BLAST, BLITZ, PROMOS, REVEALS, & TOURS . . . : SPOTLIGHT Audio w/CHARACTER INTERVIEW - CONTEMPORARY - The Art of Remembering by Alison Ragsdale

THE ART OF REMEMBERING

by Alison Ragsdale
Narrator: Heather McRae
Length: 11 hours 49 minutes

Released: September 23rd 2019

Publisher: Alison Ragsdale
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Professional ballerina Ailsa MacIntyre is at the peak of her career when her world is shattered by a shocking diagnosis. Life-saving surgery leaves her with a fractured memory, little recollection of her husband, Evan, and none of her career as a principal dancer.

While recuperating at home, Ailsa hears beautiful music coming from the apartment upstairs, and the sound of the grand piano at the hands of a talented new neighbor sparks her muscle memory. As her recovery progresses, the broken pieces of her past gradually re-emerge, a picture not quite as idyllic as Evan would have her remember. Ailsa must navigate the conflicting visions of her past, and potential future, as they collide.

Q&A with Protagonist Ailsa

How would you describe the feeling of being on stage?
- Like floating, but scarier. It’s an adrenaline rush, the sense of looking out at an audience you can’t see, but being totally under their scrutiny. There’s something magical about the fear, though, because it becomes almost addictive.

When did you first know that you wanted to be a dancer?
- At the age of nine. I’d started ballet classes at five, and never looked back.

Why didn’t you stand up to your mother sooner about her pushing you so hard?
- Because she had sacrificed a lot for me, and I knew she thought she was doing the best she could to prepare me for life as a professional dancer. Even though she was hard at times, it came from love, so as a young woman I found it hard to go against her, or to disappoint her.

When did you know for sure that Sam was the man for you?
- When we sat on his floor and ate strudel. That was the day he told me about his wife. There was something so endearing in how much he had loved her, I knew there was real depth to him – real caring. It touched my heart deeply.

If you could go back and change anything, what would it be?
- I don’t think I’d change much, because I believe that we end up where we’re meant to be. The choices we make, whether in retrospect we think them good or bad, get us to where we are now, and I wouldn’t change anything about that.

Are there any roles you’d liked to have danced that you didn’t?
- Yes. I always wanted to dance The Firebird, from Rite of Spring, to Stravinsky’s score. It never happened, though.

A former professional dancer, and marketing executive, originally from Edinburgh, Alison now lives near Washington DC with her husband and dog. She was educated in England and holds an MBA from Leicester University. Alison is the author of five, bestselling novels: TUESDAY'S SOCKS, THE FATHER-DAUGHTER CLUB, FINDING HEATHER, A LIFE UNEXPECTED and THE ART OF REMEMBERING. She is also a two-time IPPY Award winner with THE FATHER DAUGHTER CLUB being awarded the IPPY 2016, Bronze Medal for Best Regional Fiction - Europe, and A LIFE UNEXPECTED, winning a Bronze Medal in the 2018 Popular Fiction category. THE ART OF REMEMBERING, released in July, 2019 debuted as an Amazon bestseller, was a finalist in the American Fiction Awards Literary Category and was selected by BookBub for their Best Book Club Book list in both July and August, 2019.

Website⎮Twitter⎮Facebook⎮Instagram

Heather McRae is from Falkirk in Central Scotland, but met her husband whilst studying at Lancaster University in the North of England, where both were very involved with the Theatre Group. Having moved back to Scotland in 2006, she and her brother took over the music and advertising business their grandfather had started back in the '60s, and she's currently in the process of setting up a glamping business to support the maintenance of a listed building. She also sings in two choirs, and she and her husband breed pedigree Tiffanie cats and are very involved in the cat show world. Reading and writing have been lifelong passions, and Heather won numerous awards for poetry recital and public speaking growing up (though now prefers to be backstage). In 2018, some people commenting on a video she had uploaded to social media mentioned that she has a soothing voice, that would be good for audiobook narration. Seeing this, one of her friends pointed her in the direction of Amazon's Audiobook Creation Exchange, and helping authors to bring their books to life has become a new source of much enjoyment in her free time. She has developed a fascination for dialects and accents, and now drives her husband mad by trying to learn to mimic every new accent she encounters.