"Let's call me Fred," she says. "That's bound to drum up interest." Seriously: "DL is what I use professionally. It separates the writer from the musician (to the relief of my family)."

Drumroll ... the writer Diana Killian recently published The Art of Dying through Xlibris.

Drumroll ... the musician, Diane Browne, performs with her two sisters and a cousin at Scottish Highland Games and Irish Festivals throughout the Western United States. Appearing as The Browne Sisters and George Cavanaugh, their repertoire includes everything from contemporary Scottish songs to Gaelic waulking songs.

SIC: Will you give us a little personal background?

DL : Argh! This is the part I'm terrible at. I graduated from Pepperdine, Malibu (California) with a double-major in English and Humanities. I'm happily single again following the end of a long and exhausting relationship. No kids, but I'm a devoted aunt to four knee-high hoodlums. I love dogs and I usually have a couple, but apartment living makes that impossible for the moment.

SIC: You hold down a fulltime job. What kind of job is it? What other jobs have you held that you're willing to talk about -- tinker, tailor, soldier, spy?

DL : I'm the Operations Manager at the Los Angeles branch of an international security company. That sounds even less interesting than it is, which is saying something! I also spent about five years in the exciting and challenging role of substitute teacher in high school. Barely escaping with my life, I was happy to retire to the private sector with a permanent twitch in my left eye.

SIC: Tell us about your music, how you started, how often you perform. Did you sing around the house while growing up? Do you sing for love or money?

DL : The Browne Sisters and George Cavanaugh have been performing professionally for about 12 years now. It sounds corny, but yes, we did sing together growing up.

When our family went on trips our whole family would sing in the car. My dad taught us all these great Bing Crosby songs; then he discovered the Beatles and we learned all those. Cowboy songs, Peter, Paul and Mary, sea chanteys.

Finally, realizing they had created a monster, my parents locked us up in the back of a camper for long drives -- and that's when my sisters, Pam and Laurie, started figuring out elaborate harmonies to everything. It's definitely genetics. The singing gene runs in our family.

Love or money? Well, we perform for money. Singing is different. I'll be driving somewhere with one of my sisters and a song will come on the radio and suddenly we're singing, taking parts, harmonizing -- totally focused. It's almost like a drug. When we get together, we sing. That's how we are.

There have been some memorable times, but it's all kind of a blur. We always have fun. That's what people always say: "You look like you're having so much fun up there." Playing together is like a little party. George, Pam, and Laurie are the funniest people I know, so we're always laughing -- except when we're trying to kill each other over creative differences.

SIC: How long have you been writing? How did you begin?

DL : I always wrote little stories, and all my teachers kept encouraging me (I always had great teachers), so when I hit high school I started trying to sell novels. I didn't actually score until I graduated from college. I finally sold a Harlequin romance, Love's Good Fortune.

SIC: You have gone the traditional publishing route, but your most recent novel, The Art of Dying, is self-published through Xlibris. Did you have particular reasons for that? Was the process everything you expected? What were the best and worst aspects of it?

DL : I didn't really try to market The Art of Dying, and I should have. I knew I wanted to try out the "new" self-publishing, and I thought it was fairly strong, though "niche." I thought it would be a good test run.

And it was, but I learned something about myself: I hate promotion; and marketing a self-published novel takes even more effort and determination than marketing a traditionally published novel, because so many doors are closed through bias or ignorance.

As far as self-publishing? It was the best of times and the worst of times. Both firms delivered exactly what they promised, which is simply a product. Most new writers are not equipped to deal with that kind of responsibility; they need the guidance and expertise of an editor. Plus, many of them know little or nothing about the industry.

For me, it was an interesting experiment, and there are circumstances under which I might try it again (should my own publishing contract be cancelled, it would be one way of keeping my series alive if it took a long time to nail another publisher). This time I would be prepared for the wait (which, while longer than promised, is still much shorter than is usual in traditional publishing) and for the lousy customer service. Knowing what to expect makes all the difference.

I didn't go into self-publishing with high expectations. I was curious more than anything. I don't believe it is a satisfactory substitute for a traditional publishing contract, but those are becoming more and more scarce.

The positive side of self-publishing is the heady sense of freedom that comes with total creative control. It's a delight -- and a danger. It takes a lot of self-discipline to force yourself to do rewrite after rewrite when you know you can publish as is.

The other very cool thing about the new technology is that if you feel really strongly about a novel, but can't get publisher support, you do have the option of putting your money where your mouth is, and publishing it yourself.

It's a brave new world out there! It scares a lot of writers. Maybe it should.

SIC: Given your various careers and projects, this question may cause you to laugh hysterically, but what's your favorite way to relax, assuming you ever find time?

DL : Reading, naturally. I collect old mysteries -- and I collect them to read them, not just for the pleasure of owning them. And I enjoy terrorizing the plants in my garden (I'm a horrible but enthusiastic gardener). I also love renting movies -- especially old movies and especially old mystery movies. In fact, my preferred writing background music is old movies. I belong to the Home Film Festival, so every couple of weeks I get some oddball foreign films or something really archaic in the mail.

SIC: What do you read for pleasure? What did you read as you were growing up, and how did your reading tastes change or develop?

DL : I review for "I Love A Mystery," so I actually get to stay current with ... er ... publishing trends, but for sheer pleasure I'm a nut for the mysteries of the 1930s and '40s. Mignon G. Eberhart, Leslie Ford, the Little Sisters ... I love that stuff! I read a lot of romantic-suspense growing up. But I also read and loved cowboy novels: Max Brand, Zane Grey, Louis L'amour -- and then a ton of Georgette Heyer.

I'd like to say that I had a well-rounded reading background, but now that I think of it, it was almost totally in popular fiction. I don't know if my taste has changed a lot. Romance bores the heck out of me -- which is why I may not make a very good romantic-suspense writer! I've gotten to like more hard-boiled stuff -- I don't require happy endings anymore, although I prefer them!

SIC: What kind of promotions do you plan for your new book?

DL : This is a real battle for me. It's one thing to sing in public -- it's almost impersonal, if that makes sense? -- plus the focus isn't solely on me. But to show up some place and hawk my book is really really hard for me. I know I'm not unique in this; most writers would rather write than promote. I'm going to Bouchercon this year -- for me that's a big step. And I've made the resolution to start doing signings with the next book.

SIC: Do you have a work in progress? If so, can you tell us anything about it?

DL : I love this project. It's romantic-suspense but the kind of romantic-suspense I like -- a mix of lots of adventure and humor. At least, I hope it's humorous! It's titled Dangerous to Know and it's about an American professor who stumbles across a body on her vacation in the Lake District. Before she knows it, she's involved in the search for a lost manuscript of the wicked Lord Byron. It's nearly complete. Now I have to try and sell the darn thing.

SIC: Tell us about Wicked Company, the mystery community you founded. What piqued your interest in doing that? What have been the surprises, pleasant or otherwise, in your first year of leading that very lively community?

DL : What's that quote from "The Lady From Shanghai": "You know nothing about wickedness." If I had known then what I know now ... actually it's been great fun. The community started out for iUniverse mystery writers but from the point that we started a discussion list on Yahoo, it bloomed into something much larger, and more entertaining. Now we have a colorful assortment of writers, reviewers, editors, and the always appreciated readers. The writers come in all sizes and flavors too: aspiring, self-published and traditionally published.

Unpleasant surprises? Not many. It is interesting the number of people who aren't willing to give anything back to a "community." They pop in to promote their books every six months but don't partake in the actual discussions, never offer to review anyone else, etc. The happy surprise is that these folks are in the minority. Most of our members take the concept of community to heart.

SIC: Tell us more about the short story anthology you plan to take to Bouchercon.

DL : Down These Wicked Streets, the PI anthology, is a collaboration between Wicked Company and The Thrilling Detective Web Site. It was actually Kevin Burton Smith's idea. (Everyone else has the ideas, I just trot along behind, pouring the coffee and fluffing the pillows.) We've got seven original stories written by members of Wicked Company -- many (myself included) who had never written a PI story before. It was an excellent test of writing discipline and turned out to be a lot of fun.

SIC: As an editor, what are the main weaknesses you see in material submitted to iUniverse and Xlibris?

DL : Most of it desperately needs an editor. I think the freelance editor business should be booming. Besides all the proofreading errors (increasingly commonplace in traditional publishing as well), you've got writers who don't understand about pacing, structure, characterization, theme (my old favorite) and dialogue. They don't know the basics.

They love writing! And they recognize that much of what is published through traditional venues is mediocre, but what they don't recognize is that while those books are flawed, they are not flawed as desperately as is much of what is self-published. And they struggle against facing the fact that it doesn't matter if someone else's unworthy book is on a bestseller list, THEY have to follow the rules. They have to write BETTER than the traditionally published author because they've already got two strikes against them.

SIC: Gaze into your crystal ball. What will you be doing ten years from now?

DL : When I grow up I wanna be a geisha and write Haiku murder mysteries. I've always wanted long, raven black hair...

SIC: Many thanks, DL, and good luck with your books and other endeavors.

DL : Thanks, Pat. I enjoyed it!