Hulllooooo, my peeps! I have another treat for you, a guest blog from my author colleague Dianne Harman. She’s here to tell us a bit about how her book Blue Coyote Motel came to be.

BLUE COYOTE BACK STORY

by Dianne Harman

I’ve been a reader since before kindergarten and was an English Major in college, but I never felt I had the “necessary credentials” to become a writer. I’d never gone to numerous workshops, joined critique groups or anything else that I thought “real writers” needed to do. Nevertheless, whenever someone would ask me what my dream thing would be I always pictured myself at a computer with a large window looking outdoors next to it and me writing. And so I sit here today at the computer, the large window next to me and a hummingbird nest in my tree! So much for visualization!!!

My husband read a review of Stephen King’s ten-year old book, On Writing, and suggested I read it which I did. It changed my life. Stephen said I could write. I didn’t need to do all the things I thought an author had to do to write. But now what to write?

We were at a wedding in Palm Springs, California where our son was the best man. It was being held in an old renovated downtown hotel. The temperature outside was 106 degrees in October. The air-conditioner was silent, and for what reason I will never know, I turned to my husband as we were getting ready to go out to dinner and said, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone put a ‘feel-good’ drug in the air-conditioner and everyone felt good all the time?” He looked at me and said, “There’s your book.” That was the genesis of Blue Coyote Motel.

At dinner that evening a large priest with a huge cross was seated at the table next to us. It was about the time of the Penn State – Jerry Sandusky scandal. The priest became an alcoholic pedophile in my book. At the wedding dinner the next evening I was seated next to a couple who owned gold mines in Brazil. They became characters in the book. And so it went.

I wrote the book on my iPad as the California State Senate was in session and I was in Sacramento, California with my husband without a convenient computer. It went fast. The characters dictated what was going to happen and I simply wrote it down. I thought it would probably go in the bottom drawer of my nightstand and that would be it but I would have fulfilled my dream. My husband asked to read it. Three days later he told me it had to be published. I couldn’t have scripted the rest. I self-published it and a few months later Blue Coyote Motel was chosen as a quarter finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Then, unbeknownst to me, it was chosen as Goodreads Psychological Thriller of the Month. Who would have thunk? Not me. And it’s still selling well after all these months!

I never intended to write a sequel or a series, but the Beta readers and others kept asking me what happened to Maria. The next in the series, Coyote in Provence, is in the final editing stages and the third book has been written and should be out by the end of the year.

I guess the whole lesson is to “bloom where you’re planted.”

BLUE COYOTE MOTEL SYNOPSIS

You’ll never look at motel air conditioning the same way after you read Blue Coyote Motel.

Blue Coyote Motel is a suspense filled thriller about six travelers who stop and spend the night at a remote California desert motel. Each of them leaves the following morning “feeling good,” but unaware that they have inadvertently become addicted to a gaseous drug piped into their rooms.

Jeffrey, the owner of the motel, is a scientist who was recently fired by a prestigious Southern California drug manufacturer for giving an anti-aging hormone he discovered to his beautiful Latina wife. Spinning slowly into the depths of insanity, he decides to test the effectiveness of another of his drug discoveries on unsuspecting motel guests. He calls the drug Freedom because it frees people from depression, anger, stress, grief, and aggression. Jeffrey has grandiose plans to make Freedom available throughout the world in order to bring about peace and harmony, but instead it causes grief and chaos in the lives of the motel guests. The cast of characters includes a defrocked priest, a Native American pediatrician, a wealthy widow, a Brazilian couple who owns gold mines and a salesman intent on finding himself.

Blue Coyote Motel presents an engaging look at the human frailties present in all of us.

ABOUT DIANNE HARMAN

Dianne Harman draws her stories and characters from a diverse business and personal background. She owned a national antique and art appraisal business for many years, leaving that industry and opening two yoga centers where she taught yoga and certified yoga instructors. Dianne has traveled extensively throughout the world, most recently dividing her time between Huntington Beach, California and Sacramento, California, where her husband is a Senator. A gourmet cook, she has entertained Governors, Congressmen and numerous other political figures in her homes. An avid reader, Dianne brings the richness of her life experiences to her novels, Blue Coyote Motel and Tea Party Teddy.

Amazon Book Pages http://amzn.to/SO8uIj & http://amzn.to/ZgKwIB

Goodreads Author Page http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6568284.Dianne_Harman

Facebook Author Page http://www.facebook.com/#!/AuthorDianneHarman

Twitter Username http://www.twitter.com/@DianneDHarman

Website: www.dianneharman.com