diane cox

My name is Diane Cox. This website is under development. For now, this page is the hub. I hope it evolves into the home of Diane Cox - Novelist!

A current passion

Cubberley High School Reunion - Class of '59

My, how time flies when you are having fun.

I've been having a blast as webmistress of our reunion site. The software we are using is kick-ass! You can see it here - Class Creator

Writing

All my life I have wanted to write - but didn't. Like many who come to writing late in life, I didn't feel I had anything to say. Then out of the blue in 2007 a novel just sprang to life in my imagination. I rushed to write it down, spewing forth 350 words in a mere four months. You can imagine what a mess it was. I have spent the last year and a half, refining and re-writing, taking courses and getting back my long lost skills. I hope it will soon be ready to make the rounds to editors. I realize my timing isn't great - publishing is going through a lot of changes right now, but I am hopeful. I have a blog for this work in progress - Wiregrass Country. It has been fun adding images that go with the story and chronicling my efforts.

Photography

Last year I upgraded my camera to a digital Canon. What a treat! It is a fantastic piece of equipment. I enrolled with the New York Institute of Photography in order to learn better how to use it. However, I can just get so far without hands on instruction. I learn from seeing, rather than reading. I have taken a lot of floral photos with this camera, some of which like this cosmos will appear on this page.

Web Design

My desire to create outstrips a couple of things in my life -a) the time to devote to learn how to do what I want and b)the money to make it not matter how I am using my time! One of my goals is to learn to use Adobe Illustrator and create cool graphic designs of my own.

Jewelry

A few years ago I started fooling around with making jewelry. I was pretty bad at it to begin but eventually got better and have actually sold some pieces. I have also donated two pieces for auction for charity. Now, I maintain a section on this web site where my jewelry is featured - Stone Blossoms.

Gardening

I am proud to say I was a pioneer on the web. I started a little gardening webzine in 1995 called the Atlanta Garden Connection. It was doing pretty well, but my other business was bringing in cash, so I closed it in 2001. What a mistake! My competitors at the time have since sold their sites for big bucks. Oh, well. I put it up again earlier this year, but now it's one of thousands and isn't getting a lot of traffic. I'll give it a few more months.

Coaching

During the course of my business career, I have had many occasions to offer advice to people and help them along their way. When I owned an executive search firm, I spent a bit too much time in this endeavor, but got quite good at it. When the rage for life coaching came about, I decided to take a course in coaching. I applied this skill for about a year, in addition to my regular business. All of us have things they are proud of in life, and I am proud of how many people I helped to find a new career, even out of their industry. My main source of income was really taking off so I focused on it instead. Recently I decided to start the coaching again. As you can see by this page, I am a multitasker! My coaching is geared toward small start up businesses - the name of this new endeavor is Create a Business. My intent is to help new business owners with the basic structure of a small business - employee manuals, operational structure, accounting basics, marketing, web presence etc. I have thirty years experience and feel quite certain I can be of help. My partner in the project has thirty plus years experience in employment law - an area all of us should know about. We both want to make our services available in small, affordable increments, in consideration of the high expense of starting any new business.

This story was conceived from homesickness and nostalgia. The homesickness was for my Southern family, all now departed. For the past decade I have researched my beginnings, both on my mother's and my father's side. The history of my mother's family centers on the South. In the process, I have learned so much about our country's history and in particular the history of the state of Georgia.

Long ago I fell in love with the marshes and the wilderness of south Georgia. I found myself wondering what it would have been like to live in those times. My mother instilled a concept in me as a child that something wonderful might be lurking down one of those dirt roads leading off into the wild.

On one of my trips passing through south Georgia, my next door neighbor shared the story of one of her ancestresses, who did indeed live in the Wiregrass Country in the early 1820s. Although she is not the main character of my novel, her tale of bravery and concern for the welfare of her children sparked the story I have eventually written.

Many people don't know that the wiregrass covered thousands of acres, the natural companion to huge longleaf pines and cypress trees. Buffalo also roamed freely across the Southeastern United States and the Creek Indians in Georgia numbered 30,000.

Nostalgia seems to be as much a part of Southern culture as hot summer days and fireflies at night, laced with a longing for an agrarian existence that has all but disappeared. There are those who argue that Southerners eschewed the wealth of industry for the more cultural aspects of life - family, place, music, literature - and above all, patriotism. For me the South is haunted, a fabled land of beautiful women, daring men and poor folk of both colors, skin shriveled by the hard work of farming.

I can't get enough of my homeland. It is in my blood, always beckoning me back no matter how far afield I stray.

Copyright 2009 Diane Cox All images and copy exclusive property of Diane Cox * writing [at] dianecox.net