Vicki Lane

Joan Medlicott suggested I read Vicki's first book, Signs in the Blood, and possibly include her in the Cozy Library. Vicki was quick to tell me her book wasn't cozy ... and it isn't. But it's a wonderful book (see review) ... so I created a "Not Quite Cozy" category just so I could connect you with her and other authors I can recommend. Author photo by Max Poppers, courtesy of Vicki Lane.

Books:

Author Bio: (from author’s website, used with permission)

Vicki Lane lives with her husband, sons, and daughter-in-law on a mountain farm in North Carolina. She is at work on the third Elizabeth Goodweather novel (working title - Old Wounds) which will be published by BantamDell in 2007.

Vicki and her husband moved to the mountains in 1975 – which makes them “new people” in a county where farms still in the same family after seven generations are not unusual. Though both had been teachers in Florida, they immersed themselves in the rural life, learning from their neighbors how to milk cows, churn butter, plow with mules, butcher pigs, raise tobacco and beef cattle, as well as the hundreds of other minutiae of a farm life that had changed little in a hundred years.

Though she no longer keeps pigs or a milk cow Vicki still tends a large garden, a smaller salad and herb garden, and is continually adding to the flowers and ornamentals that threaten someday to get totally out of hand. She cans, freezes, and dries garden produce for family use. A family flock of fourteen Aurucana chickens provide lovely blue-ish eggs. Six dogs, two cats, and several fish ponds add to the general merriment.

The farm, the woods, and the people of Vicki’s adopted county are all reflected in the world of Elizabeth Goodweather. “I think that, as an outsider, I sometimes see more clearly the wonderful things that people who grew up here take for granted.”

Vicki is a quilter and has co-authored two books on quilting (under her married name.)  She made a quilt honoring the late Dale Earnhardt for novelist Sharyn McCrumb to use on her St. Dale book tour.  Vicki began painting six years ago and also reads compulsively.

Author Website: http://www.vickilanemysteries.com/

Author Interview:

Cozy Library: On your web-site, you mention a community college professor who said you didn’t have the passion to become a writer. Have you spoken to him since you published the first Elizabeth Goodweather novel? If you have, has he eaten his words?

Vicki Lane: I emailed Bill when I got a contract and he told me that now I'd probably leave the farm and run off with a saxophone player.  Fortunately, he was wrong about that too.  Then I saw him later at a book fair and he said to a friend, "Do I know how to pick 'em or what? Taught her everything she knows."

To be fair to Bill, I probably didn't have the passion it takes -- until he made that snarky comment.

CL: I read the “teaser” chapters from your second book in the paperback of your first one. Like Signs in the Blood, Art’s Blood appears to have an older tale interwoven with the contemporary story. Is that a device you plan to use for all your Elizabeth Goodweather books?

VL: Very likely.  I really enjoy going to another voice.  And I love how the past and the present interweave and how the past affects the present.  Not to mention the fact that the area where Elizabeth and I live has a very colorful past that I've only barely touched. 

I'm working on book 3 right now and its secondary tale takes place in the recent past -- 1985 and 1986.  It shows us Sam and Elizabeth when they've just moved to Full Circle Farm, as well as their daughters as children.  And I get to bring Sam and Cletus and Dessie, who are all dead in Signs, back to life. What fun!

CL: Usually, I don’t care to read pages and pages written in a dialect – probably because it isn’t always easy to decipher and it slows me down. I didn’t have that reaction to Sylvie’s story, however. In fact, I thought it added to the story. How did you master that dialect well enough to write it so well?

VL: I've lived in the mountains around these folks for thirty-one years. I've spent a lot of time with my neighbors and have always been awed by their poetic turn of phrase.  Learning a dialect is not unlike learning a foreign language -- if I'd lived in Italy, say, for thirty-one years, I’d hope I'd be able to speak Italian. 

 Writing dialect is a little daunting (dauntin'?) because you have to do enough to get across the flavor of the speech without going so far as to spell it out phonetically thereby causing the reader to throw the book across the room in disgust.

 CL: On your web-site, one of your FAQs is about the emphasis on religion in the story. How were you able to write so sympathetically about what can only be called unusual religious practice – e.g., snake handling and speaking in tongues) to most people, as they are to Elizabeth, the Episcopalian?

VL: (Elizabeth is a lapsed Episcopalian, as is her creator.)  I attended several revivals in my county, as part of my research for Signs, and was struck by the utter sincerity of the congregations and the depth of their spirituality.  The speaking in tongues and religious fervor were quite strange to me but totally compelling.  My experience of the snake-handling comes from two fine books which I credit in my acknowledgements.

 CL: Although there is a crime investigation in Signs in the Blood that qualifies it as a mystery, I believe it could also be categorized as general, not genre fiction (maybe that’s true of all good mysteries). Where do you believe the line is between the two?

VL: Good question. My agent had some trouble selling Signs as the opener in a mystery series because many editors said it was "too literary."  I'm tempted to say the line is in the sophistication of the writing -- at the strictly generic/ genre end of the spectrum the plots are simple and the characters tend to be one-dimensional.  The closer one gets to the "literary" end, the more description there is of setting; the more complex the characters become; sub plots begin to pop up; leit motifs, symbolism, poetic writing -- all that fancy stuff comes into play.

 CL: Is it difficult to write a main character who’s a widow when you aren’t?

VL: No more than writing a character who has daughters when I have sons.  Imagination is a wonderful tool.  I was delighted when a recent widow told me that I had done a good job of describing early widowhood.  Though I would imagine that the experience varies from woman to woman.

 CL: Whom do you see playing Elizabeth in the movie version?

Tough one as I'm not much of a movie goer or television watcher.  I had to throw this one to my family and friends.  I have always said Andie McDowell, just because she lives in the Asheville area but she's probably far too beautiful and young.  My daughter-in-law suggested Helen Mirren; my younger son suggested Emma Thompson.  A visiting friend suggested Pamela Anderson -- but he hasn't read the book.

CL: Who are your favorite authors?

VL: Lots of people. In mysteries, I like classic British ones, especially Dorothy L.Sayers and Agatha Christie, as well as Elizabeth George and P.D James. I like regional mysteries – Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee series is a favorite. Closer to home are Sharyn McCrumb and Sallie Bissell, two writers whose love of the Appalachians is inspiring.

Writers I reread: All the above plus: Jane Austen, E.F. Benson, Robertson Davies, Tony Earley, Barbara Kingsolver, Madeline L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Patrick O’Brian, Lee Smith, Angela Thirkell, Anne Tyler, P.G.Wodehouse, among others.

 CL: Who are the authors who have most influenced you as a writer?

Sheila Kay Adams,  Sharyn McCrumb,  Lee Smith,  Dorothy L. Sayers, Tony Hillerman, Elizabeth George -- probably more that I can't think of at the moment.

CL: What are you reading now?

VL: Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee, as my husband and I plan to visit the Cotswolds in May and Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle.