Kirsten Fullmer - In Love With Shabby Chic

Kirsten Fullmer - In Love With Shabby Chic
author of the day

Kirsten Fullmer is an author who bid farewell to her job in the drafting industry and pursued her dream to write novels while traveling with her husband for his job. When she isn't writing, Fullmer loves tinkering with all kinds of crafts, including scrapbooking, cross stitching, crocheting and sewing. As our author of the day, Fullmer chats with us about how she fell in love with the Shabby Chic style, why she picked a small town as the backdrop for her books and talks about her writing habits.

Please give us a short introduction to Shabby Chic at Heart

Shabby Chic at Heart is a story of conflicting mindsets. Due to her past, Tara is a bit of a control freak, and she is determined to save and rehab every old house in her community. Justin moved to town from Washington DC to build flashy new country resorts for his big money clients. The unlikely couple ends up bidding on the same resort property and forced to work together, tempers flair. Tara wants to save the house and barn, Justin wants to tear everything down and build new. As the story unfolds and they fall in love, what appears to Justin to be small town clannishness turns out to be hidden secrets about the community, Tara, and her childhood. This book is a lighthearted, funny and inspiring read, with plenty of junk lovin', before and afters, and of course, shabby chic style!

Why did you make your heroine a home decorator?

I know there are about a million women who love watching home décor and rehab shows on HGTV, so I thought maybe the Shabby Chic trend would make a fun background for a book. If you’re part of the “redo stuff” craze, you know it’s like a drug. You spend all your free time searching for junk, and you see broken, rusty things in a completely different light than most people. Also, men can’t figure it out. They hate it! If conflict and compulsion are tinder for a good story, I figured having my leading characters wrapped up with the shabby chic movement was a fun way to go. I also get to live vicariously through my characters. I spend half the year living in a fifth wheel trailer following my husband’s job, so rehabbing a great old house isn’t likely to happen for me anytime soon. My husband thought writing about rehabbing stuff would be much cheaper. Silly man.

What is it about the shabby chic style that inspires you?

I suppose I like discovering a charming, sad little object, then applying a little love, vision, and a bit of elbow grease, to make it shine. 

You picked a small town community as the backdrop for your book. Why?

I’m always amused by the fact that people who are crowded into big cities have more anonymity than folks who live miles apart. I grew up in a small town and you knew if there was a new face in school, or who had the fancy new car. You knew the town drunk, who lived where, and the sheriff’s kids. I guess it felt like a safe place to start writing because it felt like home.

Your books feature dreamy guys. What's your advice on how to meet a nice, dreamy guy?

Read a great romance novel! You got me. I’ve been married for forever to a wonderful regular guy. He is pretty handsome and a great source of inspiration thought.

Your novel is filled with humor and flirtation. How important is humor to help tell your story?

Humor is very important to my stories. I’ve always felt that your most embarrassing moments are usually very funny to someone else. This is probably because they’ve done something similarly stupid themselves. I think it helps the reader identify with the characters. My books are about serious and stressful issues, but a sense of humor is what gets you through. If you can’t laugh at yourself, or your characters, I think you’re in trouble.

Besides writing, what other secret skills do you have?

Secret skills? I’m not a very secretive person. I actually had two shabby chic boutiques in Tampa a few years back, so I can never have enough crap in the garage that I mean to doll up. I was very into scrapbooking when my kids were little, and I like to make cards for my sisters and friends. If it makes a huge mess, I’m into it. Lately I’ve turned my office into a photo studio to take pictures for my shabby chic trilogy Instagram posts. I secretly love to paint with watercolors, unfortunately, watercolor painting is a minimalist art, and I tend to keep adding layers of paint until it’s ruined. And of course, my own home has been redecorated over and over, even the poor trailer. No secret there, though.

What inspired you to write your first Shabby Chic book?

One day I was watching the show Rehab Addict on the HGTV and I thought what a fun book character Nicole would be. She’s driven to the point of being half insane, she’s beautiful, loveable, and successful. She is determined to save old houses that have been divided up into apartments and run into the ground. Then the show Income Property came on, with hunky Scott who buys old homes and makes them into apartments, and I thought “Wow! These two would hate each other if they lived in the same town!” Boom, there it was!

Did you plan right from the start to make it into a series?

No, I didn’t plan to write a series when I started the first book, but by the time I was half way through, I knew it would be a trilogy. Smithville was too fun to leave. Readers are already asking me for another Shabby Chic book, so I’m planning a Christmas story about Smithville.

How do the other books in the series tie in with this one? Are they all standalones or do they end on cliffhangers?

Each book is a complete stand alone story with a new leading couple, but the locations and folks from Smithville, as well as the couples from previous books, are all part of the story.

What, would you say, is the hardest thing about being a writer?

For me, the hardest part about writing is putting the full color, sound and music filled visions in my head into words. I try to write textures, hues, and smells. I want my readers to feel and experience the story the way I see it play out in my mind. I also spend a lot of time struggling to make my characters relatable yet interesting.

Do you have any interesting writing habits, what's your average writing day like?

I started writing because I had to retire from my career in the drafting/engineering industry due to poor health. I had pretty serious memory and attention problems, so writing was a real challenge for me at first. When I wrote Shabby Chic at Heart three years ago, I’d get up at 5 am and get my husband off to work, then sit down to do brain teasers for an hour in an attempt to stimulate my brain. I did jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, dot-to-dots, and anagrams. Once I felt ready, I’d open the outline for the novel and review where I left off and what I planned to write. Sometimes I’d start then get stuck, so I’d get in the shower, where, for some weird reason, inspiration would strike. Then it was a mad rush to get dried off and dressed and back to the computer before I forgot it all. I’m not sure if writing has helped me develop new skills, but my memory is much better these days. Now I get my hubby out the door and as I make my coffee, feed the dog and the cat, and load the dishwasher and washing machine, I go over in my mind what I wrote the day before and what I want to write about that day. I still have to use a good solid outline and have a quiet environment, but I manage much better. On a good day now I get so into the story that I look up and it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I’m still sitting there in my pajamas.

What are you working on right now?

I’m almost half finished with a book about a girl who, after a fruitless post-college-graduation job search, goes to build a pipeline in the Appalachian Mountains with her ne’er-do-well grandpa. It’s about finding who you are as a woman, while being tossed into the deep end of a male dominated job. It’s filled with plenty of quirky characters and comical experiences.

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

I have a website, www.authorkirstenfullmer.com that is full of information about my books. There’s a contact page, photo galleries for each book, my blog, reviews, links to my bazillion Pinterst boards, facebook page, Instagram feed, and Twitter, as well as a freebee chapter from all three Shabby Chic books. I love to hear from readers!

This deal has ended but you can read more about the book here.
Wendy L Owens - Romance Amidst Rival Mafia Families
FEATURED AUTHOR - Wendy Owens was born in the small college town of Oxford, Ohio. She loves to paint and travel in her free time. She writes both romance and psychological thrillers. When she's not writing, this dog lover can be found spending time with her tech geek husband, their three amazing kids, and three pups. As our Author of the Day, she tells us all about her book, Crimson Ties: A Dark Mafia Romance.