When at the end of 2012 the author and editor Hans Georg van Herste approached us to tell us about his idea to edit a series with the title „Strong Ladies“, we all were very skeptical.

Heroes, whether young or old, rather had to be male with a steeled muscular body. Ladies, of course only beautiful ones, whatever you mean by this, were put alongside these heroes to attract male readers as well. These women didn’t necessarily have to be intelligent. Often an erotic aura was enough to be allowed to play alongside a strong man, to be allowed to be decoration.

This genre had proved very successful in the course of the centuries. How should we poor weak women be able to be very successful without having a man alongside who we could follow, who we could look up to?

Hans Georg van Herste, who for decades has been fighting against discrimination of women and girls and naming and shaming sexual and domestic abuse, helped us to find a way out of acquired minority and therefore out of misery. He explained us causal relations we wouldn’t have conceived by ourselves. We had to learn that we are full-fledged persons having a right on happiness and self-realization even without a penis. Quite a few of us took a long time to get over the fact that female minority which had been hammered into our minds round the clock for centuries can’t be shaken off within seconds.

Many submitted to the pressure of society, family and friends and abandoned their freshly won liberty; very few stuck it out and became happy. We, the ones left over, sincerely thought about out ways of life and thus discovered longings and wishes within us, which had been there forever but we had suppressed them in order not to strike or not to be expelled. After having a closer look many a glorified protected childhood went to pieces to give way to a reality having nothing in common with our optional memories.

It was a long and hard way but it has been worthwhile. Today we allow ourselves our individualities. We allow ourselves our own opinions. We haven’t only learned that a daily multiple orgasm is just as little harmful as driving a big comfortable car and that we can have incredible fun rushing on a cruise on a big motorcycle without losing our femininity, without becoming a woman poisoned by testosterone, or better a second class man tromping through the world in short hair style and men’s trousers.

Our books, each based on a true story, are about women who shuffled out of the most devastating childhoods, overcame the worst experiences and pushbacks, battled their way through, even when the much-loved glass ceiling wanted to hinder them.

We live out our femininity and our feminine advantages today. We have become women and we will continue to be women. We wear skirts, because we enjoy being women and not to bewitch men. We wear long hair because we like it – with us. We like sitting together talking. Now and then we meet to dance and to be cheerful together. We all experienced a lot without remaining victims for the rest of our lives.

We watch documentaries together because we also want to be enlightened. We read magazines about technics and research, because we are interested. We don’t have our senses clouded by fashion and recipes. We want to know the difference between a drum brake and a disk brake and how a wiper works. We don’t allow a male controlled only profit oriented industry to manipulate us anymore. We have learned to develop our own opinions and to present our points of view.

We stopped trusting doctors who deliberately invent some ceilings for cholesterol levels or blood pressure or what not, just to pump us full of medicines and just making us ill. We are not talked into having cancer only to have our sound breasts and wombs cut.

We do not hate men. They as well were born into this male dominated world which is infested by the churches and their crude opinions. Many men are unhappy as well, because they are pressed into a role not suiting to them; they would like to get rid of it but would never dare it. Malice and isolation would be assured for them.

Many men are trapped in marriages, having begun lovely but soon ended badly, because they had been taken in by a borderline princess. In the beginning they felt charmed and flattered by a beautiful erotic woman. But after a short time the true nature of this lady should come to light. After marriage and child her behavior suddenly changes. Suddenly the outer appearance isn’t very important any more. Suddenly the lady of heart is wearing only jogging suits instead of mini dresses. Suddenly the husband is actually superfluous in the house. It is enough if he works and brings money home to enable a better life for the princess who actually had been only searching for a copy of her abuser. Those men carry a pitiable fate, a life that had become a burden. No matter how well they mean it, no matter how much they achieve, it will never be enough for the princess. She will always find faults. None of us would like to change with such men.

Readers who expect reading about a Sally Stupid in our books whose only mission in life seems to troll a chief of medicine or a film star, that is a bread-winner, should quickly move on. Instead we will carry you off into a world where strong ladies set an example how wonderful it can be to bite through, to develop and lead a really happy life. If you want to take part in really fascinating stories, you have come to the right women.

Enjoy reading!

Elisabeth Keller