Diana Holquist. fun. funny. sexy. smart.

(er, her books, that is...)

The Official Bio

I love to write. That’s pretty much all I do. Ask my family about the undone laundry, the un-bought groceries, and the fact that I rarely find time to get dressed in the morning. Actually, if you train your family right, they won’t notice any of these things. "Popcorn for dinner again, mom! Cool," say my filthy children. God bless them, they don’t know what panty hose are.

Oh, my poor husband.

Anyway, it took me a long time to figure out WHAT to write. So I spent years writing ads, brochures, and company reports. If I had to give advice to anyone--which, thankfully, I don’t--it would be that if you want to write books, start now. In fact, get the heck off this website and do it.

(First, throw your TV out the window. Good. Now write.)

Are you still here?

Okay, then you must be a pure reader (or my mother). Good for you. No money in writing. Best to have a real job.

What else do you want to know about me? I love kids. I love cats. I love chocolate. (Not necessarily in that order.) I live in upstate New York in paradise, and yet I’m moving in a few months back to a city. (Wanna buy a cool house in rural NY? Wanna sell me a cheap one in a suburb with decent schools?)

Okay, that’s enough about me. Let’s get to work and talk books.

What readers want to know: How I started writing.

How did I start writing?

I started writing badly. Really badly.

Then, after a high school career of angsty badness and a college career of angsty awfulness, I took a job in advertising. I had to be funny and fast and tight. All the time. Eighty hours a week. It was insanely hard and the people weren't nice. They said things like, "that sucks" and "come back when it's funny." I loved these people. I slaved for them. And after about ten years of this intense training, I started to write tighter, funnier, faster.

At about this time, my family left New York City for the middle of nowhere (Hi everyone in Ithaca! I miss you!), and my career in advertising was over. So I looked around for something else to write. Something fun and funny and fast and exciting. I decided, like so many other misguided souls, to try to write a novel.

A year later, I did. And it sucked. So I wrote another. And another. Meanwhile, I met the amazing women of the Central New York Romance Writers. I started to study romance novels.

And well...the rest is history.

What readers want to know: Creating Characters

Oh. This is an easy one. I steal them.

It's true.

I steal them from friends, family, strangers, neighbors--even from myself. All those odd little tidbits that make people who they are can't be made up. Yet they're what make characters sing.

For instance, right now I'm writing a character, Amy the Gypsy Psychic, who is NOT an introspective sort. So how to show her thoughts? And how does she think, anyway?

Then a writer friend told me that she constantly imagines the interviews she'll have when she's famous. These interviews run through her head at the oddest times.

My friend. Not me. I swear. Okay, me sometimes me too, but this is what makes this character detail ring true, we've all done that.

Oh, you haven't? Well, anyway...

So, I decided that Amy would constantly imagine she was being interviewed by Oprah. And as the book progressed, the interviews would get tougher and tougher until...well, I can't give that away, now can I?

This is an example of a telling, emotionally real character trait that lets me show so much about Amy without telling it. And helps move the plot. And maybe even gets me a spot on Oprah :-) Okay, probably not that.

Next time: hobbies. (Really? You want to know my hobbies? Well, okay...)