“James, I like the Sunset Saga. As a woman I enjoy it as one of your more accessible fiction settings. In rereading Seven Moons Deep, I find myself curious as to how you researched the lesbian scene in Joyfully Over The Crooked Moon. How much of this is male fantasy and how much based on the reality of two women coming together?
-Jen
Jen, I have done most of my character development research through conversations and interviews with working class, middle class, and criminal individuals. Such is my source for lesbian character development.
-I have had two coworkers with whom I was friendly who were "butch dykes.”
-I have been close friends and roommates with two “fems” or “lipstick lesbians’ which is to say girls sitting on the gender fence wondering which one to pair up with.
-I have dated four fems and thereby garnered much information about their comportment in intimate circumstances, which, in two cases extended to pretty detailed discussions about their exact activities with and feeling about, their female partners. On this last note I am expecting an “ataboy” for self-sacrifice in the cause of humanistic research—taking home plate for the masculine team, you might say.
