I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
Post three photos of just yourself and write a short caption beneath each about why you chose that photo.
Nominate seven women for the Fix Her Crown Award, women who lend a helping hand to the woman whose crown seems too heavy, who appreciate the sister who dares to be her own glorious self, who raise strong young women, who smile at the sister journeying alone and walk alongside her for a time, who stand with the sister whose crown has been knocked off her head time after time and women who shine as their own beautifully unique selves.
Link to the blogs of the seven nominees.
Here are three photos of me:
Silas and Janet were equally excited the day “their” vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, arrived in July, 2014.
Janet with Penny Padgett, owner of The Book Shelf in Tryon, North Carolina. Penny and The Book Shelf bookstore hold a special place in my heart. Penny was the first (and only) book store owner who invited me to have a book signing after my vintage postcard book was published. That was in happier days for Penny and for me. Sadly, she has had to sell off her inventory and close the bookstore this year after not being able to find a buyer for her business in the wonderful small mountain town of Tryon.
This is a photo of my first local history column in 2005 in the now defunct weekly newspaper, Harrisburg Horizons in Harrisburg, North Carolina. I wrote a different local history article every other week for more than six years. It was the most enjoyable “job” I’ve ever had. Maybe someday I’ll be able to publish all those newspaper columns in a book!
That’s enough about me. Here are the women, in random order, I nominate for the Fix Her Crown Award:
I enjoyed participating in February so I look forward
to blogging the four Tuesdays in March using these prompts.
It was tempting to list two books that readily came to
mind, but I decided to give today’s prompt some deeper thought. I reviewed the
list of books I’ve read and the two I chose to write about might not be selected
by anyone else doing Rae’s #TwoForTuesday challenge.
Climbing
Over Grit,
by Marzeeh Laleh Chini and Abnoos Mosleh-Shirazi
Climbing Over Grit, by Marzeeh Laleh Chini and Abnoos Mosleh-Shirazi
Few books I read in 2018 left an impression on me like
Climbing Over Grit, by Laleh Chini
and her son. It left me wondering how any women raised in Iran have the
strength, resolve, and grit to overcome the oppression that men inflict on
females there.
“I have been following Laleh Chini’s blog, “A Voice from Iran” for quite a
while, but I had somehow missed knowing that she was writing a book. When she
announced that her book, Climbing Over Grit, was available on
preorder, I immediately ordered it. Laleh has a gift for storytelling, so I
knew her book would be good.
“Little did I know that Laleh’s book was based on some experiences within
her own family! The book is written in first-person point-of-view, but I still
didn’t catch on that it was written in her mother’s voice until I came to a
page well into the book that said something like, “The second daughter was
named Laleh.” I gasped out loud! It was then that I couldn’t put the book down.
I finished reading it at 4:30 in the morning.
“I still cringe to think about some of Laleh’s family members being
subjected to arranged child marriage and the abuse that often goes along with
that practice.
“Fortunately for her readers, Laleh got out of Iran at the age of 16 and
came to the United States. She now resides in Canada. The photographs and
Iranian folktales she shares in her blog have helped me get a picture of an
Iran I didn’t know existed.
“Climbing Over Grit is not a pleasant read, but I highly recommend
it to anyone wanting to know more about the child bride culture of Iran. Her
blog can be found at https://avoicefromiran.wordpress.com/.”
The
Taster, by V.S. Alexander
The Taster, by V.S. Alexander
I’m sure somewhere in my study of history I knew that
tasters had to sample Adolph Hitler’s food before he ate it, but it wasn’t
something I’d given a lot of thought to until I read The Taster, by V.S. Alexander. What The Taster shines a bright light on is the fact that Hitler’s
tasters were all women because in his warped mind women were replaceable.
I’ve read The
Magdalene Girls and The Taster,
by V.S. Alexander and I am impatiently waiting to rise to the top of the
waitlist at the library for The Irishman’s
Daughter. Alexander is fast becoming one of my favorite historical fiction
writers.
I read The
Taster a year ago and shared my thoughts about the book in my March 5, 2018
blog post “Reading and Writing in February 2018,” (https://janetswritingblog.com/2018/03/05/reading-and-writing-in-february-2018/.)
Feel free to read that entire blog post, if you missed it the first time. The
following is a quote from that post:
“The Taster is the story of a young woman in need of a job and
living in Hitler’s Germany. The job she got was not a job she wanted. She was
selected to be a food and drink taster for Adolph Hitler. Hitler was mortified
of being poisoned, so all his food and drink had to be tasted in advance by a
replaceable woman. If a taster died, she could be replaced. Hitler, of course,
did not see himself as replaceable.”
The life of a food taster for Hitler was beyond
stressful, as we can only imagine. The tasters didn’t know from one meal,
snack, or reception to the next if that would be their last bit of food or
drink.
Janet's Writing Blog 