DiAnn Mills Interview
Tell us about your family and your call to write: I have four adult sons. I didnât start writing until â96. My husband looked at me and told me someday youâll write a bookâquit your job and Iâll give you one year to get anything published. I said âOkay, I will. Iâm working on book number forty-two now.â
How did you get your first writing break? I submitted my story to a publishing house I knew that was open to new writers and they liked the story so I really didnât have a lot of rejectionsâit was being at the right time and the right place and it was Godâs purpose or it wouldnât have happened.
What do you write and why this genre? I write historical romance. I like what happened before us and what shapes and forms our country and make us the people we are today. I also write contemporary and that takes care of the passion in me to get the stories out.
Do you have any recent contracts and upcoming releases? Awaken My Heart, and Texas Legacy Trilogy.
What do you hope to accomplish through your novels? I would like the reader to ask: How can I be a better person? Can my relationship with God be deepened? I have friends and neighbors who will never darken a churchâs door. I can hand them a fiction novel where the character has the same kind of problems but they live their lives by the Bible and that is when that unbeliever can think to themselves, âWow! Thatâs what theyâve been talking about.â
How do you balance being a mom, wife and writer? You have to look at priorities. My first priority is to God. My second priority is to my husband, my family and then writing. I am a highly disciplined scheduled person. I know life is about interruptions. I back up a new contract two months from when it is due. I then take all the writing time that I have and I divide that into my word count and I know how many words I have to have done every day.
Did you write when your children were at home? I was a single mom for years with four boys. So my creativity in writing was writing stories about detective agencies and hero stories.
What would you say to moms who can’t wait until their children are older so they can write more? You have the best world around you. There are reasons why many writers are older. We have to be experienced adults. There is so much changing and growing in our lives. We have to live life in order to write about life. Being a mom and the growth we gain make gives us more able to handle who we are.
What interruptions in your writing didn’t you expect once your children were older and out of the home? Neighbors and friends thinking because I didn’t work outside of the home that I had all this free time.
How do you get back into the flow of writing when you’ve been interrupted? The excitement and passion for the story or project keeps me into it.
