Interview with Romantic Suspense Author DiAnn Mills and a Giveaway!

Welcome to Readers Write to Know! I asked you, my readers, what questions they would ask their favorite authors if given the chance, and the authors visiting my blog answered them! I’m always excited when I have a friend as my guest, and this week I am THRILLED that DiAnn Mills is my guest! DiAnn and I have been friends for years. I love any moment I get to spend in her company. We have served on boards together, spent time at conferences together, and share a special bond after we both lost sons in tragic accidents very close to each other. I adore this woman and know you will, too. Read on to see how you can enter to win!

Tell us a little bit about yourself: DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She weaves memorable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels with threads of romance. DiAnn believes every breath of life is someone’s story, so why not capture those moments and create a thrilling adventure?

Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards, Selah, Golden Scroll, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests.

DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, an active member of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers, Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Mystery Writers of America, the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild, and International Thriller Writers. DiAnn continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country.
DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas.
DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers.

Tell us a little bit about your book: Lethal Standoff: Hostage negotiator Carrington Reed is called to the scene when reports come in that fifteen hostages are being held by the Kendrix brothers in an abandoned house in south Texas. When she arrives on site, Carrington quickly learns that the brothers are armed and refuse to release their victims, a group of undocumented immigrants, until the local police identify their father’s murderer.

Working closely with Levi Ehrlich, a handsome investigative reporter who has covered some of Carrington’s negotiations in the past, she finds herself being undeniably drawn to him. Carrington digs deeper into the death of the Kendrix brother’s father and begins to notice that some details surrounding his death aren’t adding up.

If you knew ahead of time your book would benefit only one person on their spiritual journey, would you still write it? Yes. To that one person, the book made a difference.

Do you feel pressured to compromise your standards in order to reach a larger audience or be more successful? No. My priority is God’s standards. He called me to write for Him in a Christian worldview.

What do you think is lacking in Christian Fiction? That question made me think. What is important to me is that good overcomes evil, faith is shown in actions, and that Christians struggle and fail too. When people turn to God, He picks them up, dusts them off, and sends us into the world again.

With all those characters in your head screaming to get out how do you write fast enough to get it all down? One word at a time. And I view it through a camera’s lens, showing a character walk a journey.

How do you push past the fear of your writing being average and be bold enough to sell it to a publisher(or agent or audience if you self publish)? I constantly challenge myself for each book to be better than the previous one. I also believe competing against myself is healthy.

What inspired you to start writing, or did you always want to write? Always! From the time I could hold a pencil, but I didn’t have confidence. I threw everything away.. In 1996, my husband challenged me to write a book, quit my job, and see if I could get anything published in the next year. Dynamite comes in small packages, and I accepted the challenge. I wrote and sold articles and a book that year. My first book was published traditionally in 1998.

I’m always intrigued by how writers get started did you always have these books inside you and knew that you wanted to write them or did the idea just pop into your head one day and you decided to put pen to paper? They just pop into my head and hang around until I do something!

Is there a book you wrote that you didn’t think would do well and it did? Or a book you thought would do well and it didn’t? I didn’t know if Facing the Enemy would do well because I wrote it during a time of grief. But it sold very well, and I’ve received awards for it. I forgot our best writing comes from personal pain.

Find DiAnn online:

Website – diannmills.com
Facebook – facebook.com/diannmills
Twitter X – x.com/diannmills
Blog – diannmills.com/articles
BookBub – bookbub.com/authors/diann-mills
Instagram – instagram.com/diannmillsauthor/
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/diannmills
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannmills/
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/diannmills/
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/81639.DiAnn_Mills

Find DiAnn’s book online:

Lethal Standoff

Price: $17.99

31 used & new available from $10.83

DiAnn is giving away a paperback (or ebook) copy of her book! Here’s how you can enter to win:

2 comments

  1. Not yet, I’ve written several books but all of them are unpublished but hope to be published someday.
    Great interview enjoyed reading it and really enjoyed the book excerpt too so much so I really want to read the print copy of Lethal Standoff so I can review it. Looking forward to reading it.
    Hopefully I Win Contest
    Thanks for the chance to win

    • Caryl Kane on September 8, 2024 at 21:31
    • Reply

    DiAnn Mills is one of my go-to authors. I had the privilege of meeting her at my local library a couple of years ago. She is delightful!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.