About Diadem Books

Welcome to DiademBooks.com

Diadem Books was founded in 1997 by Charles Muller, who is Editor-in-Chief and Proprietor of Diadem Books. Since then well over 200 books have been published and given worldwide exposure through Diadem Books in association with the US company that launched Writers Club Press. The unique feature of Diadem Books is that the basic fee includes unlimited editing, regardless of the amount of editing required.

Perhaps the best introduction to Diadem Books would be to reproduce an article published (while Charles Muller was still the owner of the Kenmore Bank Hotel in Jedburgh) in The Southern Reporter, a newspaper that serves the Scottish Borders and Southern Scotland.  In a sense, it says everything in a nutshell! 
 

The following article appeared as a full front-page feature in The Southern Reporter, Thursday, October 12, 2000, eight months before The Kenmore Bank Hotel was sold to new owners.

‘The Plot Thickens’-- Interview by Mark Entwistle, Photograph by Gordon Lockie.

How a new chapter opened for author Charles Muller when he switched careers from South African academic to Jedburgh hotelier.

GUESTS staying at a small Borders hotel could easily find themselves featuring in a novel if they are not careful – especially if they feel inclined to make a complaint!

            Ten years ago, Charles Humphrey Muller and his wife Joanne, bought the Kenmore Bank Hotel in Jedburgh. By that time South African-born Charles had been professor of English at the University of the North in the Transvaal for 10 years and prior to that lectured at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

            Joanne hails from Yorkshire and has written for magazines such as “Cosmopolitan” and “Fair Lady”.

            The hotel has provided them with a lifestyle which allows them both time to write novels, while their other business, Diadem Books, has not only successfully placed works by other authors with publishers, but also supplies proof-reading and cover-design services.

            The literary duo originally met in Harrogate in 1977 when Charles was in the UK on a study year. Joanne travelled to South Africa with Charles, but the couple returned to Britain in 1988 after the situation in South Africa started to rapidly deteriorate. It also seemed like a good time to move to take a further step forward in making their dream of being able to write full-time a reality.

            “One of the reasons for leaving South Africa was the uncertainty. The University of the North was an apartheid institution set up by the government to look good to the outside world,” Charles told me.

            “Thankfully, things have changed and for the better, but back then at the end of the 1980s the continual strikes by the students were beginning to take their toll and I was sick of the endless rounds of committee meetings.  I felt I was stuck in a rut and had to get out.”

            Growing up in the Afrikaner heartland of the Orange Free State, he says he was unaware of the political problems plaguing much of the country.

            “I was just aware that black people lived in a different area from me. Nevertheless I grew up with black children who were great friends. I was never aware of differences until I came back from university – then I found there was a different attitude towards me.”

            His life and experiences in South Africa have furnished him with much background material and plot lines for his novels, although his latest published work is greatly influenced by the Borders.

            Entitled “Continental Drift”, it is published by the American-based Writers Club Press and tells the story of a dissipated and disillusioned hotelier in Scotland, Harry Denton, who “drifts across the world, following a dream of a dark-haired girl and a vision of utopia”, according to the publisher’s blurb. An inheritance left to Denton by his father enables him to start a new life by buying a small hotel in the Borders, but it is in apartheid-riddled South Africa that he finds his dream.

            Some of his previously published works were written during his time in the republic, including his first – “The Cage and the Cross” – in 1974 and which deals with the rather more serious topic of prisoners incarcerated in Pretoria Central Prison.

            At the time, Charles was experiencing a personal crisis himself following his decision to break away from a fundamentalist religious sect known as the Christadelphians, and part of this period also influenced the novel.

            As well as fiction, he has had numerous academic textbooks and literary studies published, and added to this are the two books he has co-authored with his wife.

            Charles sends his manuscripts to his American publishers electronically by computer. “It was two years ago that I bought my first computer and that is what really opened things up for me.”

            Several of the walls of the Kenmore Bank Hotel are covered with watercolours and oil paintings executed by the Mullers – Joanne’s artistic efforts also adorn the cover of “Continental Drift”, based on a painting of Jedburgh Abbey.

            “A novel should be based on something you know – above all it has to be honest and not contrived. Basically, you have to write straight from the heart and that is what I try to do.”

            Charles says his academic background in English has actually been a handicap rather than a help to his writing career.

            “When you are trained as a literary critic it makes you very aware of the quality of writing which already exists. It makes you self-conscious. Any time you write something, you tend to think it’s not good enough and that stops the spontaneous flow of creativity.

            “Academic training stifles you to a certain extent.”

            He confesses that a number of guests who have stayed at the Kenmore Bank Hotel over the years have ended up immortalised in print.

            “We have had so many guests over the years, it is difficult to remember them. The majority are usually very nice and we’ve only rarely had any complaints.

            “But it has tended to be those who have complained about something, who have been a bit of a thorn in the flesh so to speak, who have ended up caricatured in my novels.”

            He believes a writer has to be disciplined above all else. “You have to force yourself to write every day. You have to sit down and start – you can’t just wait until the mood takes you. It is like going to work anywhere else.

            “Once you have worked out a plot, you sit down and you will find one thought triggers another. Then you will find that when you set yourself to write 10 pages in a day, you have written 20; when you set yourself a target of 20 that becomes 30 and eventually the problem is you are writing too much.”

            Charles has three daughters from his first marriage and one of them, Winnie, has recently opened a beauty salon (“Body Beautiful”) in Jedburgh, while the other daughters live in Coldstream and Glasgow.

COVERING NOTE "Wheel of Fortune," a tale of intrigue and violence by Charles Muller

            Charles added: “We moved to Harrogate first to consolidate our assets.” He said, “It was just before the property boom under Maggie Thatcher and we ended up being able to sell our house for twice what we paid for it and that money enabled us to buy this place here in Jedburgh. The idea was that we would leave South Africa and find something to do which would give us the time we needed to write. But it took a long time before we actually got down to writing because it took a long time to establish the hotel business.

            “In fact, the hotel was almost counter-productive. I have found that running a business like this stultifies the mind to a certain extent. In fact, you might say that with all my academic degrees and three doctorates, I am the most highly qualified waiter in the country!”

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Note: Charles Muller sold the Kenmore Bank Hotel in Jedburgh in the spring of 2001 and moved to the Great Glen in the Highlands of Scotland, where he lived for 5 years.  His present address is: "Ocean Surf", CLASHNESSIE, By Lochiver, Sutherland, Scotland UK. His wife Joanne wrote a book on their experiences at the hotel called So You Want to Buy a Small Hotel! A Guide and presently runs her own hotel booking service Travel Accommodation: