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.

READ is a four-letter word

I grew up in a house of readers. My mother read mysteries; my father popular history with an emphasis on Civil War biographies. My sister preferred non-fiction as well, especially social histories and examinations of culture; my brother is a more eclectic reader who bounces back and forth and often recommends books to me. I read everything and have turned my love of reading into a career. Who knew?
Unlike a lot of people I know, I am a big proponent of phonics because that's how I was taught to read. I didn't know how to read when I entered school but I could recognize some words because one or the other of my parents read to me every night. (And more often than not it was my father, who loved, loved, loved words.  He knew that kids like the sound of silly words and he was a lawyer, so he taught us all phrases like posse comitatus and delighted in hearing us parrot them back. He also taught us the meaning. How many eight year olds can define the term? Which may explain why my brother became a lawyer, so he'd have a chance to use all those ornate Latin phrases.)
I was thinking about reading today as I read about the Teacher's Strike in  Chicago.
Education begins with reading  and reading needs to begin in childhood.  There are some great organizations out there to help encourage childhood reading and all of them are hurting for money in these difficult (understatement of the year) economic times. If you have a little spare change, consider donating it to Reading is Fundamental or Kids Need to Read.
For me, supporting causes like that is enlightened self-interest. Kids who read turn into people who buy books. I think of it as job security.