For as avid of a reader and podcast listener as I am, I don’t listen to books very often. Audio books are hard for me to get into because I tend to listen and do at the same time, be it commuting, traveling, or working out (yes, I listen to podcasts while I run. Go ahead and giggle). And if something else grabs my attention, be it a neighborhood dog lunging for my apparently delicious tennis shoes or an announcement of a train delay, I can’t just trace back to where I was in an audio book like I can on paper.
However, when Macmillan Audio contacted me about the audio release of Ann Leary’s The Good House, I accepted their offer of a review copy. I did not regret it.
Author Ann Leary
Leary’s novel about a middle-aged New England real estate professional is a darkly funny yet touching portrait of a woman and her community. Hildy Good is an alcoholic who is (sort of) in recovery, dealing with a slow business year and her fair share of interpersonal relationship problems. Her inner monologue skewers everything from townie weirdness to politically-correct educational methods to East Coast WASPiness with a wry sense of humor. Yet Hildy’s own vulnerabilities keep her brash observations from taking over the story. And as the novel delves into the literary worlds of mysteries and thrillers later in the story, Hildy’s voice is a constant–if unreliable–witness.
For how down-to-earth and practical Hildy is, she has a whimsical side. The undercurrent reference to her persecuted female predecessors, whether they are victims in the Salem witch trials or her misunderstood bipolar mother, puts an interesting twist on Hildy’s “mind reading” parlor tricks and her perceived second-class status as a recovering alcoholic. Continue reading »
Noting the success of author/lawyer John Grisham in spotlighting his profession in fiction, C.M. Nevill thought it was about time real estate took the dramatic stage of the action-adventure novel. His first book, Due Diligence, 
follows the trail of Sam Reid, a struggling newbie real estate professional in Houston, as he unwittingly becomes involved with an international drug cartel.
Nevill, a residential salesperson with Jim Stewart, REALTORS®, in Waco, Texas, talked with us about finding the inspiration and time to write, the difficulties of publishing a first novel, and how aspiring authors in real estate can follow his lead into the literary world.
Due Diligence is an action-adventure novel, but the story is still firmly entwined in Texas real estate. How much do you draw on your everyday life to craft Sam Reid’s world?
Nevill: I have a really wild imagination, and it’s very easy now in today’s world to actually get involved in just about anything you want to by getting on the web. You can pretty much find out any information that you want simply by Googling. And, so as far as my own personal involvement in the story, maybe a few little odds and ends, but mainly it’s just creative imagination.
How did you get started?
Nevill: Real estate really comes first in my life, and in real estate you sometimes have some down time. A lot of people go out and they play golf or tennis or fish or something like that. But I like to read. And it just occurred to me that, you know, a lot of this reading that I do, I could probably get involved in writing too.
From reading John Grisham, he involves lawyers in a lot of things, and I thought, “Well, we ought to be able to come up with something that would involve a young real estate agent.” And so, my creative juices just started coming together. Continue reading »
By Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
Real estate professional Regan McHenry is about to close on the house of her client’s dreams. But when the seller turns up dead, suspicions lead Regan to the center of a murder mystery. Nancy Kille, real estate practitioner turned mystery author, draws from her 20 years of experience for inspiration in The Death Contingency (Good Read Mysteries, 2008).
Kille, who writes as Nancy Lynn Jarvis, spoke to The Weekly Book Scan about her cliff-hanging mystery, and what it took for her to make the switch from real estate to writing.
Are you a fan of murder mysteries? What made you decide to write one?
Nancy Kille
KILLE: What started this whole thing is my mother-in-law, who lived in South Carolina, died a couple of years ago. We knew it was coming. We traveled there to spend some time with her before she died and we had to drive across country. So, to try and make my life easier, I started reading Tony Hillerman-a mystery writer who writes about a Navajo and the Big Reservation that comprises a large chunk of the southwest.
It was fun to be driving and noting, “oh, there’s a directional sign for something I’m reading about.” He uses the locations and he talks about the culture. By the time we got home, I was hooked. I read all of his books. He writes what are I call “cozy mysteries,” not full of graphic violence.
At the conclusion of that, I decided it would be a real hoot to try and write one.
How did the idea for The Death Contingency come about?
KILLE: Well, Tony Hillerman writes about where he lives and about something he knows well. So I decided to set my book in Santa Cruz, and decided I’d set it in the real estate community because there are so many interesting people and colorful people I have met in the course of being a REALTOR®. I drew on some of those stories.
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
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.
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?
Jennie Bentley
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. Continue reading »
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