of the past helped me feel rooted. I searched for meaning, for something to help me feel anchored. At first it was my grandparents’ house in Stamford, and the long history that tied our family to the area. I dreaded the time when we might no longer have any links there, spending hours fretting over the future. And then, one day, my grandmother died, the house was sold, and the last cord that gave me some semblance of stability – of identity – vanished. I felt bereft, displaced, lost.

    I turned next to a small and insignificant village in North Cornwall – somewhere generations of my extended family had visited for nearly a hundred years and where I went as often as school holidays allowed. There, I spent happy weeks with my family, my cousins, and cousins of cousins, knowing every tree bent by the sea wind, every rock and every pool. The people in the local town became friends, and I felt more rooted there than anywhere else in the country. Oh, how important it is to be able to identify with a culture, to be able to say you come from somewhere – to belong.

    We are family.
    We are family.

    But, as I attained adulthood and had my own family, I came to realise that vital though roots are, I needed more to grow. I had become a Christian at the age of eighteen, and felt free for the first time in my life knowing that I had a home in Christ. It wasn’t as simple as that, of course – life didn’t suddenly become easier, but He became my bedrock and helped me change my perspective on life.

    I still have a yearning to belong somewhere – to a place, a time, a thing – but it isn’t overwhelming. Instead I treasure the memories I have with my family and the new ones we forge. This is what matters – the history we create. We have a shared history that will continue long after I’m gone and as such, I will always belong.

    IMGP8602Writing as CF Dunn, Claire Dunn is a Christian novelist writing historical and contemporary suspense fiction for the general market. Her debut novel Mortal Fire – published by Lion Fiction – won the gold medal for adult romance in the Book Of The Year Awards, 2012, and was nominated for Best Novel by CRT in the same year.

    Alongside her first loves of family, history and writing, CF Dunn is passionate about the education and welfare of children with dyslexia, autism and communication difficulties, and runs a special needs school, which she founded in Kent with her husband.

    Book four – Realm of Darkness – was recently released in the UK, and The Secret Of The Journal series comes to a heart-stopping conclusion with the publication of book five, Fearful Symmetry, this September.

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