From Here to Fourteenth Street was re-released in 2015 with The Wild Rose Press, after I revised it and gave it a new title. It was originally titled I love You Because with my first publisher. It’s the first in a trilogy, The New York Saga, featuring 3 generations of the McGlory family. Tom McGlory, an Irish New York cop, and Vita Caputo, an Italian immigrant from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, meet and fall in love despite the overwhelming odds against them in 1894. They overcome economic hardship, prejudice, hatred, and corruption in this tumultuous world.

Book Two, Bootleg Broadway, is set during the Prohibition era and features Tom and Vita’s son Billy, a scatterbrained musical genius. My objective was to get him into one mess after another, and had no trouble doing that, once I got to know Billy.

In Book Three, The End of Camelot, Billy’s daughter Vikki is the heroine. Set around the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, Vikki realizes her husband Jack was embroiled in the plot to kill the president, but his mission was to prevent it. Jack was found dead in the bathtub of his hotel in Dallas, the same day of the assassination. When the Dallas police rule his death accidental, Vikki vows to find out who was behind the murders of JFK and her husband. With the help of her father and godfather, she sets out to uncover the truth.

My inspiration for From Here to Fourteenth Street was my great-grandmother; businesswoman, politician, small-time bootlegger, wife and mother. She was way ahead of her time. I modeled Vita after her, and since 19th Century New York City history always fascinated me, it came naturally to weave her story through that world, brining sights, sounds and smells of the streets and tenements to life.

I am a strict plotter – I work out a detailed outline, and for the last few decades, I’ve been using the Donald Maass workbook Writing Your Breakout Novel. It contains questions to ask your characters and explains how to outline your story. I find it invaluable for structuring my stories.

For this and most of my historicals, I usually spend about a year researching and writing. I write 2,500 words every day, and don’t quit until I’ve reached that goal.

Diana writes about folks through history who shook things up. Her passion for history and travel has taken her to every locale of her books: Medieval and Renaissance England, Egypt, the Mediterranean, colonial Virginia, New England, and New York. Her urban fantasy romance Fakin’ It won a Top Pick award from Romantic Times. She is a member of the Richard III Society and the Aaron Burr Association. With her husband Chris, she owns CostPro, Inc., a construction cost consulting business. In her spare time, Diana bicycles, golfs, practices yoga, lifts weights, plays her piano, devours books, and lives the dream on Cape Cod.

Connect with Diana at www.dianarubino.com

It’s 1894 on New York’s Lower East Side. Irish cop Tom McGlory and Italian immigrant Vita Caputo fall in love despite their different upbringings. Vita goes from sweatshop laborer to respected bank clerk to reformer, helping elect a mayor to beat the Tammany machine. While Tom works undercover to help Ted Roosevelt purge police corruption, Vita’s father arranges a marriage between her and a man she despises. The story has a paranormal twist – Vita and Tom work together against time and prejudice to clear her brother and father of a murder they didn’t commit, as Vita’s friend Jadwiga, a medium, helps them find the killer with some help from the otherworld – and some creative thinking.