Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Bente Gallagher | Turning What If….Into A Novel
Author Guest / July 2, 2010

What if…? Those two words are a writer’s best tool, and have been the impetus for many a great book. What if… the world was flat (and was carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of a giant turtle)? What if… the South had won the Civil War? What if… Sherlock Holmes didn’t really die that day at Reichenbach Falls? What if… magic’s real and there are witches and wizards living among us, but we’re just too stupid to realize it? What if… I walked into this empty house and found a dead body? That last question was the ‘what if’ that started me on the journey of writing the first book in the Savannah Martin Southern Real Estate series. Savannah is a newly licensed Realtor in Nashville, and the idea for her story came about when I was a newly licensed Realtor in Nashville, walking into empty houses a lot. There was another ‘what if’ involved, too: What if this guy who called me out of the blue and asked me to meet him here, is really a dangerous murderer? What if I never walk out of here again? I put those two…

Jennie Bentley | History Mystery : Truth or Fiction?
Uncategorized / March 4, 2010

It’s the kind of coincidence that, if I’d put it into a book, nobody would believe. Picture this: it’s sometime in late 2008, and I’m sitting in front of my computer, getting ready to start writing the third book in my Do-It-Yourself mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime, featuring textile-designer-turned-home-renovator Avery Baker and her boyfriend, hunky handyman Derek Ellis. (Remember those names. There’ll be a quiz later.) Each book in the series details the renovation of a decrepit house, and each book includes a few fresh murders and some sort of history mystery. In book 1, Fatal Fixer-Upper Avery inherited her Aunt Inga’s Second Empire Victorian cottage and hooked up with Derek, the handyman she hired to help her renovate it. In book 2,Spackled and Spooked the two of them bought and renovated their first project together: a low-slung mid-century brick ranch, rumored to be haunted because of a tragedy that took place some seventeen or eighteen years ago. I had already decided that in book 3, Avery and Derek would be taking on the renovation of an old carriage house at the back of their friend Kate McGillicutty’s property. They’re broke, since they haven’t sold the house from book…

Jennie Bentley | When life imitates art and vice versa
Uncategorized / August 6, 2009

Last year around this time, I was getting ready to start promoting my debut, Fatal Fixer-Upper, first in the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime, featuring New York designer turned Maine renovator Avery Baker, and her boyfriend, hunky handyman Derek Ellis. The book came out in November 2008, and since then, my life has pretty much gone by at warp speed. Launching a first book was insane, and then came Thanksgiving and Christmas, before we sold one house and moved into another in January. Since then, we’ve been renovating what is our ninth house in nine years. All while we’re going about the dual businesses of real estate and writing, and while raising two boys under eleven and caring for the menagerie of pets they’ve accumulated between them. The latest house is a brick mid-century ranch, long and low-slung, with a big picture window in the front, situated on a large lot surrounded by tall trees. Chapter 1 of Spackled and Spooked has a description that matches that one in pretty much every particular. In Spackled and Spooked, Derek and Avery are renovating just such a house. It’s a local haunted house; I thought the idea of a…

Jennie Bentley | Home, Sweet Homicide!
Uncategorized / November 7, 2008

I spent the first half of my life in the same house. My grandfather built it with his own two hands back in 1929, and when he died, my mother inherited it, and lived there until she died. It was my home through childhood and most of my teen years, until I headed out, to seek my fortune in the world. Since then I’ve lived in…oh…roughly twelve more houses and a few apartments in a couple of different countries, cities, and states. I renovated my first home eight years ago; since then, I’ve owned and renovated seven more. Eight houses in eight years isn’t too bad of a track-record. Especially since most of them were renovated around our ears as we tried to go about our business as usual in the midst of paint and drywall mud and dust and men with their shirts off flexing their muscles as they drove nails and soldered pipes. And it’s just really hard to keep going about business as usual when there are shirtless men driving nails and soldering pipes in the next room, isn’t there? Anyway, it’s that background that caused Berkley Prime Crime to offer me a chance to create a…