My Guest Today Is Vila SpiderHawk

Vila SpiderHawk is taking a different view on the aging of womankind. Hidden Passages: Tales to Honor the Crones is a collection of tales, some of which are interconnected, others which stand alone, all of which deal with women who are finding or already using the wisdom acquired from years of life experience.

Vila SpiderHawk and her husband share a log home of their design in the woods of Pennsylvania where they live with their five cats and enjoy frequent visits with their many woodland friends.  SpiderHawk is an avid gardener and a gourmet vegan cook. 

Hidden Passages: Tales to Honor the Crones 

                           Brimming with hope and beautifully written, these eight stories of women helping women and girls through the challenges and transitions of life will surprise you with every turn of the page. 

                           In Passages, a girl moves through a rites of passage into womanhood, both symbolic and literal, among her tribe of watching women, bonding with the other women as well as with the feminine in nature, bonding with the divine, and erasing boundaries between all. 

                           Lavinia is something of a ghost story of women, where the reader wonders at times who is living and who is not.

                           Vila SpiderHawk is taking a different view on the aging of womankind. Hidden Passages is a collection of tales, some of which are interconnected, others which stand alone, all of which deal with women who are finding or already using the wisdom acquired from years of life experience. 

                           These are women as women should be: unafraid of living, unafraid of expressing their femininity, unafraid of aging, unafraid of facing up to their own fears and weaknesses and transforming them into strengths, unafraid to confront those who would deny them their place, simply – unafraid. We should all wish to be such terrific crones.

 

Vila, What was the inspiration for your characters and their stories?  

Mima Po is the one story in the book that comes even remotely close to being autobiographical.  There actually was a wonderful old Czechoslovakian woman on our block whom everyone shunned and feared.  Like everyone else, I feared her too and, because of the neighborhood rules, shunned her.  

However, because she was forbidden, she fascinated me.  I had to pass her house to go virtually anywhere, and I often hesitated, daring myself to knock on her door and introduce myself.  I never did.  When she was on her porch, however, I worked up the courage to nod at her.  She nodded back.  Becoming even bolder, I verbally greeted her.  She responded.  Before I knew it, I was sitting on her porch listening to stories that I was sure were fiction about her experiences during World War II.  A deep friendship blossomed between us.  

Her death was the first time I came face to face with permanent loss.  I kept going back to her house expecting her to be there, and of course she wasn’t.  Since I was too young for school, I could not grasp that she would never be there again.  I thought my heart would break when someone else moved in to that house and I had to accept that she was well and truly gone.  I have always cherished the memory of that magnificent old woman.  Therefore, I wrote a story about her and placed her in the primary position of the book. 

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You can find Vila at www.vilaspiderhawk.com

Follow Vila’s Virtual Book Tour at Pump Up Your Book

Watch the book video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmlz31q_ugQ

Vila reads from Hidden Passages: Tales to Honor the Crones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXzvTLo71Ok