Featured Author: Dianne Harman

About the book:

Kelly pulled into the harbor parking lot next to the pier and noticed that Amber’s car wasn’t in its usual place and there was no sign of her. She was usually standing at the door of Kelly’s Koffee Shop, waiting for Kelly to open up. Wonder what that’s all about, she thought.

The local residents of Cedar Bay come to Kelly’s Koffee Shop for breakfast, lunch, and lots of gossip. Kelly serves it all up as she works to solve the murder of the high school Homecoming Queen. The townspeople can’t believe what has happened in their sleepy little Oregon seaside town. She identifies five prime suspects, but which one did it?

Follow Kelly, her boxer dog, Rebel, and her boyfriend, Mike, the county sheriff, as they try to determine who the killer is in a murder that’s shocked the town.

Kelly’s Coffee Shop is a mouth-watering cozy mystery with recipes!

Interview with Dianne Harman

Tell us about your series. Is this book a standalone, or do readers need to read the series in order?
Although the book is part of a series, I always write a standalone book. It’s a personal thing. I don’t like to feel that I have to buy the next book and the next book and . . .

Where’s home for you?
Huntington Beach, California

Where did you grow up?
The Midwest – Denver and Kansas City

If you had $100 a week to spend on yourself, what would you buy?
More books!

What do you love about where you live?
The ocean is within walking distance!

What is the most daring thing you've done?
Trekking in Nepal and getting within one day of Mt. Everest!


What’s one thing that you wish you knew as a teenager that you know now?
It really doesn’t matter what people think of you as long as you’re happy in your own skin.


What makes you bored?
Having someone tell me the same thing in a number of different way when I understood it the first time!



What choices in life would you like to have a redo on?
I don’t think I’d redo anything. Whatever I have done has led me to this time, and I’m very happy where I am now.

What makes you happy?
Having people appreciate what I do.

Do you have another job outside of writing?
No. I am very fortunate to be able to write full time. The children are grown, and I don’t have an outside job. I really admire writers who can do this as well as care for a family and work outside the home.

How did you meet your spouse?
I met Tom in college. We got married six weeks later, and it’s lasted for a long, long time!

If you could only save one thing from your house, what would it be?
Probably whatever animal I had at the time.

Would you rather be a lonely genius, or a sociable idiot?
A lonely genius.

What’s one of your favorite quotes?
“It is what it is!”

What book are you currently reading and in what format?
I have several going at the moment. Just finished Gone Girl Gone and was blown away by it. I have become a huge e-book fan.

What’s one pet peeve you have when you read?
Books that aren’t properly edited with misspellings and other errors.


Do you have a routine for writing?
Yes. I wake up early, put my contact lenses in, make some coffee and try to get a couple of hours in before I do household things.

Where and when do you prefer to do your writing?
I think my best writing comes early in the morning. I write at the computer in my office.

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing?
When someone tells me they couldn’t put the book down.

What’s the worst thing someone has said about your writing? How did you deal with it?
I think the stupidest thing is when someone says they don’t like that genre and then give a book a bad review. If you don’t like the genre, don’t pick up the book, and for sure, don’t review it! My husband was a California Senator for many years, so I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years.

Why did you decide to self-publish?
I have control over the book.

Are you happy with your decision to self-publish?
I’m very happy with my decision. A mentor of mine told me to self-publish because he had gone with a publisher and the publisher had taken out bankruptcy. My mentor lost a lot of money and was quite emphatic that self-publishing was the way to go. Unless you’re in the Stephen King league, it seems to me that you’re still going to have to do the marketing, etc., so you might as well get all of the profits rather than giving a large part of a publisher.

What are you working on now?
The second in the Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery series, Murder at Jade Cove.

Other books by Dianne Harman

 

About the author:

Dianne lives in Huntington Beach, California with her husband Tom, a former California State Senator, and is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post.


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