Vicki Lane is
the author of the Elizabeth Goodweather
Appalachian Mysteries, which include Signs in the
Blood (Dell 2005), Art's Blood (Dell 2006), Old
Wounds (Dell 2007) and In A Dark Season (Dell,
May 20, 2008.) Vicki lives with her family on a
mountain farm in North Carolina where she is at
work on a fifth Appalachian Mystery, The Day of
Small Things, to be published by Bantam Dell in
2009.
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.
She no longer keeps pigs or a milk cow but 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-green 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 says.
Vicki is a quilter and has co-authored two books
on quilting under her married name. She paints
when she has time and reads, no matter what.
"We were so lucky to be able to make a choice
about where and how we would live. I know there
were those who thought we were crazy for choosing
to live as we did. For the first several years,
we didn't have indoor plumbing (gasp!). And I
felt a little bad one dark night as I handed my
four year old a flashlight and sent him out the
door to the outhouse. But when he came back, his
eyes were wide with wonder and he said, 'City
kids don't get to hear owls when they go to the
outhouse.' I knew then we'd made the right
decision. And I know it today because that same
boy and his wife, after a five year stint working
for a publishing company in Atlanta, moved back
to one of two rental houses on our farm, from
which they telecommute to the Atlanta jobs. And
my younger son, with his honors degree in
philosophy, lives in the other house and supports
himself by carpentry and beautiful artistic rock
work. My husband takes care of the farm in the
summer and does woodworking in the winter. For
us, this is the good life."
Author Profiles 
