Jennie Bentley: Fatal Fixer-Upper

Title:  Fatal Fixer-Upper
Author:  Jennie Bentley
Publisher: Berkley
Paperback: 336 pages
ISBN-10: 0425224570
ISBN-13: 978-0425224571

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

Thanks for the congrats; I’m still pinching myself. And thanks for having me on The First Book Blog!

Here’s the 30-second pitch:

When New York textile designer Avery Baker inherits her aunt’s house in a tiny town on the coast of Maine, she lands knee-deep not only in drywall and paint, but in murder, historical intrigue, and maybe even romance. There are family secrets, scheming relatives, priceless antiques, a missing history professor, cats – Maine Coons, of course – tips for Do-It-Yourself home renovation projects, and a bare-chested handyman with tight jeans, a low-slung tool belt and dreamy, blue eyes. Oh yes, and a few dead bodies. What more could a woman want?

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

I was at the zoo, with howler monkeys in the background and screaming kids in the foreground. Very festive, not to mention loud. My agent and I had been busy for a couple of months submitting the first book in a different series, about a real estate agent who stumbles over a body in an empty house, and when my agent called, I thought she might be calling to tell me that someone wanted to buy that. Instead, she asked if I’d be interested in writing a series about a home renovator for Berkley Prime Crime. My bio says I’m a Realtor® as well as a renovator, so my editor at Penguin thought it might be a good fit. I submitted an outline and a sample chapter, and they offered me a contract for the first three books in the series.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

I finished DIY#2 this summer – it is scheduled for publication in August 2009; by then it’ll have a name – and I have to finish DIY#3 by February. In DIY#2, Avery takes on the renovation of a local haunted house, and it isn’t long before strange things start happening, including mysterious footsteps and the discovery of a skeleton buried in the crawlspace. At the time of this writing, DIY#3 is but a gleam in my eye, but it’s getting close to Christmas in Waterfield, Derek and Avery are helping a friend turn an old carriage house into a romantic retreat, and Avery’s mother and stepfather are coming to Maine to meet Derek. And then someone dies…

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

In an ideal world, I’d start writing in the morning, because that’s when I seem to get the most done. Since this isn’t an ideal world, and since I’m responsible for two boys under 10 and a very hyperactive dog, I write when I can. That usually means between taking the kids to school in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon, as long as my better half doesn’t need me to do something real estate related with that time.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

I’m horribly allergic to cats. They’re lovely animals, but they make me sick. It made things interesting when I started to write the DIY-series. One thing my editor requested, was that the heroine inherit her aunt’s cats along with her aunt’s house, and since I have no cats of my own, I have no personal experience to draw on. Nor can I get any. (See ‘they make me sick,’ above.) So I did all my cat research online. Instead, I have a very cute but high maintenance Maltese/Shih-Tzu mix named Zoe. She looks like the Sesame Street monster, hence the name. She doesn’t sit on the keyboard, although she does lie at my feet while I write, and if they’re naked, she licks them.