Celebrating Pride’s Dykes on Bikes in Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of love, revolution, and marriage--#amreading #YouTube #Prideeverymonth
- Janet Mason
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
To celebrate being in Jae's Pride Month Book Calendar, I'm reposting this section of the opening pages of my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage (published by Thorned Heart Press). The link to the Pride Month Book Calendar is below.
It is my pleasure to bring you this opening of my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (published by Thorned Heart Press) that I read recently at an online reading. The excerpt is on YouTube and below that is the text. The novel starts out when one of the narrators is in midlife and attends the New York Pride march in 2012. This narrator sees a woman who reminds her of an old flame in her youth in the late 1970s and she wonders what made Art (short for Artemis) Art.
Enjoy!
Grace stood on the crowded sidewalk and watched the Dykes on Bikes contingent kick off the parade. The skyscrapers on both sides of Fifth Avenue echoed the roar: rage turned celebratory.Today was their day.Pride.Motorcycles, full of motion, crawled at parade speed. Hands gripped controls at the ends of shiny handlebars. Engines revved.Rainbow flags rippled red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Horizontal stripes danced. The colors represented the many nationalities and ethnic groups — all of them — in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community. Like a telephoto lens, Grace focused in on a woman in the center of the crowd, and mirrored sunglasses stared back. The woman’s short, mahogany hair looked like it had been carved by the air, like wings. A thrill shimmied up Grace’s spine. The woman was riding slowly. but in Grace’s imagination, she zoomed. She reminded Grace of a girl from her adolescence, her lover (even though they didn’t call it that then), a girl named Art. Maybe Art had blazed through time — from high school to the present nearly three decades and a world of difference later.Art had been short for something, but Grace couldn’t remember what. Grace had known Art so long ago that it felt like a previous life; one that Grace never talked about. No one knew about her past except Thalia, Grace’s partner of twenty-four years. Thalia was a compassionate person. She almost always saw the best in everyone. Her voice lilted. Her hair fell to her shoulders in a cascade of loose curls of silver and shades of blond and brown. Beyond salt and pepper, her hair resembled shades of light. When Thalia looked up at Grace, her hair framed her face. Her crown caught the light and a halo appeared.When Thalia listened intensely, her deep-set blue eyes enveloped Grace. One time, when Grace mentioned that “No one believes me when I talk about my past.”Thalia responded by saying somberly, “I believe you.”In that moment, Grace relaxed into herself. Thalia made her feel understood. She was safe with Thalia.Grace never mentioned her past, even to her friends. She made sure never to tell her students. What kind of example would that set?Grace hadn’t used drugs for years and dealing them was in her past. She had come to understand that life was too precious to risk.She had seen firsthand that actions had consequences. Even Thalia had her limits. Before becoming involved with Grace, she had been involved with a woman who had a drinking problem and who got involved in messy situations. Thalia made it clear that the relationship hadn’t lasted long.Grace knew she was lucky.
To order my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here.
CINNAMON, my most recent novel, is available on amazon.com: Cinnamon: A dairy cow’s (and her farmer’s) path to freedom: Mason, Janet: 9781958419786: Amazon.com: Books
CINNAMON is also available through your local bookstore and library
(just ask them to order it if they don’t have it).
My novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books; 2018) is available through bookstores and online where books are sold. It’s also available through your local library. If the library doesn’t already have it, just ask your librarian to order it.
For more information on THEY, click here.
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