Vicki Lane Captures the Passion of Mountain Living With Her Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries

How a beginning writer reacts to comments about his or her prose, and how the comments affect the writer’s future efforts, has always intrigued The Old Cobbler. After years of reading author’s recollections about the comments they received early in their writing career, a conclusion has been reached.

One hard slap on the wrist more often than not produces better results than two nice pats on the head. A perfect example of this is Vicki Lane, the author of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries.

Vicki’s desire to be a writer had been first stirred when she was a high school student in the late 1950s. But that desire dropped down the list of life’s priorities as she assumed the mantle of wife, mother, teacher; a life that included a family move in 1975 from Florida to the mountains of western North Carolina.

In 2000, Vicki sought to revive her dream of writing by enrolling in a creative writing class at a local community college. But when she asked the instructor, a published author himself, for a personal comment, he responded by saying she didn’t have the passion it took to be a writer.

Five years later, the first book in the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries, SIGNS OF THE BLOOD, was published; followed by ART’S BLOOD in 2006, OLD WOUNDS in 2007, and IN A DARK SEASON in 2008. A fifth book in the series, THE DAY OF SMALL THNGS, is due for publication in 2009.

From The Old Cobbler’s viewpoint, there is irony in the comment about her lack of passion. Her instructor might have believed she did not have it, but she has proven she has a tremendous talent for capturing it through the characters that populate her novels.

Her stories are set in the mountains of western North Carolina. The Old Cobbler was born and raised on the Tennessee side of those same mountains. Reading her books was a step back in time into a land of tall, sunlit mountains and deep dark valleys, a land that can attract and repel at the same time.

The land demands that those who choose to live and work there do so with a dedication and passion to the basic needs of life that few urban dwellers could ever understand. Vicki Lane has captured this element of mountain life with photographic reality.

However, her writing also confronts the stereotypical view of the area. The inhabitants of the mountains do not live a simplistic life among themselves in a “bucolic serenity of isolation,” the term some have used to describe the area.

Folks from the outside, either moving to the mountains or passing through, have long been a part of the area’s history. Their presence has shaped events and affected the lives of the area’s inhabitants in ways that often spark the passions for both good and evil.

It can also be said that she captures a way of life that appears to be shrinking, one that may be on its way to extinction. Traveling through the region reflects what some call progress.

Cities and towns have swollen in size, along modern roads, lined with dozens of chain stores, until reaching the multi-gabled structures of suburban neighborhoods. But, beyond this cookie-cutter spread of urban clutter, it is a different story.

Many farms have been abandoned. The house that was home to generations now stands vacant, showing the ravages of time and weather. The fields that once produced the food that fed those generations now lies fallow, filled with volunteer growth of sedge and field cedar.

When that last farm is abandoned or turned into a vacation retreat for an urban dweller, we will have authors like Vicki Lane to thank for giving us a picture of life as it once was among the tall mountains and deep valleys.

Susan Wittig Albert Uses "Voice" to Make China Bayles Mysteries A Winning Series

Reading is like fishing. No matter how often you go fishing or to the library, or how many fish you catch or books you check out, you can never catch all the fish or read all the books.

That’s the only excuse that The Old Cobbler can give for just recently discovering a great author who has been writing a series featuring the same main character for sixteen years. That would be Susan Wittig Albert and her China Bayles series.

Over the years, I’ve developed a list of authors that are on my auto-read list. My first step at the library is to check through the new titles on the mystery shelf for their names. Beyond that, I simply take potluck; grab a book off the shelf, checking only to see if the type is large enough for old eyes to read.

That is how I came to read SPANISH DAGGER, the sixteen offering in the author’s series featuring China Bayles, a former lawyer who runs a garden shop in the small town of Pecan Springs, Texas.

The best way to describe the experience is to ask a question. Have you ever been out somewhere and ran into a total stranger, heard her talking, and just listening to her was so enjoyable that you forgot where and when you were supposed to be going?

Well, when China started talking about plants and herbs--not something I've ever really been dying to learn about--and her friends. I was hooked.

In writing, it called “voice,” the way the words “sound” when read. This sound is a combination of things—the tone, the words, and the sentence pattern—all combined to give the character a personality.

And the story in SPANISH DAGGER is a good one, too. Pecan Springs struck me as being a lot like Cabot Cove—small town; most folks know each other, with a few strangers around to keep the gossip mill grinding.

And, like Jessica Fletcher, China’s conversations with friends, asking pointed questions and getting answers, keeps her one step ahead of her close friend, the town’s female Chief of Police, in the solving of local murders.

The best part of the deal is that I checked my local library’s on-line catalog and fourteen of the fifteen previous China Bayles series are available. Guess what I will be reading for the next few weeks?

Without Solid Rules for English Usage, Will We Become a nation of Babylonians?

Are we as Americans losing our ability to communicate? Are we becoming like the citizens of ancient Babylon? The Old Cobbler, who has been attempting to communicate with written words for over a half century, isn’t ready to answer with a resounding yes. But I am ready to suggest that there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence that suggests the task of communication is going to become a more difficult one in the future.

The word communication means the exchange of information, but presupposes a common language and a common understanding of that language. Without going into a detailed history, suffice it to say a common ground was reached on the basic rules for spelling and grammar long before any of us were born.

For many older Americans, the study of those rules was a basic part of a public education. My exposure to the rules of spelling and the rules of grammar in public school was very little changed from what my great grandfather studied. Things, however, are changing.

My son, who finished his public education in 1991, was on the receiving end of a downward spiral reflected in the 1994 National Curriculum Survey, which showed only 69% of responding teachers still taught grammar and usage. So, what does this mean?

Nearly one half (46%) of high school seniors graduating in 2002 scored at or below 19 on the ACT English Test. Such a low score suggests the students were struggling with the basic rules of English and were at best minimally prepared for college-level work. This lack of preparation is reflected in one survey that showed four out every ten college freshmen taking remedial courses are in doing so in English classes.

The interesting part of this scenario is that both public school teachers and college professors hold a very high opinion that writing skills are an important part of an education. But, if spelling and the rules of grammar are not taught in the public schools, where are the students supposed to learn these skills?

The Old Cobbler has asked several teachers this question. The answer has been very much the same. “They learn by reading.” Now if that concept is not scary enough, one needs to look at what the kids are reading. Check out the spelling, the dialects, the street slang, and the free-form usage of punctuation.

A friend, a retired high school teacher, who now teaches a local class of English as a second language, highlighted the growing problem recently. She was rather irritated when she said, “How the hell can we teach immigrants correct English when we teachers can’t agree among ourselves as to what is correct?”

My friend’s problem was this. She was teaching subject-verb agreement to a father. He goes home and is told by his daughter, a fifth grader, that her teacher told the class not to worry about subject-verb agreement.

Getting back to the high school/college gap. Several institutions of higher learning are posting Web pages containing the basic rules that students at the school are expected to follow. It’s a great idea, except for one flaw. If one reads enough of these pages of basic rules, one begins to find differences. What is considered correct at one school may be a no-no at another.

What is the status of things beyond the high schools and colleges? The Old Cobber hangs around a Web site filled with folks who are readers of mystery novels. However, based on extensive comments from some folks about the TV shows they watch, one has to wonder when they find time to read. But, be that as it may, the shocking thing to date has been how many times a misunderstanding arises when the discussion takes on a bit of depth; someone didn’t understand what had been written.

The Old Cobbler sees this as just one of the real life results of losing a national standard for spelling and rules of grammar. We have moved into a world where symbols replace words in E-mail messages, where text messaging on cell phones had reduced spelling and grammar to a level that makes Gregg stenography easier to read.

When deciding what constitutes proper spelling and rules of grammar becomes viewed as a personal decision—and there are individuals on the written record as saying they believe that have that right—we are only a few short steps away from becoming babbling idiots to those who do not understand what is being said or what thought or idea is being communicated.