Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Kindness of Margaret Maron

Whoopee!!! I just received a wonderful cover quote for In A Dark Season.

Margaret Maron is past president of Mystery Writers of America and also of Sisters in Crime. More importantly, she's a native North Carolinian and the author of the North Carolina based Judge Deborah Knott mysteries. I've long admired this series, from the first book -- Bootlegger's Daughter, which won all four major mystery awards when it was released -- to the latest, Hard Row, the thirteenth in the series. Margaret knows whereof she speaks when it comes to North Carolina; that's what makes her commendation of my new book so sweet.

******Vicki Lane writes of Appalachia as if she’d been driving up our hills and through our hollows her whole life. In a Dark Season richly blends past and present into a suspenseful tale of love and lust. In showing us how memory lingers like a smoky mist across the mountains, Lane reminds us again that the past never completely dies. ***************

Asking a busy writer (and in Margaret's case, a writer I've only met briefly) to take the time to read an Advance Reading Copy with all its typos and uncorrected errors is painful in the extreme -- but just part of the unending business of getting a book noticed. When my first Elizabeth Goodweather book came out, Sharyn McCrumb, another of my favorite authors, very kindly gave me a blurb and I don't know how many people have told me that seeing her favorable comment on the cover was what convinced them to pick up this book by an unknown author. So I grit my teeth and write a letter or an email and once again, rely on the kindness of (comparative) strangers. Fortunately, mystery writers seem to be an extremely generous and supportive community.

I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing the book cover when it comes out on May 20 -- with a lovely quote from a writer I deeply admire -- Margaret Maron.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Row-Margaret-Maron/dp/0446582433/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201473037&sr=1-1
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