We are delighted to welcome author Diane Weiner to Omnimystery News today.
Diane's eighth mystery in her popular Susan Wiles Schoolhouse mystery series is Murder is Chartered (Cozy Cat Press; January 2017 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with her to talk more about her work.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your series character, Susan Wiles.
Photo provided courtesy of
Diane Weiner
Diane Weiner: The main character in my series is a retired music teacher named Susan Wiles. Susan isn’t content with the usual hobbies such as knitting or scrapbooking. Her intelligence, snoopiness, and curiosity lead her into new and sometimes dangerous situations as she discovers a new pastime-solving murders. Susan appeals to me because she is in a mature marriage with two grown children. She isn’t a young protagonist looking for love, she already has that. Her concerns are her and her husband’s health as they age, complex relationships with her own aging parents, and the best job ever-being a Grandma. She constantly has to evaluate the risks vs. benefits of getting involved in crime solving, particularly since the crimes she gets involved with are all in some way related to her friends or family. This causes much conflict especially with her detective daughter, Lynette. Unlike me, who has never been on a roller coaster and won’t turn out the lights when I’m alone in the house, Susan is fearless and not afraid to take risks.
OMN: How has she developed over the course of the series?
DW: Susan has grown a lot throughout the series. In the first books, she constantly disregards her daughter’s warnings not to interfere with police business. As the series progresses, she is more careful and respectful of not getting in the way of the police or messing up crime scenes. Once she becomes a grandmother, she is more careful about risking her personal safety as well. Her relationship with her grown daughter evolves. There is still conflict to be sure, but with it comes more respect on both parts. There is a theme of mother/daughter relationships which we see develop as Susan deals with her own mother. I won’t give too much away here, but it’s quite a colorful and at times humorous battle.
OMN: Describe for us the series' setting. And are any of the characters based on people you know?
DW: The setting of my series, Westbrook, New York, is based on the town of Highland, New York, where I grew up. Of course, in my mind, it is spiffed up a bit, with the downtown area resembling an area like you might find on Mackinaw island, Michigan or ‘The Villages’ in central Florida. The characters in my series are a conglomerate of traits from people I’ve met along life’s way. The closest to real people, are Mike, who is supportive and wonderful like my own husband, and Evan, who bears an uncanny resemblance to my son, Eric. Of course, the murder victims are based on people I fantasize about killing (just kidding).
OMN: How did you come up with the idea for this series?
DW: I got the idea for the series from a simple germ of an idea. One of my coworkers at a school where I worked was constantly ‘sucking up’ to the principal, often bringing her baked treats. That led to me thinking “what if that cupcake he brought her turns out to be poisoned?” Being a fan of Jody Picoult, I started on a project with my youngest son and youngest daughter. We would each take the image of a funfetti cupcake sitting on the principal’s desk with the principal dead on the floor, and write it from a different point of view. For example, my son wrote as if he was the school custodian stumbling upon the scene, my daughter wrote from the perspective of one of the teachers finding the body…you get the idea. It started as a fun activity to fill the summer vacation. Eventually, my kids lost interest, and I took over. The first book is told from several perspectives, alternating by chapter. A few readers called the first book “a bit choppy,” so I reevaluated and the rest of the books in the series are told solely from Susan’s point of view.
OMN: The books in this series all feature a school theme in the title. Tell us a little more about the titles.
DW: While writing the first book in the series, my working title was Pat-a-cake, You’re Dead. An editor reviewing the book said the title made it seem like a children’s book. It was my husband who came up with Murder is Elementary. From there, each subsequent book mentions murder in relation to a type of school, i.e.: Murder is Secondary, and my most recent, Murder is Chartered.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
DW: When writing my books, I start with a list of suspects and the murder victim. I jot them down in a journal and come up with a motive for each. Then I make a general overview of the story, coming up with a few key twists spaced throughout the story. Before I write each chapter, I make a list in my journal of what I want to accomplish in each chapter, for example, I might put “Susan finds a button on the floor near the murder scene; Susan is followed when grocery shopping: Susan gets a letter from a distant family member: Mike gets chest pains…. As I write the chapter, I check off each item on the list as I use it. I love days where I start writing early, taking some breaks to go run or clean the house, then returning to write a new chapter (i.e.: summer break). When I do this, my writing is much more efficient than on the days where I only have an hour to write, or go a few days without writing, and have to spend a lot of time rereading and getting back into the story.
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Diane Weiner is a veteran public school teacher and mother of four children. She has enjoyed reading for as long as she can remember. She has fond memories of reading Nancy Drew and Mary Higgins Clark on snowy weekend afternoons in upstate New York and yearned to write books that would bring that kind of enjoyment to her readers. Being an animal lover, she is a vegetarian and shares her home with two adorable cats and a little white dog. In her free time, she enjoys running, attending community theater productions, and spending time with her family (especially going to the mall with her teenage daughter and getting Dairy Queen afterwards).
For more information about the author, please visit her website at DianeWeinerAuthor.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook.
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Murder is Chartered by Diane Weiner
A Susan Wiles Schoolhouse Mystery
Publisher: Cozy Cat Press
Susan Wiles is driving home from open house on a winding, mountain road late at night. Nearly falling asleep at the wheel, she is startled when she hears something hit her Prius from out of nowhere. It's a dead woman lying in the road! Susan panics. Did she hit this pedestrian?
After calling for help, she notices that the body lying dead on the road is her school's assistant principal, Melissa Chadwick. Her detective daughter arrives at the scene and sensing something isn't right, discourages her mother from admitting guilt. Is this an accident, or a murder? Was Melissa killed by a coworker, someone with a grudge against her husband's recently relocated business, or someone very close to her heart?
Feeling responsible, retired teacher Susan Wiles puts on her sleuthing cap, determined to find the answer. Will she find out the truth, or will tragedy once again strike the cozy New York town of Westbrook?
— Murder is Chartered by Diane Weiner
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