The Law of Attraction, Cozies and Cats: An Interview with Author Jennie Bentley Pets Families.com

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how I wish I knew any authors who featured cats in their work so I could interview them for the Pets Blog. Well, in yet another display of the Law of Attraction at work, wouldn’t you know my wish was granted this past Sunday when I was on a panel at the Southern Festival of books with Bente Gallagher who writes as Jennie Bentley?

Her first mystery in her DIY Home Renovation Mystery series is called Fatal Fixer Upper and it’s due out November 4th. In the process of talking about her book she mentioned how it was a cozy with cats. Immediately after our panel ended I asked her if she’d be willing to be interviewed for the Pets Blog and to my delight she agreed.

Courtney Mroch: What kind of pets do you have? (Or have you had.)

Bente Gallagher/Jennie Bentley: Right now, I have three. A hand-me-down parakeet that the owners got tired of; a carnival goldfish that my oldest son won in a ringtoss two and a half years ago – he’s still thriving; and a hand-me-down dog. Her name is Zoe, and we were told she’s a Shih-Tzu/Chihuahua mix, although we don’t see much Chihuahua in her. Some Maltese, maybe…? She’s almost two years old and extremely hyper and she can jump super-high. The parakeet is called Snowy – another name we didn’t pick; she came already named – probably because she’s pure white. The fish is called Herman; my son named him after a character in a favorite book series. (The Chet Gecko PI series by Bruce Hale. Wonderful books for the younger set, and anyone else with an appreciation for hardboiled PI novels/1940s noir. Chet is actually a gecko, as well as a 4th grade PI. That’d be 4th grade of elementary school.) The character is a gila monster, the fish is a fish, but that’s where the name came from.

Growing up, I used to have parakeets, because my mother couldn’t handle anything furry. After I got married, we had another dog for a while, one named Emily, a big, black mutt who was with us for 15 1/2 years until she got too old and sick and we had to let her go. That happened almost three years ago, and I still miss her.

CM: I can sympathize with you. It’s so hard to let them go. Especially when we work around them all the time. Speaking of which, do your pets contribute to your work methods and help with the writing process at all?

BG/JB: Snowy’s cage is next to my desk, and she chatters at me while I work. Zoe’s pillow is under the cage, and she keeps me company, too, but more quietly. (Except when Snowy throws something at her. Then she’ll bark and Snowy will scream, and they carry on something fierce for a few minutes.) If my feet are bare, sometimes Zoe will lick them, and as anyone who’s ever had their feet licked by a dog can attest, it’s a wonderful feeling. Very brain-stimulating. Herman lives in a bowl in the dining room, but I see him every time I pass through to the kitchen for a snack – the occasional snack being a necessity for a working writer, the sugar replenishes the creative juices we use along the way; or so I tell myself – and he always swims to the surface to greet me. Definitely a fish with personality.

CM: Can you tell us a little bit about the cats appearing in your book? I know when we were on the panel you mentioned that your editor wanted cats, but you also had a good story about how you came to decide on the breed you’d use.

BG/JB: There are two cats in Fatal Fixer-Upper: Jemmy and Inky. (The cat on the cover is Jemmy; he’s striped while Inky is – duh – black. And I know he doesn’t have a shadow, but he’s not a ghost cat, I swear. Just a normal Maine Coon. If there is such a thing.) Jemmy and Inky used to belong to Aunt Inga, who was Avery’s great aunt. Avery Baker is the main character, the protagonist, of the books, and in Fatal Fixer-Upper, she inherits the cats along with her aunt’s house in tiny Waterfield, Maine, and embarks on the adventures of home renovation.

When I was asked to write the Do-It-Yourself series, my editor had certain requirements, or maybe ideas is a better word, for what she wanted the books to be like, probably based on research the Penguin Group had done. Cats sell books, so they told me to be sure to add a couple of cats. They also asked for a New England setting, and a historical connection or mystery of some sort. Maine is in New England, and I knew there was such a thing as a Maine Coon cat, so I thought it might work to make ‘my’ cats Maine Coons. I’m horribly allergic to cats – they make me sneeze and cause my eyes to swell shut and other unpleasant things – so I couldn’t do any personal research. When I Googled Maine Coons, though, I ran across the various stories and legends behind how the breed came into being. (And no, it’s not from cats and raccoons interbreeding. That one’s biologically impossible.)

One of those stories had to do with a failed plot to rescue Marie Antoinette from the Guillotine and spirit her off to the New World on a Maine schooner named the Sally, captained by Samuel Clough of Wiscasset. The Sally was loaded up with all of Marie Antoinette’s favorite things, including her six long-haired cats, and Mrs. Clough was told to prepare for a royal visitor; all that remained was getting the queen out of the Conciergerie prison and onto the ship.

Well, we all know how it went, don’t we? It didn’t work. Marie Antoinette lost her head, and the Sally headed for Maine without her, but with all the queen’s possessions below deck. The stuff – furniture, clothes, and other fineries – were distributed up and down the Maine coast, to Samuel’s friends and relatives, while the cats went off to make kittens with the local feline population. Or so the story goes. I’m not sure I believe it – there’s another explanation that makes more sense to me: that the Maine Coons are descended from Norwegian Forest Cats (skogskatter) that the Vikings brought over when they discovered Vinland some 1,000 years ago; the two breeds have a lot in common – but it made for a great plot twist, so I decided to use it anyway.

Courtney Mroch: Do you ever use your own pets as the basis for any animal characters?

BG/JB: I haven’t, no. I use the feelings of a pet-owner as the basis for the feelings of my characters, if that counts. But so far, the only pets I’ve had in my books are the two cats, and as anyone knows, cats are different from any other kind of animal. There’s no taking a dog, a fish, or a parakeet and turning it into a cat, for fictional purposes. A cat is a cat, and that is that. So I had to make up the cats just the way I did the other characters in the books, with names, looks, and personalities. One day I may write a book with a dog, or a fish, or a parakeet, though, and then I’ll definitely use the traits of my own pets. Write what you know, right?

Courtney Mroch: Exactly! Thank you so much Bente writing as Jennie for gracing me with this most entertaining and informative interview! Best of luck to you with the new series.