Author Chat: Fatal Fixer-Upper

The Weekly Book Scan caught up with real estate pro and author Bente Gallagher (a.k.a. Jennie Bentley) to talk about her new novel, Fatal Fixer-Upper (Berkley Prime Crime, 2008), a do-it-yourself mystery centered around a renovation project. The book follows New Yorker Avery Baker, who inherits her aunt's 1870s Victorian cottage in Waterfield, Maine. While she sets out to learn all about home renovation, she unravels family secrets with historical ties and clues to a missing professor in the area.

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Bentley used her experience as a renovator and real estate professional in Nashville, Tenn., to write the fiction book, which is her first published novel. In November, the book was No. 11 on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for paperback novels.

Bentley is willing to respond to any of your questions, so after you read the Q&A, be free to post a comment or question for her below.

Where did you get the idea for the novel?

BENTLEY: I had first written an unpublished book Cut Throat Business about a real estate agent when I was a new agent myself. Whenever I walked into empty houses, my vivid imagination would start going wild. I would open the door to an empty house - and I realized that anything could be in there-you never know what you were walking into. So for that book, I made it about a real estate agent who stumbles over a dead body in an empty house.

My agent started sending it around to publishers and it made it to Penguin. They liked it but they didn't think a real estate topic would work for them. Their books are usually focused on crafts, hobbies, and activities.

Because of my bio as a real estate agent and renovator, they asked me to write a mystery series about a home renovator.

TO READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW, PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK:

http://narblog1.realtors.org/mvtype/theweeklybookscan/2008/12/author_chat_fatal_fixerupper.html#more