Who Am I?

For this additional biographical information I picked this heading over “Who I Am” because it’s the name of one of my favorite songs from my favorite musical, Les Misérables.

I had a fun childhood (well, not without its problems and traumas, of course) that involved lots of visits to both sets of grandparents, who lived an hour or so away in neighboring small towns. My grandfather was a county sheriff and the jail was actually a part of the big old house in which he and my grandmother lived. The cells were up a flight of iron steps that ascended from a separate entranceway to the house.

They had many interesting visitors (apart from the prisoners)—among them a faded old lady who, it was said, was the inspiration for the popular song, Delta Dawn.

My grandmother had a “haunted” portrait called Southern Belle that snapped, crackled, and popped when you were left alone with it. My other grandmother also lived in a large old house, with one whole room full of books, mostly mysteries. I spent hours in that room. She also had an antique doll collection which was kind of spooky, and lots of interesting outdoor places to visit—barns, outbuildings with trunks of old clothes, an abandoned, half-burned house, school play yards, etc.

As a young adult I started wishing for a “simpler” life and moved from a large city to a small one. I enrolled in nursing school and on that college campus met my husband and promptly dropped out of nursing school to set up housekeeping…then found that two incomes were more or less necessary to make it in today’s world. I worked part-time while raising our two children, then went back to full-time jobs which have included: secretary, bookkeeper, working in the editorial department of a newspaper, owner of a short-lived resume-writing business, and personnel specialist. I’ve done such challenging things as hanging off an overpass to take photos of graffiti (for the newspaper, not for fun), and arranging a political event attended by the governor.

My first book, Shadow of Dawn, was published in 2003. (Woman of Sin is older but hadn’t been published at that time.) My writing encompasses several genres that are often interconnected: historical, romantic suspense, inspirational, and mystery. Lest there be any confusion, I’m not the author of The Red Camp, which was written by another Debra Diaz.

My hobbies are reading, research, visiting museums and touring old houses, national parks and battlefields.

So who am I? A writer who humbly invites you to step inside my books, escape from reality, and find something you’ve been looking for!