Local Author shares life as a writer

By Bonnie D. Stone
Special to the Antelope Valley Press
Local author Diana Killian, who loves killing people, planting red herrings and offering virtual tours of the Lake District of England on her web site, will share her life as a writer at the December 12, 7 p.m., book club meeting of the Antelope Valley Branch of the American Association of University Women.
In the first mystery in the Poetic Death series, High Rhymes and Misdemeanors, Diana’s favorite heroine Grace Hollister is vacationing (under guise of researching her dissertation on the Romantic poets) in the English Lake District when she stumbles upon her first (but not her last) body. Before long she’s involved in kidnapping, murder, and the hunt for what she firmly believes is a lost work by Lord Byron. She also becomes involved—against her better judgment—with former jewel thief (now semi-law-abiding antiques dealer) Peter Fox
The Dallas Morning News called the mystery, a "Light, charming... And entertaining romp through a beautiful part of Britain.
For members of the AAUW book group, which meets monthly in members’ homes, it will be a unique chance to learn how an author works. The group, by the way, is the longest-running book group in the Antelope Valley, said Beryl Amspoker, one of the founding members of the Antelope Valley Branch of AAUW. “To the best of my recollection, it was formed as a special interest group in 1951, the year after we started the branch.”
And these women do read – classics, current events, and biographies. Diana’s light-hearted first mystery is being sandwiched in between Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between and Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine Dark Sea.
Diana Killian got her start writing romances before she wrote her first mystery. The next two books in the series after High Rhymes and Misdemeanors, are the Verse of the Vampyre and Sonnet of the Sphinx. In Spring 2008, Corpse Pose, the first book in the new yoga-themed Mantra for Murder series will debut from Berkeley Prime Crime followed by the fourth poetic death novel, Docketful of Poesy in spring, 2009.
Diana is the recipient of a Mystery Writers of America grant, and can be found blogging weekly on the notorious Good Girls Kill For Money Club, www.good-girls-kil.com (which recently received a nod from the London Times Book Review), as well as the Cozy Chicks blog. www.cozychicksblog.com
Blogs are important because writers no longer have the luxury of sitting in a garret composing on a dusty Underwood. They must take an active part in marketing their own works. And, because most everything is internet based, Diana works hard to communicate her name and her mysteries on the internet. Check out her web site www.girl-detective.net