November 2017

LOCAL AUTHOR
Teacher, mystery
novel author
by Dale King
Around Coral Springs,
Diane Weiner is
known as a career
public school teacher, wife,
and mother of four who can often be seen at the mall with her
teenage daughter, going for a Dairy Queen treat after shopping.
Fans of mystery novels know the veteran educator and
Highland, N.Y. native for another venture. She’s a writer – an
award-winning one at that. In fact, she has penned nine murder
mysteries since 2014 and her tenth has just hit the stands.
She produces “cozy mysteries,” a subgenre of crime fiction in
which violence is downplayed and investigations are usually
conducted by Palmer Peters by amateur sleuths in small, socially intimate
communities.
“The people who read them devour them,” Weiner said.
“They are really into it.”
Weiner created a protagonist, Susan Wiles, a retired
schoolteacher and mother of Lynette, a detective. The action
takes place in the fictional town of Westbrook, N.Y., patterned
after Highland – with a touch of Coral Springs thrown in.
The writer just released Murder is Homework, her ninth novel in
the Susan Wiles Schoolhouse Mystery Series.
Weiner got the idea for the series from a co-worker who talked
constantly about a colleague who “sucked up” to the principal,
often bringing in baked goods for him. “I started writing with
my youngest son and youngest daughter. We each considered
the image of a cupcake sitting on the principal’s desk with the
principal dead on the floor, and wrote it from different points of
view,” she said.
“It started as a fun activity to fill the summer vacation.
Eventually, my kids lost interest, and I took over.”
Out of that grew the Schoolhouse Series. Each novel has an
education-related term in the title: Murder is Collegiate, Murder
is Secondary, and Murder in the Middle among them.
Weiner fashioned Wiles as a headstrong woman who generally
disregards her daughter’s warnings not to get involved with
police business. As the series developed, Susan toned down
her risk-taking. “She is still in conflict with her daughter, but
it comes with more respect on both parts,” Weiner said.
Weiner took up fiction writing after struggling through her
doctoral thesis.
“After writing a dissertation, fiction writing is pure joy,”
she said. “When I was very young, I remember carrying
around a notebook and writing poems. In high school, I was
recognized by the National Council of English Teachers for
an essay I wrote. Now, I stick to writing cozies.”
She has loved reading since childhood, drawing influences from
Nancy Drew and Mary Higgins Clark. Her favorite writer is Jodie
Picoult, a contemporary author whose novels often deal with
social problems.
Weiner has already launched a second series of crime novels,
the Sugarbury Falls Mysteries, spun off from the Schoolhouse
Series. Book one, A Deadly Course, is a finalist for the 2017 Eric
Hoffer Book Award. A Deadly Course and Murder is Collegiate
are finalists in this year’s Chanticleer Mystery and Mayhem
Awards contest.
The crossover features lead characters Emily Fox, a former
reporter, and Henry Fox, her husband and a retired doctor.
Author/teacher Weiner is an animal lover and vegetarian who
shares her home with two cats and a little white dog. She
enjoys running, attending community theater productions, and
spending time with the family. She teaches at Millennium Middle
School in Tamarac and formerly taught at J.P. Taravella in Coral
Springs.
Weiner’s novels are published by Cozy Cat Press.
For information, visit www.cozycatpress.com or
www.dianeweinerauthor.com P
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NOVEMBER 2017