Evelyn Schmidt Van Dyck was born in Berlin in 1949, as the Berlin Airlift was winding down, and came to America at four. At seven, a Pan Am crew invited her into the cockpit, and she was hooked.

She became a pilot and flight instructor, taught people to fly in Florida for twenty years, and served as an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner. In Arizona she taught high school chemistry for another twenty years. Her husband, a retired airline captain, was once her instrument student.

Now retired, she writes the Vogel Sisters novels, beginning with Doppelgänger, and the Wings Series of flight-training novels, from Cleared for Takeoff to Cleared for Heavy Metal.