A “vindication of the human spirit” — Loving Artemis “not to be missed” –#amreading #LGBTQ #MarriageEquality

I am delighted to be able to bring you this review by the esteemed author Maria G. Fama on my novel Loving Artemis, An Endearing Tale of Revolution, Love and Marriage (Thorned Heart Press; August 16, 2022):

In her absorbing new novel, Loving Artemis, Janet Mason gives her readers a coming-of-age tale masterfully framed by the story of Thalia and Grace, two professional, middle-aged women in a long-term relationship in 2015. We are then taken back in time to the turbulent late 1970s, when the Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and Women’s Rights Movements were making inroads into the national consciousness. There we meet bright, talented, working-class teenage girls, Artemis, Grace, and Linda, among other interesting characters, both male and female. The girls grapple with their sexuality, family expectations, education, relationships, and life decisions, while finding their way in a world with many pitfalls, including drugs and alcohol. This novel contains an added bonus of providing engrossing facts about history, science, culture, and religion, as Artemis and Grace ponder them.

We are taken back in time to the turbulent late 1970s, when the Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and Women’s Rights Movements were making inroads into the national consciousness. There we meet bright, talented, working-class teenage girls.

 Loving Artemis offers within its pages, stories of romance, danger, disappointment, love, and the ultimate vindication of the human spirit. This novel is very rich and satisfying and is not to be missed.

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Voting as an act of compassion for yourself and others–#Vote #VoterRegistration #Midterms #UUtheVote

I ran into a friend yesterday who is doing voter registration. When he asked me if all my friends were registered, it gave me pause. To make a long story short, I don’t know. But I have observed that voting is a way of caring for yourself and of caring for others. So, whether you are doing this remotely or by mail, please vote. Remember there are some key issues on the ballot. Social security is one of them as is choice, voting rights and the future of the planet. They are not small issues.

So, take care of yourself and others and vote like your life depends on it.

My friend who gave me this flyer is Tim Styer, someone I met through my Unitarian Universalist community and who is working on the UU the Vote efforts. Tim, also a worship associate, was one of the early readers of my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage (Thorned Heart Press) and I was delighted to hear that he was loving the novel.

He gave it a brief assessment:

It’s not boring!

For information on my novel Loving Artemis click here

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Loving Artemis chosen as one of the top LGBTQ Christian Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT

I was delighted earlier this week to learn that my recently published novel Loving Artemis, An Endearing Tale of Revolution, Love and Marriage (from Thorned Heart Press in Oregon) is on Q Spirit’s important list of the top LGBTQ Christian books in 2022.

Q Spirit includes the following listing:

“Loving Artemis: An Endearing Tale of Revolution, Love and Marriage” by Janet Mason.

A lesbian romance novel set in the 1970s captures what it was like to come of age in the post-Stonewall but pre-AIDS era. Church and other spiritual traditions are woven into the narrative, including the goddess Artemis. The author is an award-winning creative writer and Unitarian Universalist lay minister. Q Spirit’s annual list of the top LGBTQ Christian books included her novels in in 2018 (THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders) and 2020 (The Unicorn, The Mystery) published by Adelaide Books in New York and Lisbon.

To view the entire list, click here.

Since the Q Spirit ministry which includes an online newsletter promotes LGBTQ spirituality in all forms and prominently includes the saints, I decided to include an excerpt from Loving Artemis that references the saints. (I spent a lot of time on Catholic.com researching this.) In this chapter, one of my main characters, Grace, drops acid at a party and imagines that Artemis, the other main character, is Saint Anne. The novel is set in the 1970s.

Grace followed Saint Anne outside and got onto the back of her motorcycle. Grace wrapped her arms around her. They started to move. The night air felt good against Grace’s face. She could feel purple streamers of light trailing behind them. She hadn’t jumped out of a window, but she was flying.
“What is your house number?” Saint Anne asked when they were stopped at a red light.
“Seven,” replied Grace over the purr of the engine.
Seven was her house number, and it was also the number of glowing angels that descended from the stars and spoke her name. When they pulled up at the curb outside her house, Grace got off the bike. She knew she lived there, but at the same time she wasn’t sure if she was really the girl who lived there. She sat down in the street.
“Whoa,” said Saint Anne. “Are you okay?”
She got off her bike and helped Grace to her feet.
Grace wondered if she really had met Saint Anne. Could it be true?

Loving Artemis, by Janet Mason

For information on my novel Loving Artemis click here

For information on my novel Loving Artemis click here

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Taking things further–revisiting The Well’s influence on Loving Artemis: #amreading #LGBT #MarriageEquality

This week, the international LGBT radio program, This Way Out reran a piece of commentary I wrote and recorded some twenty years ago, on The Well of Loneliness.

This made me reflect on this seminal lesbian book and wonder how it affected my later work, especially Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (Thorned Heart Press 1922).

Revisiting the Well made me think back to 2011 when my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters had been just published.

I was at a wring conference on a panel when I learned that the women in the audience (who were all in queer studies masters’ programs) had never heard of The Well of Loneliness. The only dyke author they had ever heard of was Allison Bechtel. They were very interested in hearing about our history! I was very happy I was there!

The Well of Loneliness is billed as the first lesbian-centered novel. It was first published in 1928 in England where it was banned and not because it was a good book. It was banned because the authorities were afraid that it would give women ideas!

Every coming out story is unique but there are some commonalities. One of them is feeling alone in the world. When I wrote Loving Artemis, I revisited what a queer teen would find when she searched for herself in the library in the 1970s:

Then she noticed something. At the bottom, where the metal rod ran through the cards, were the lower portions of eight index cards. She ran her fingers along the ragged edges and counted them again. The top halves, where the typing would have been, were torn off. Grace stared down at the bottoms of the index cards. It looked like somebody tore them off on purpose. At first Grace was confused, then she was outraged. But finally, she decided that this gave her hope. There were eight missing subject headings where the word Lesbian should have been. That meant there were eight books that were probably still in the library somewhere.

As the author Kathy Anderson wrote, Loving Artemis “captures perfectly the days when young queers searched library catalog cards to find ‘homosexual’ books, when teen lesbians felt they were the only ones in the world. More than a coming-of-age story, more than the love story of Artemis and Grace, the novel is also an illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable journey through the decades. I cared about these characters and loved seeing their lives come full circle by the book’s end in the 21st century.”

The Well of Loneliness wasn’t foremost in my brain when I wrote Loving Artemis since I read the book so long ago, but it must have been there inspiring me to take things a bit further.

For information on my novel Loving Artemis click here

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