selected books
If you’re interested in a book that does not appear here, write to Janet at janetwhardy@gmail.com. Books should be available in your favorite online or brick-and-mortar bookstores unless otherwise indicated.
“Many people dream of having an abundance of love and sex and friendship. Some believe that such a life is impossible and settle for less than they want… A few, though, persist and discover that being openly loving, intimate, and sexual with many people is not only possible but can be more rewarding than they ever imagined.”
“What’s so great about getting whacked on the butt? For that matter, what’s so great about whacking someone? There are probably almost as many answers to these questions as there are spanking fans….”
“If you’ve ever dreamed of being in control of someone’s behavior and sexuality… if you’ve ever yearned to hurt someone, just a little… if the idea of having someone tied up and helpless makes you a bit short of breath… if your regular, everyday sex is seeming just a tad bland and boring… or maybe even if you have a partner who really, really wants the experience of sexual submission that only you can give them… This book is for you.”
“I have always wanted in. In: to the twisty humor and campy adulation. In: to the why-not sex and effortless fabulosity. In: to the lost-soul neediness, the fuck-you self-definition, the endless streams of gossip and in-jokes and flirtation and sheer raw Eros…. Even as a child I responded to vague cultural referents and deeply coded television characters, recognizing my place in a world that danced just beyond the reach of my ineluctably female fingertips.”
“Your authors believe that one of the things that feels so very good about orgasm is that it’s most people’s easiest pathway to something that feels like oneness-with-the-universe… for just those few seconds or minutes you get to float (or shimmy, or tremble, or convulse, or scream, or bellow) in a place outside space and time and boundaries. Extremes of sensation or emotion or loss of control that we experience during peak BDSM moments carry us into those same transcendent spaces… When we drop our boundaries, we flow into each other.”
“I used generic words for the participants in the fantasy because I rarely make up my own people. Instead, I use people made up by other writers…. If I wrote the fantasy using those people, it would be fanfiction and nobody would publish it. When I say ‘I’, though, that’s not a generic person. That’s me, Janet. I’m a middle-aged, otherwise rather unexceptional woman who spent thirty years of her life chasing something, got sort of famous during the chase, and then caught it.”
“This is an unabashedly bottom-centrist book. In it we will tell you over and over again that bottoms are beautiful, bottoms are powerful, bottoms are alchemists who magically transform suffering into sex, humiliation into desire, screams of pain into moans of pleasure. In this book, we will you to be a proud, fierce, redoubtable bottom – a bottom whose power is so profound that it attracts tops like pollen attracts bees.”
“We honor and applaud your willingness to venture out on the thin, scary ice of taking control of another’s sensations, emotions and spirit. In this book, we’ll encourage you to insist on being recognized for your humanness as well as for your toppiness, to demand the nurturance and support you deserve, and to find ways to get your sexual needs met.”
“If you learn that someone you care about enjoys something that you’ve been taught is weird or funny, or even wrong or sick, you may see that person in a whole new way…. Yet many people cross that gap every day. By learning more about whatever it is that their son, daughter, friend, parent, sibling or co-worker enjoys… by trusting that person’s ability to make healthy choices… and, above all, by continuing to offer love, friendship and affection even when things seem confusing and weird and impossible… they discover deeper, truer connections than they ever had before. That is what we want for you, and why we wrote this book.” [written under the pen name Catherine A. Liszt]
* Co-authored with Dossie Easton
** Also available as audiobook, voiced by author/s
*** Currently available in ebook form only
selected articles
- Dance, Magic, Dance: Exploring the Strong Link Between Dance and Sexuality, Archer Magazine, 2015
- Fantasies With Two Faces, Dissolution, and Other Refusals of Meaning: The Rumpus, 2015
- The Wonderful and Confusing World of Girlfags and Guydykes: Fair Observer, 2015
- Why Plural Marriages Make Sense: CNN.com, 2014
- My Tantric “Awakening” Turned Me Off Sex, Salon.com, 2013
- Open Relationships Can Be Difficult, and Rewarding:* New York Times, 2012
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