The Goddess of Wit: Queer Icon Fran Lebowitz and the Mortal Goddess Mocktails

Plus exciting Author News re: Christina Consolino, Andromeda Romano-Lax, and Vera Kurian, and a booktail inspired by MATRIX, Lauren Groff's lesbian nun historical fiction!

Welcome back to The Cauldron! (Flim flam floom!)

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#readwritedrinkmakemagic

Ok, enough of that. Onward!

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The Goddess of Wit

The summer solstice, also known as Litha or Midsummer, is upon us. Well, actually it was on June 21. That day, my spouse and I put off work and went out for pho and udon, then got drinks at my favorite witchy bar, The Black Salt in Hamtramck, MI. It was an afternoon of beauty amidst what’s shaping up to be a difficult season; unexpected stressors have been lurking about. This has put my priorities into perspective. I’m seeking more fun, more enjoyment, more memory-making. And more magic.

The Litha cocktails from Pick Your Potions' Wheel of the Year recipe deck

Speaking of magic, I’d like to talk to you about Fran Lebowitz… (Yes, really. Bear with me.) You see, I’ve been doing a lot of research on a selection of modern icons as preparation for Pick Your Potions’ next recipe deck, the Mortal Goddess mocktail collection. The deck will feature 13 living deities who inspire, educate, and entertain the world, like Serena Williams, Malala, Jonathan Van Ness, Margaret Cho, etc. Coming in at lucky 13 is Lebowitz herself as the Goddess of Wit. So if you don’t “see” me around much on social media these days, this is why! Plus I’ve got classes to plan (my local library asked me to teach a mixology class next month. How cute is that?!) Oh yeah and there are books to write, more booktails to fashion, which means more books to read, events to prepare for, including the 3rd Annual Labyrinth Celebration in Detroit in August… Suffice to say, your girl’s a busy little kitchen witch. See where the bit about mindfully seeking pleasure and memory-making comes in?

Anyway! Back to Fran Lebowitz. Lebowitz is lesbian classic: an old school gay with impeccable blazers, who was out before being out was a thing celebrities did. Though her writing made her famous, it’s her mouth she’s known for; her whole life, she’s had opinions. She declared herself an atheist at age 7. At 17, she was expelled from high school for being a bad influence, basically. Well aware the suburbs were no place for a young lesbian with thoughts to share, Lebowitz moved to NYC in 1970 with 200 bucks in her pocket. She took odd “bad” jobs and wrote film reviews for an underground newspaper. She met Andy Warhol through a friend and became a columnist at Warhol’s magazine Interview, where she reviewed the worst films of the month. In 1978, her first book, Metropolitan Life, became an instant sensation. Social Studies followed in 1981. Since then, Lebowitz has been experiencing a “writer’s blockade.” An iconic social commentator and natural wit, she tours the world (though she hates to travel), sharing conversations on stage. Lebowitz was featured in friend Martin Scorcese’s documentary series Pretend It’s a City, which aired in 2021 and introduced a whole new audience to her insight and signature style. And also taught F.L. what the heck “Netflix” is.

I’ll never cram all the wonderfully hilarious stuff there is to know about her into one recipe deck so please, enjoy these further tidbits.

More Fun Facts about Fran Lebowitz, Goddess of Wit

• She smokes like it’s 1969.

• She doesn’t have a computer or a cellphone. Or internet, for that matter.

• F.L. hates to shop, but she loves Anderson and Sheppard, the Savile Row tailor whose customers have included Fred Astaire and Tom Ford. At first, they wouldn’t make clothes for her. “It was Graydon [Carter] who got them to do it. And whoever Graydon spoke to said, ‘We only make clothes for one woman, [and] that was Marlene Dietrich.’ And Graydon told me this, and I said, ‘Well, she’s dead. So now I can take her place.’ ”

• Toni Morrison was one of her best friends. She called her “the only wise person I know.” They talked on the phone every day.  

• She harbors about 12,000 books, including 30-40 dictionaries and the first book she ever owned, which her mother picked up at a garage sale, called Six Little Cooks. 

• In her youth, she worked as an editor of pornographic fiction and used the name of the principal who’d kicked her out of high school as a pseudonym, one of her “most beautiful acts of revenge.”

• Lebowitz had a cameo as a judge in Scorcese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

• She also played a judge on Law and Order and got mail from real judges saying she banged the gavel too much. 

• She has a huge sweet tooth.

• Vanity Fair named her one of the best dressed women in the world.

• The only subject she doesn’t like to talk about is love: “The only monogamous relationship I’ve had in my life was with a car,” which is a 79 light gray Checker, no longer driveable, but she holds onto it as a “quintessential New York artifact.”

• F.L.’s favorite coffee is the coffee she makes herself:  “I don’t want to brag, but I am the Albert Einstein of coffee. I make the best coffee that anyone’s ever had. I grind the beans. I use a very old fashioned porcelain Melitta. So it takes about 30 minutes to make a small pot of coffee, but it is worth it because it is exceptional. And I drink it black, of course, because to me putting something in coffee—it’s no longer coffee, it’s an ice cream sundae.”

The Mortal Goddess mocktail deck will be available for purchase this fall.

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News from the Library

Featuring news and updates on authors and their booktail-ized books!

Check out this beautiful cover for Christina Consolino’s next novel, THE WEIGHT WE CARRY, coming this October! And available for pre-order now from Black Rose Writing. For 15% off, enter the code PREORDER2023 at checkout.

PLUM RAINS and ANNIE AND THE WOLVES by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Master storyteller Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of PLUM RAINS and ANNIE AND THE WOLVES, has a mother-daughter suspense novel THE DEEPEST LAKE coming out in May of 2024 from Soho Crime! Woohoo!

NEVER SAW ME COMING by Vera Kurian

Vera Kurian, author of the hit psychopathic revenge tale NEVER SAW ME COMING, has announced her forthcoming thriller STEP PAST DARKNESS, arriving early 2024! Yas, witches!

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And now, for some sapphic historical fiction: the MATRIX booktail!

MATRIX by Lauren Groff

Journey back to 12th century Europe via Lauren Groff’s stunning novel MATRIX, where Queen Eleanor has just banished our unmarry-able protagonist from her court. Sent off to starve in an abbey, Marie de France finds she is not only too large and ungainly for marriage, she’s far too big to disappear, either. Once she sets her mind to living, she gradually revitalizes the entire abbey, constructing an industrious fortress whose bounty extends to the surrounding community. Descended from crusading women who bucked convention, sapphic Marie wields a sword as well as she does a chalice, as she amasses power unheard of for a woman outside the court, and dares to take on rites still reserved by the Catholic Church exclusively for men. 

Flawlessly constructed, this novel is told with such rich, lustrous language that imbues the story with so much life, it’s easy to forget Marie is based on a historical figure and medieval badass. As a lesbian love story, there is much unrequited longing, minus an unearned tragic ending: just because Marie can’t have the woman she most desires doesn’t mean she can’t have any woman at all. 

This booktail is made with eau de vie (aka aqua vitae), which means “water of life” in French. A clear brandy made with fruit, eau de vie is a descendant of one of the earliest elixirs of life, as liquor’s history begins with alchemy. It’s a fitting match for creatively industrious Marie. During her first Matins prayer, where the nuns sing in the dark and cold, her mind wanders to memories of a banquet at the queen’s court, including “[...] a gift for delight, a cockatrice made of a boar’s head greened in a parsley bake and a roasted peacock’s body, tailfeathers sewn back on, and rags in its mouth soaked in camphor and aqua vitae set alight so the monster is breathing green fire.” Years later, Sister Nest pulls a bad tooth for her, then instructs Marie to rinse with betony in aqua vitae. Moments later, the sisters share a moment of pleasure. The eau de vie is sweetened with apricot rose syrup, for the apricots Marie stole from the queen’s private trees. She plants the pits and the tree’s growth becomes a metaphor for Marie’s own ripening: 

One night, Marie steals out to smell the apricots ripening. She takes a raw fruit in her hand to feel its weight, to marvel at the large and healthy tree that god compressed into a seed. But this fruit comes off its stem easily and its flesh has a little give to it like the firm thigh of a girl, and in the dark Marie rubs the soft down of the fruit upon her cheek and feels a thrill up the length of her skin [...]

Rose is for the Virgin, a goddess-like figure, and the queen’s perfume. Likewise, the drink is served in a glass rinsed with absinthe for that irresistible and omnipresent hint of Queen Eleanor’s scent. Lastly, the cocktail is garnished with a lemon twist—for Cecily, the love and companion of Marie’s youth, and her lemon balm lavender soap—and a blackberry for the secrets Marie observes in the abbey blackberry patch. 

This booktail is presented against an ombre stone background that mimics the golden rays bursting off the cover. Standing on a shining silver base, the book is framed by fruit and flowers: blood red poppies, the same blossoms Marie’s mother gathers in the Persephone-like legend of Marie’s conception, reworked by gossip and fame. In contrast, lavender evokes the wool smock given to Marie upon her arrival at the convent and the scent at the heart of Cecily’s braid. Ripe apricots—a recurring image throughout the novel—adorn the display. 

MATRIX

Ingredients
1.5 oz eau de vie 
0.5 oz apricot rose syrup (See recipe)
Absinthe 
Lemon twist
Fresh blackberry 

Instructions
First, prepare the syrup. Meanwhile, rinse glass with absinthe and set in the freezer or at the back of the fridge to chill. Once the syrup is cool, add it to a mixing glass filled halfway with ice, along with the eau de vie. Stir until well-chilled then strain into the absinthe-rinsed glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon and a blackberry. 

Apricot Rose Syrup 

Ingredients
6 fresh apricots, pitted
1 c sugar
1 water 
1 Tbsp dried organic rose petals

Instructions
Combine all ingredients together then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and strain, discarding solids. Store in a glass jar or bottle. Keep refrigerated.