In the past, she
has worked as a typist and freelance editor, a researcher, an amateur
actor/playwright, an activist for women's and GLBT rights, an art model
and a call girl. Since 1998, she and her long-term partner have sung
in the local GALA (queer) choir, for which the director/composer has
composed two suites of songs based on choir members' lives, Watershed
Stories 1 and 2. Performances at choir festivals have won rave
reviews, and the Canadian Roadcasting Corporation produced a recording.
The CD will be available for sale in spring 2006.
Jean writes in
various genres and flavours. She won a major award in a student writing
contest in her last year of high school, and wrote book reviews and
occasional articles for local publications throughout her twenties.
For two years in the 1980s, she produced a lesbian newsletter with
sporadic help. In 1988, a collection of her lesbian short stories, Secrets
of the Invisible World, was published by a one-woman publisher
in Montreal. The book was described by friends as a "tease" (short
on explicit sex), then it went out of print when the publisher went
out of business.
Inspired by readers'
comments, she began sending out her erotica in 1998. Since then, her
erotic stories have appeared in anthologies such as the Best Lesbian
Erotica (2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006) series and the Best Women's
Erotica (2000, 2003, 2005, 2006) series from Cleis Press, in two Wicked
Words anthologies (#3 and #8), soon to be reprinted by Black Lace
Publications in England, and numerous others (see list of published
fiction). Several of her stories have won awards in website contests.
Her BDSM novel, Prairie Gothic, is downloadable from the website
Amatory Ink (www.amatory-ink.co.uk).
For those who crave
raw autobiography, the story of her first lesbian experience ("Family
Gathering") is included in Up all Night: Adventures in Lesbian
Sex (Alyson Publications, 2004). A story about her life as a call
girl and single mother, "The Trouble with Claws," appears
in Best Women's Erotica 2003. Jean's darker fantasies have appeared
in Cthulhu Sex magazine, in Closet Desire IV: Flights Of
Fantasy (iUniverse, 2003) and in Monsters (Torquere Press,
2004).
Jean's reviews
and editorials appeared in her column, "In My Jeans" on the
website Blue Food from December 2003 until August 2005. They
still appear in the "reviews" section of website The Dominant's
View, in "Cover Stories" in website Clean Sheets,
and in print journal Batteries Not Inclued. Her essay (originally
a talk) on the history of erotica and censorship was published in Arrington
Lesbian Fiction Quarterly as "Clever Curll and Other Culprits:
Lust and Reading Under Fire" (see relevant section of website.)
Several of her articles on lesbian life have appeared in Girlfriends magazine.
Jean has found
that there is usually a thin line between fiction and reality.
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