Feminist Fiction Friday: Witch Rhymes with Bitch

I was Googling around and put in the search terms "feminist mysteries," expecting to get back a list of books by women writers or books featuring female protagonists. Instead, what I got were links to a series of books about the neo-pagan movement, some of which I've read (Drawing Down the Moon) and some of which I haven't (The Holy Book of women's Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft,Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and Other Womanly Arts).
That search led me to this excerpt from a paper on occult crime and law enforcement by a writer named Isaac Bonewits. (The website is holysmoke.orghttp://www.holysmoke.org/  which turns out to be a Scientology site.)

And that sent my train of thought derailing into the whole subject of witches. Some of the greatest villains in pop culture and English literature were memorable witches--Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and Narnia's White Witch and the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (and also her kinder/gentler self in Wicked). There is the wicked queen/witch of Snow White and the witches in The Golden Compass. In The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, a contemporary woman discovers she's heiress to a tradition of healing that goes back to the Salem Witch Trials and an ancestress accused of witchcraft.  The book is a historical novel first and last, but it has a theme that you see over and over in witch books--a woman inherits a supernatural destiny. And in all of these books, the heroine is a strong woman, powerful and in command. (And usually beautiful, which is in itself a sort of power.) The only exception I've seen is Anne Rice's "Mayfair Witches" books, which have, to me, an unpleasant undertone of victimization and sexual politics.

A Book to Look Out For: Penny Marshall's My Mother Was Nuts

Garry Marshall, Penny's older brother, wrote one of the best show biz memoirs I ever read, Wake Me When It's Funny. The book is full of really smart advice for writers, among other things, and although it's a bit dated, I always recommend it to people who want to know what writing for television is really like. Penny's book, My Mother Was Nuts comes out next week and it sounds like it's going to be a good one too. Among other things, it promotes her four rules of life: "try hard, help your friends, don’t get too crazy, and have fun.”  I can't wait to read it.  Penny Marshall directed two of my favorite movies, Big and A League of Their Own.

Keith Rawson sounds off on gender and noir

You may know Keith Rawson from his blog, Bloody Knuckles, Calloused Fingers, or as author of the short fiction collection The Chaos We Know. He is also the co-editor of Crime Factory: The First Shift. He's got a column over at Lit Reactor today that touches on a subject dear to my heart--gender and noir. Check it out here.

Women Gone Wild--You have been warned!

Courtesy of Just For Grins

It's my birthday and I'll laugh if I want to!

I'm not really a birthday kind of gal. I prefer Christmas and Halloween, holidays where food and family are important and people give you things and you can dress up if you want to. (I work at home in casual attire, so putting on grown-up clothes is actually dressing up for me.) and people give you candy! I never did like Mary Janes though--and as far as I can tell, you only got Mary Janes at Halloween.
So, Christmas and Halloween are my holidays. And Thanksgiving too.
This year, I have hit one of the "big 0" birthdays and it's come at a time when I'm going through family pictures and scanning the ones I want to keep and letting go of the rest. I ran across this picture of myself and it gave me pause. I'm probably around two in the picture with a haircut that has my mother's hand all over it. (To this day I don't wear bangs because she traumatized me!)
But what strikes me is that in the picture,  I have a skinned knee and I'm laughing.
I was a happy kid. And I got a lot of skinned knees.  And I laughed them off.
And that's a lesson I want to take with me into the next decades of my life.
Life is full of skinned knees and birthdays and sometimes, you just have to laugh it off.
And I cannot WAIT to see what happens next.

New from the Dashing Dish

Courtesy of the Dashing Dish

HOW GOOD DOES THIS LOOK?
I love food blogs. I regularly check in with PunchFork, a site that picks the best of the best. Today this recipe for Crispy Baked Parmesan Green Bean fries for the Dashing Dish caught my eye.
I am a reformed junk food junkie but like any recovering addict the taste is still there. This looks like a recipe that will curb my cravings but won't leave me feeling guilty.
Dashing Dish was created by Katie Farrell  for the sole purpose of finding healthier alternatives to unhealthy food choices. The recipes sound incredibly yummy and I can't wait to try out some of them. (Almond Joy pancakes anyone?)
Katie sells memberships to her site so not all recipes are accessible, but what you can see for free is pretty great.

Coming Soon--Interviews with Lowrance, Laity and more

Heath Lowrance is blog-hopping this week to talk about his new book, City of Heretics. He'll be here on Saturday.
Kate Laity, who is currently editing her anthology Weird Noir, will be here soon.
Kattomic Energy interviews with writers Christine Pope and G. Wells Taylor are in the offing as well, and the multi-talented Julie Robitaille, writer and artist, will drop by soon too.