Welcome, Jean Roberta

Miz Ginger, thank you for inviting guests into your blog to talk about love. I am Jean Roberta, writer of fiction (mostly erotic), reviews, opinion pieces and the occasional research-based article. By day, I teach first-year English classes at a Canadian prairie university. More information is available on my website.

I like to write about unconventional love between women, between men and sometimes even between a woman and a man.

I spent most of my life until age 16 in Idaho, a rural state where teenagers could marry and often did. I received several serious (as far as I could tell at the time) marriage proposals before I moved to Canada with my family, but the romance of life as a stay-at-home wife and mother of many children didn’t appeal to me. I married much later, but alas, it was not a match made in heaven.

One of my favorite comments on love is one by erotic writer Patrick Califia (who also grew up in Mormon country): “The existence of love is as unprovable as the existence of God.”

We can never be sure we are loved by someone else, no matter how many times that person swears undying devotion. (And asking for proof of love over and over again is a fairly sure way to make it disappear.) We can only be sure of the love we feel, so I suspect that love for another person is usually more healing and empowering than love from someone.

Love that bridges a culture or credibility gap seems especially inspiring to me. My latest lesbian erotic story, “Rematch,” is currently available in various formats from Torquere Press

Here is a teaser:

Emma has had a love/hate obsession with Karen ever since Karen, a “white-bread” hottie, defeated outcast Emma in the high school debate tournament by arguing against legalizing same-sex marriage, the big issue in Canada in 2005.

Now Emma wants a rematch. Karen wants Emma to forget the past. Does this relationship have a chance?

Speaking of love, two of my recent stories (not sexually explicit) are in anthologies that are sold to raise funds for good causes. My lesbian romance, “The Art of Communication,” is in To Love and To Cherish, which was released on Valentine’s Day by Love You Divine/Alterotica. None of the contributors are paid, and all the proceeds go to U.S. Marriage Equality. (As you might know, same-sex marriage has been legal throughout Canada since 2005.)

The book is available in three volumes, available in different formats here:
Volume 1: On Bended Knee
Volume 2: With This Ring
Volume 3: Lives and Wives
Or you can check out the whole collection here.

My story about the complicated relationships of two men and two women, “The Feast of the Epiphany,” is in Coming Together: Into the Light, an anthology about secrets and how they are revealed. Learn more about the whole series of “Coming Together” books here.

For more of my views on love, sex, writing and various other things, you can read my monthly column, “Sex Is All Metaphors” (a play on a line in a poem by the late, famous drunken Welsh bard Dylan Thomas) here. (Look in the Smutters Lounge gallery, where you can find my current and archived pieces from July 2008.)

For more of my stories, you can find my single-author collection of fourteen diverse erotic stories, Obsession, at Eternal Press.