Good morning everyone and welcome. I have been asked to participate in a Holiday blog blast. Editors Candace Walsh and Barbara Straus Lodge have put out a new book of short stories called ‘Greetings from Janeland’. Below is my review for the book. For those of you who’d like some discussion, feel free to leave your questions in the comments.
These stories are about married women leaving their husbands for other women. Each story is fast paced and the story was over by the time I was getting into it. There was some romance going on between main characters. There wasn’t much to say about intimacy scenes. This you really have to use your imagination.
In one story the protagonist lived in the closet until she realized she was who she was and she wasn’t changing for society. She stood up to people and walked her own path. Her actions inspired me.
In another the lead character takes a leap of faith expecting a certain outcome. The author showed her bravery and how she came to love herself.
“A moving, revealing, and often funny exploration of women who love women, and a reminder that whether love makes us glow with joy or ache with rejection, we still want more.”
— Victoria Zackheim, writer, editor, best-selling anthologist
My favorite story was about a woman who felt trapped by life. She learned about men by observing them and proceeds to live her life by lying to her true self. She meets her best friend who helps her break out of the eggshell. The woman she wants to be is confident, happy, the best she can be.
The pace is smooth but there were parts that caused some emotions in me, which makes good storytelling. These stories are short enough to read on your lunch break, and I did just that. What I liked was there was no violence or strong language. The stories are enough to take you into another world if only for a brief moment. They encouraged me to do my own journaling.
Check out the media below for this wonderful book.
101 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ, 07302 | (201) 431-5455 | www.cleispress.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jennifer Do
do@start-publishing.com
646.257.4343
Heartwarming and tear-jerking, true stories of women who have redefined or questioned their sexuality
PRAISE FOR GREETINGS FROM JANELAND
“These incredible writers describe love’s heartaches and passions in the no-holds-barred language of women’s desire. These stories are both singular and universal, and are poised to transform the world.”
— Karen McClintock, My Father’s Closet
“This collection of brave, beautiful stories is an engaging, important lifeline for women who are taking on whatever life throws at them in order to live more authentically and passionately.”
— Samantha Waltz, Blended: Writers on the Stepfamily Experience
“A moving, revealing, and often funny exploration of women who love women, and a reminder that whether love makes us glow with joy or ache with rejection, we still want more.”
— Victoria Zackheim, writer, editor, best-selling anthologist
“With clarity and compassion, the stories allow us to see what it might be like to live these moments ourselves, and remind us of the forks in our own traveled roads. Raw, honest, funny, heartbreaking, beautiful, and romantic; this collection touches every part of the human heart.”
— Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, Filling Her Shoes: A Memoir of an Inherited Family
GREETINGS FROM JANELAND should be of interest to:
Any LGBT, NON-BINARY, POLYAMORY, TRANSGENDER, or GENDER-FLUID-friendly outlet interested in exploring these unique, but shared experiences where women question and sometimes come to new conclusions about their SEXUALITY.
Anyone interested in a true HUMAN INTEREST piece about questioning one’s sexuality and the effects it can have in many areas of one’s life.
Anyone who can sympathize with or learn from the struggle to find ACCEPTANCE in society and with their own SEXUALITY.
Journalists and outlets that are interested in the lack of HETEROSEXUAL PRIVILEGE in non-heterosexual relationships
Any outlet interested in POLITICS and LGBTQI+ ISSUES (especially in AUSTRALIA!)
ABOUT THE BOOK
In an increasingly common phenomenon, women who once identified as straight are leaving men for women ⎯ and they have fascinating stories to tell. In this sequel to Lambda Literary Finalist Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women, writers who come from a diverse array of perspectives open up and bare their souls. Essays on subjects such as repercussions, both bad and good; exes, both furious and supportive; bewildered and loyal family and friends; mind-blowing sexual and emotional awakenings; falling in the deepest of love; and finding a sense of community fill the pages of this anthology. One story is as different from the next as one person is from another. With a foreword by former Editor in Chief of AfterEllen Trish Bendix, and essays by acclaimed writers including BK Loren, Louise A. Blum, and Leah Lax, relax, sit back and take a journey into Janeland-⎯a very special place where women search for, discover, and live their own personal truths.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Candace Walsh is the author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards winner and the editor of Dear John, I Love Jane, and Ask Me About My Divorce. Her writing has appeared in numerous national and local publications, including Newsday, Travel + Leisure, Sunset, Mademoiselle, New York magazine, and New Mexico Magazine. Her essays have been published in the anthologies Here Come the Brides!, Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage, Blended, and Spent, and she is currently editor in chief of El Palacio Magazine. She lives in Santa Fe with her wife Laura André, their two children, and two dogs.
Barbara Straus Lodge is an essayist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Motherlode blog and the “LA Affairs” section of the Los Angeles Times. An essay under her pseudonym, Leigh Stuart, was published in the anthology Dear John, I Love Jane. Her work has also appeared in Parabola Magazine, The Rumpus, Literary Mama and a variety of anthologies.
YZ
Greetings from Janeland: Women Write More about Leaving Men for Women
Edited by Candace Walsh and Barbara Straus Lodge
LGBT/Nonfiction/Anthology | Trade Paperback Original | 240 pages | Cleis Press | November 2017
Print: $16.95, 9781627782340 | ebook: $10.99, 9781627782357
Stay tuned for my blog next week. I will be reviewing the next installment for Samantha Jacobey’s ‘Christmas Candy’ series, ‘Christmas Carol’.
Until next time,
Lynn
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