The March Hare

Amethyst Vineyard, celebrated novelist, sits in the book-lined study of her lovely Greek revival home. Through the open curtains, one can see the flourishing garden and the swimming pool that she still uses daily at eighty-four years of age.

Miss Vineyard smokes non-carcinogenic cigarettes as she speaks to me of her beginnings as a writer, publisher, and war correspondent.

"You know, in those days, everyone had advanced degrees. You could hardly move without bumping into a Master of something or another. Because I didn't have the letters after my name, I had to prove myself in other ways."

And prove herself she did. With the publication of her first novel, "Wunderkind", at only twenty-five, she established herself as a wunderkind of the literary world. Twenty-six novels, over one hundred short stories, and three collections of poetry later, she has certainly lived up to the promise of her youth.

Still a lovely and lively lady, we move from the study and take a tour of the house, from the recording studio where she still produces her weekly radio plays, to the room devoted entirely to period costumes, and into a grand Tuscan-style kitchen where Miss Vineyard pops the cork on a bottle of red and pours a generous glass for each of us.

"The secret," she says, "is proper planning. You can't do what you can't imagine yourself doing, and so every day I conduct an interview with myself in which I discuss the recent accomplishments that I haven't completed yet. It takes the fear right out of it."

It certainly seems to be working for her. She has a new novel in production, the details of which she refuses to divulge, along with a forthcoming film adaptation of her sixth work, "The Gardener".

"I try to stay buy, of course," she says, tapping the ash off the end of her perfectly safe and healthy cigarette and taking another sip of her wine. "Who wants to be one of those old ladies with nothing to do?"