Writing under the name Diane Arrelle, I have had over 200 short stories published and I have two 2 published books, Just A Drop In The Cup, a collection of short-short stories and Elements Of The Short Story, How to Write a selling Story (which is out of print). I live on the edge of the Pine Barrens (home of the Jersey Devil) in Southern New Jersey with my husband, currently one of our two offspring and my cat. I am proud to be one of the founding members as well as the second president of the Garden State Horror Writers and I am also the past president of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference as well as currently on the PWC board of directors.
About two years ago my friend Beverly Haaf and I started a new and exciting publishing company, Jersey Pines Ink, LLC. In our first year we published two books a sweet cozy mystery , the first in a series of five about the fictional town of JumpRope, NJ. The book Death Behind The Lilacs and my collection of short horror stories, Seasons On The Dark Side are available in print from Amazon and as E-books from several suppliers including Kindle, Kobo (found at Wal*Mart) and others. There are many new books planned for 2019
I began writing stories in college while taking the four hour once a week class, The Geography Of Southeast Asia, which I needed for my teaching certification in social studies. It was really a long class that begged to let my imagination roam. Growing up extremely rural and listening nightly the ghastly, ghostly tales that my older siblings forced upon me, I naturally turned to horror, since I am basically afraid of everything.
To support my writing habit for the last couple of decades, I have held a wide variety of jobs including Teacher, School Bus Driver, Waitress, Sales Clerk, Mystery Shopper, Holiday Gift Wrapper in a department store, Newspaper Correspondent, Tutor, Freelance Writer, Senior Citizen Center Director and I was also that person who stood around in a mall burning vanilla tinged milk and cooking tasteless crepes to sell nonstick pots and pans.
I often turn to events that happen around me for inspiration and one of my favorite stories was inspired by a delightfully creepy resort my sister and I stayed at a few years ago. To my utter joy, it was my turn to tell her some ghastly, ghostly stories to keep her up all night.