In past lives, Brenda Fuller has been a swimming pool manager, a camp counselor and a “resale retail” (thrift store) salesperson. More recently, she worked as a substitute teacher in the Sherwood School District.
But now she is Brenda Fuller, author, with two books to her credit. Both are the first in a series. The “Grammie” books were inspired by her mother, Jean Neal, Brenda said.
The other: “Alibi Monterro —Jr. Detective.”
Brenda, who lives in Urich, has always been a big fan of mysteries, she said, and read all the Nancy Drew books when she was growing up in Shell Rock, Iowa. The city library was small, but the librarian ordered books for Brenda, and taught her how to use the card-catalogue files.
The inspiration for the “Alibi” books, in the youth-sleuth genre, came when Brenda thought of the name Alibi for the main character. The first thing she did was write down the character’s backstory, she said. “The Case of the Missing Lizard Food” is the first in a series of six books about Alibi, starting with when she is in kindergarten, and spanning her elementary school years. The lizard, Juliet, is a class pet.
“There’ll be one for every year, three picture books and three chapter books,” Brenda said.
Brenda attended Shell Rock Elementary, but set the Alibi Monterro books in a southwest St. Louis school, Stone Creek Elementary. With her editor, Brenda is planning to visit St. Louis and give the Stone Creek students small green spiral notepads, like the ones featured on the cover of “The Case of the Missing Lizard Food.”
Brenda credits grandson Milo with inspiring her to write a book when he brought her a library book he was excited about reading. Brenda’s grandson Ashton rated the first Alibi book an 8 and half, but when he found out that the series gradually reveals clues about a mystery in Alibi’s past, raised it to a 9.
Brenda also credits her Grandpa Matthews for his advice: “Don’t memorize what you can resource.” When she went to school and told her fourth grade teacher that, and she “didn’t appreciate it,” Brenda said.
Brenda said she also inherited her grandfather’s problem-solving spirit and has invented a combination bug repellent, moisturizer and sunscreen. She started with a lotion bar that had bug repellent, she said, then, remembering all her years as a pool manager, urging her lifeguards to put on sunscreen, added it to the mix. She has patented her product and is now looking for a manufacturer.
To capture story ideas, which often come to her while driving, she keeps a recorder in her car. So if you see her driving around Urich talking to herself, she’s probably dictating her next story.
The second Alibi book is scheduled to come out in August, Brenda said, with illustrations by her daughter Kati, an artist.
The first Grammie book, “Grammie’s Funny Hat,” is about an encounter between one of Brenda’s grandchildren and their great-grandmother’s wig. The second book, which will be out in December, is called “Grammie’s Magic Wind String,” about how Grammie, who is now 97, takes her great-grandchildren “flying” in her porch swing.
Brenda uses a drawing of a porch swing as the logo on her business cards, and said “I’m going to have something about the porch swing in every book.”
Brenda, who has a degree in parks and recreation from the University of Northern Iowa, is also planning to write about her experience working at YMCA camp in California. Children from Oakland who had never been out of the city before attended the camp, Brenda said, and before they went on backpacking trips, she would have to go through their backpacks and remove the hair-styling appliances and other items with electric cords.
The most well-known “girl detective” books are the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, which date from 1930, and like the Hardy Boys mysteries, were created by a publisher and ghost-written by a number of writers.
The Alibi Monterro books are available from Amazon.com. The Grammie series are published by Christian Faith and also available on Amazon.com. For more information, go to www.brendafuller.com.
