Diane Rinella: New Adult Romances seeking Marriage Equality

Hello Paul, Thank you for this opportunity to be interviewed!
Cheers! Diane

Diane Rinella- My author bio sums me up pretty well: Enjoying San Francisco as a backdrop, the ghosts in Diane’s 150-year old Victorian home augment the chorus in her head. With insomnia as their catalyst, these voices have become multifarious characters that haunt her well into the sun’s crowning hours, refusing to let go until they have manipulated her into succumbing to their whims. Her experiences as an actress, business owner, artisan cake designer, software project manager, Internet radio disc jockey, vintage rock n’ roll journalist/fan girl, and lover of dark and quirky personalities influence her idiosyncratic writing.

Diane Rinella- Love’s Forbidden Flower and Time’s Forbidden Flower are New Adult Romances where the love interests just happen to be siblings. Many have stated that this story is life altering and has the power to change worldviews. People who are in the shoes of my main characters tell me all the time how my story reflects their emotions and uncannily matches their lives, sometimes down to a person’s actual words. The books have been highly received by the people they represent, so much so that the group Full Marriage Equality actively endorses them and coined the phrase “Friend of Lily” (after my main character) to be akin to “Friend of Dorothy.” At the end of Love’s Forbidden Flower, I hope readers will look at the world through a new set of eyes and question why we make love laws. At the end of Time’s Forbidden Flower I hope readers will stare at that final page, filled with the hope of tomorrows greater than we can ever foresee.

Diane Rinella – While growing up I was a big fan of both SE Hinton and Jacqueline Susann. SE Hinton painted characters that became forever etched in my mind and heart. I hoped to someday have that kind of effect on people. Jacqueline Susann was amazing. The characters! The drama! She paved the way for modern pop culture literature. As for wanting to actually become an author, it was just something I knew that I would someday do, I just didn’t know where it fit on my calendar of life until inspiration hit.

Diane Rinella- Honestly, I have tried several times over and can’t. My subject matter is pretty unconventional. I searched high and low for existing works of a similar nature while writing Love’s Forbidden Flower and only came up with erotica stories or novels where the characters were in “justifiable” situations. I wanted to represent the normal (just like you and me type) real world couples. I’ve been told several times over that my story is wholly original.

Diane Rinella- One chilly fall afternoon I curled up and watched an obscure counter culture film called The Buttercup Chain. In it, two cousins, related through identical twins—thus making them genetic half-siblings—have a strong attraction. She is fine with the situation, while he is a huge ball of denial. The entire film I waited for the obvious to happen. When the film ended and the man was heartbroken, I felt a huge opportunity had been squandered. Clearly they were soul mates, and never once did we find out why he was so freaked out by his emotions. All you could believe was that he hid from who he was because of society. What a horrible world we live in where love is wrong.

The sadness of the situation stayed with me, as did my anger at the author for not taking the story where it needed to go, either by explaining the problem or by facing it. The proverbial gloves came off and I started writing Love’s Forbidden Flower. What started as a story ended as a chalice in which I placed my heart, all the while asking why we make love laws. How we can tell others it is wrong to love, I will never understand.