EDUCATION:

Prior to receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of New Mexico, she attended the University of Wyoming. Wanting to study everything, Dietz switched majors numerous times before ending up with a saleable degree in education, grades kindergarten through high school, with certifications in science, visual arts, and administration.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER:

Dietz’s professional career started as a teacher in an open-area concept elementary schools. Years later, she wanted to see what the big kids were like so she transferred to a large high school where Dietz taught students with special needs, science, and became department chair. Later, she became an administrator overseeing high schools and their feeder schools’ special education programs, teachers, and service providers. Her mantra: “Always keep your heart and eye on the student. Nothing else matters.”

Dietz left public education to teach graduate students at a private college and later became an educational consultant for Houghton Mifflin Publishing (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She traveled the U.S. and mainly NM for eight years conducting staff development workshops with administrators and teachers. Houghton Mifflin also hired her to construct correlations between their educational materials and different states’ educational standards, along with a booklet for teachers on how-to write science grants.

PUBLISHED WRITINGS:

Dietz’s award-winning short stories have been published in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2016 Anthology and SouthWest Writers 2019 Anthology. Her current mystery novels incorporate a touch of history and science. The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur combines family saga with corporate espionage. The Flapper, the Impostor, and the Stalker propels readers back into 1923 frenetic Chicago during the Roaring Twenties. Both these novels were named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018, and each won the coveted Kirkus Starred Review.  Her third murder-mystery novel, The Scientist, the Psychic, and the Nut, gives readers a frightening Caribbean vacation. Dietz’s current work, a biographical, historical-suspense novel, starts in England in 1638 and ends in precolonial Maryland. The Spinster, the Rebel, and the Governor, to be released in the fall of 2022, tells the story of Margaret Brent, a woman who asked for the vote over 200 years prior to Susan B. Anthony. She represented those who had no voice in the pre-colonial Maryland courts, educated an Indian Princess, built a fort to protect Catholics from a Protestant rebellion, and saved Maryland from devastation.

Dietz’s writings have received numerous awards, such as from Kirkus Reviews, Writer’s Digest, International Book Awards, SouthWest Writers, and New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.

COMMUNITY:

Charlene Dietz volunteered for twenty-five years as a lay person for the Lovelace Research Institute at Sandia National Laboratories. When the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science first opened in Albuquerque, she founded their Friends of Paleontology, became an active member of their fossil posse, hunting and excavating prehistoric life (dinosaurs), helped sculpture the Woolly Mammoth exhibit, and joined their docent staff. Currently, she’s finding grants and scholarships to send deserving young women to universities and colleges through P.E.O. (a philanthropic educational organization).

ORGANIZATIONS:

Charlene Dietz, current past president of Croak & Dagger, New Mexico Chapter of Sisters in Crime, belongs to National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers, Mystery Writers of America, New Mexico Book Association, Public Safety Writers Association, Historical Novel Writers, and SouthWest Writers.

Contact: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charlene.dietz.9/  Inkydance Studios: https://inkydancestudios.com   Email: chardietzpen@gmail.co