Please send audio files and written reviews to harper (at) itgirlragdoll dot com. Thank you!

Posts about and reviews of Eroticon 2013 are already springing up everywhere and I think it’s safe to say that even if it wasn’t all your cup of tea, everyone had a spectacularly inspiring and thought-provoking weekend. With a year’s build-up, this second round at Eroticon had a lot to live up to, and I’m happy to say it surpassed 2012 in almost every way.

Before I go on to my comments about the sessions I attended, I will say that it was a weekend that showed how much truth there is in that old saying: ‘Nothing worth having comes easy’. Despite how wonderfully inspiring it was, and how overwhelmingly happy I felt throughout the vast majority of the weekend, it was by no means easy. Running on adrenaline for 48 hours plus, I began to feel my armour slipping, and by Sunday night my emotions and my nerves were raw – as if the skin had been peeled from my body and the slightest touch of my red exterior would send me screaming. But the reason I ended up feeling this raw is just too wonderful to ignore and I would – will! – do it again and again, year after year, because I think it is that important: at Eroticon, I found comradeship, new friends, old friends; I realised just how much some people mean to me, and I felt truly accepted. I didn’t need the armour, because no one was there to attack. Everyone was there to learn and share. In essence, I simply opened myself up to something incredible; and the side effects of that, the intense vulnerability as I made my way home, were not easy, in the slightest. But, as I say, I would do it again in a heartbeat, because these experiences are so vital and ultimately nourishing to every part of my life.

Last year, at Eroticon 2012, I don’t think I realised just how much of a novice I was. I felt confident and present, and I wasn’t frightened by the prospect of being there, but I was wide-eyed and innocent; eager to learn and find my way into the larger community. In the year since that shining day in March 2012, my relationships with the people I met, or got to know better, there have flourished and I am no longer trying to find my way in: I am there. That’s not to say that the community is at all exclusive; it’s simply a matter of finding your place. Four people really stand out, as having welcomed me and become the backbone of my place at Eroticon: Molly, Michael, Remittance Girl, and Ruby. My friendships with the first three are extremely close, and in some ways deeply personal, but I will say something about Ruby.

Despite being a volunteer (who got off incredibly lightly!) at Eroticon 2012 and therefore having been in contact with Ru over email for much of 2011, the event itself was, in fact, the first time I met her, and I didn’t spend a great deal of time with her on the day. She struck me as someone to admire, simply by way of the incredible work she had done to pull the event together; she came across as extremely professional and exceptionally experienced. Having, as I’ve said, not spent much time with her on the day, I didn’t feel I knew her all that well, so it was a heartwarming surprise when she invited me to stay with her during the Summer. Over the course of two days, we walked around her hometown, played in her daughter’s ‘ship’, talked about mutual friends, and shared our thoughts on Eroticon (amongst many other things!), and by the time I was getting on the train, I was full of ideas and inspiration, feeling incredibly blessed that I had been allowed a glimpse into her life. And here’s the thing: she is professional, and I think the way she presented herself at Eroticon 2012 gave the impression that this all comes naturally to her; that she is a businesswoman who wears suits every day, and has hoards of people working for her. But she’s not. She is a businesswoman, and she is professional, but she doesn’t have a team at her beck and call. She created Eroticon from nothing! So when, during the run up to the 2013 conference, I saw people complaining about the price of the tickets, I wondered if maybe they had this extraordinarily professional image of Ru in their heads, and assumed that for her, getting sponsors and funding for the event was small fry; easy. Although I think most people know – if they think about it – that this isn’t true for anyone, there is something to be said about those subconscious ideas we get about people; those first, visual impressions can be very striking. But the truth is that it is by no means easy for her. She runs Eroticon out of passion and love and dedication, because she knows that it’s important; because there are those of us who need it. And I don’t think anyone there this weekend can be in any doubt of how their ticket money was spent: it was spent creating a phenomenal two day conference which afforded us all the kind of inspiration and friendships you cannot put a price on.

But onto the weekend itself.

As anyone who listened to IGRD 01: Get me to Coin Street will know, I had my entire weekend pretty much planned out before I got there, and I only made a handful of amendments on the day.

Day 1: Opening plenary: Brook: XES: We can’t go backwards (Brook)
The conference was opened with a talk on sexual health and sex education from a representative of the XES: We can’t go backwards campaign. The talk was interesting and informative, but I was left wondering if a talk about policies and sexual health was really the right way to start a conference for writers.

Myth busting: the submissive woman (Molly Moore)
This was the first of a few sessions which I attended for love of the person leading it. I was there to support my good friend and podcast co-host, but also because I knew a lot of the people attending it would be submissive women, and I very much wanted to be in a room with all of these inspiring people, some of whose exploits I get the benefit of reading about on their blogs. The session was brilliant, and Molly truly covered a lot in her 45 minutes! and very clearly and coherently. A great way to break the ice and get into the full swing of Eroticon.

Editing (Cressida Downing)
Being a firm believer in the editing process – and having read enough badly edited literature to know how often this essential process is done badly, or not at all! – this session was a must for me. Despite being mindful of my own editing, there is always something new to learn. Cressida Downing knows her business, and was an incredibly engaging and funny speaker. A joy and a lesson in one.

Creative Writing: Eroticism and Romanticism (Remittance Girl)
Standing outside the door before this session with Molly, RG looked at us both and asked us what we were doing there, saying we already knew everything she was going to say. And whilst I had already talked to her about a lot of the content of her talk, it was still fascinating; besides which, when we’re having tea in her living room, I don’t get to take notes! Her brilliant session covered the fine distinction between eroticism and romanticism and discussed the importance of transgression in fiction, which anyone who has read my work will know is one of my primary concerns when I write. Oh, and she also claimed that “the Pope is not huggy!”

Writing for the Adult Industry (Ruby Goodnight)
Ruby Goodnight was another person with whom I spent a lot of time during the weekend, and I was thrilled to have the chance to get to know her better, and to attend her brilliant session. Ruby talked openly and frankly about how to get into writing for the Adult Industry, the pitfalls and how to find success. She is a very good presenter, and I sincerely hope she will run another similar seminar, where writers can get an even deeper insight into this world and how we might break into it.

Self-Publishing: Getting started when you go it alone (MK Elliott)
Unfortunately a lot of this session was used up trying to get Guy New York up and running via Google Hangouts and Skype (as he was supposed to co-present). However, once MK started (handling the sudden change to presenting solo with professional grace), it was a very comprehensive look at the difficulties and benefits of self-publishing. I will definitely be contacting her in the future, as and when I make my way into this world.

Day 1: Closing plenary (Ruby Kiddell)
I have heard from several people that they felt this talk was a little too negative and therefore not the best way to close day one, and I do understand where they are coming from in this respect. Perhaps it was badly placed in the schedule; however! what Ruby talked about – that sex blogging does not take itself nearly seriously enough, and is not up to date with policies and copyright and the laws of what it’s doing, and is therefore less able to effect change through the work it produces, – is really important, and I sincerely hope that the audience took what she was saying on board.

Day 2: Opening plenary (Ruby Kiddell)
I have to confess that when it comes to recalling the content of this talk, I am drawing a blank. It was a long weekend! I suppose something was bound to slip. But I do remember it being very interesting, and largely positive. My notes read: ‘About unbelievable things becoming believable by way of very real and natural characters. In favour of indie presses for ‘different’ voices.’

Polyamory 101 (Lori Smith & Amanda Jones)
In my Eroticon 2013 Meet’n’Greet I put this down as my Must Attend session. Having recently begun identifying as non-monogamous, I have done a lot of research on the subject and so I did know a lot of the content of this session. But I have found that all my doubts and fears and worries are very well addressed by being in the company of and listening to the wise words of other non-monogamous people, so being in this room was essential for me. Lori and Amanda presented an exceptionally well timed session with humour and fun, dispelling some hard learned myths about human sexuality, and ending with a quick-fire, timed, Buzzcocks-style question and answer section that had us delegates laughing and rapt. (This session is also available as audio.)

Porn Challenge (Justin Hancock)
This was another session I had been looking forward to very much. I’ve been reading Justin’s work for a few months now, and was thrilled to get the opportunity to attend his session. We were all taken back to school days, split into groups and asked to address the problems in porn today. With big pieces of paper and felt-tip pens we began solving issues such as race, disability, and identity. It was refreshing to be in a session that was a little bit more interactive and great fun to work with the other delegates.

Storytelling and Sex (Alison Robert, Justin Hancock & Emily Dubberley)
Unfortunately this was the one session of the weekend with which I did not get on. The session covered the idea of writing safer sex practices into erotic fiction. Whilst it is an admirable idea, and it has (apparently) been shown to increase the use of protection amongst young people, it bore no relevance to my writing, as what I write is transgressive. Safe sex would not only undermine the story but be completely superfluous. When you write about rape and beastiality, condoms are not the problem. So, I will confess, I left this session early and skipped upstairs to…

SEO Love (Michael Knight)
Although I have pretty much had this session one-to-one with Michael – as have many other lucky people! – it was a joy to watch him gleeful with nerdy joy as he took the delegates through the minutiae of self-hosting, running, and promoting websites. This man knows what he’s talking about!

BDSM Tools of the Trade (Molly Moore & Michael Knight)
By this point in the weekend I was feeling understandably overwhelmed and so, although I had not planned to attend this session, I decided I wanted to spend some time with people I love, and listen to them talking about all the delicious things I crave. It was exceptionally well presented, informative, and fun – I walked out with a lovely red misery stick mark burning on my forearm; aren’t I lucky? If you want to see what it was all about, I made a good effort to live-tweet the session under #ToolsBDSMTrade.

Sex and the Media (Zoe Margolis & Nichi Hodgson)
Last year, the Sex and the Media session was pretty much the highlight of my weekend. I learned an extraordinary amount about what it really means to be a sex writer, and upped my anonymity ten-fold whilst I decided whether or not to come out. Unfortunately, this year, the session was repetitive and very negative. Whilst I understand that sex is not well represented in the mainstream media, Zoe and Nichi offered very few ways to get round the problems and fix it, which I found disappointing. There were, however, some good comments and questions from the other delegates.

Day 2: Closing plenary (Cindy Gallop)

Having become aware of Cindy Gallop relatively recently, I have been watching her work carefully and, in fact, she was the person who – through a tweet of encouragement – pushed me to my final decision to come out as Stella. I’ve heard a lot of her talk before on the Savage Lovecast and Sex Out Loud, but it was a joy to have her address us directly, and to get to listen to her once again. She is a very money-motivated person, which I think some people find troublesome, but I actually really admire her ethos and I think her ideas are exceptionally well presented. She left the conference on a positive, but important note. In addition, due to the fact that she couldn’t attend the conference itself, she was streamed in on the big screen, but apologised for her absence, saying she would never usually give the closing plenary to a conference she had not attended and I greatly appreciated that she addressed this. It seemed to show a great deal of awareness and understanding. (This talk is available to watch online.)

And there you have it. Overall a wonderful weekend! My deepest love, appreciation and respect to Ruby Kiddell for creating this spectacular conference. TWICE.

If you’ve written about Eroticon 2013, don’t forget to link up on the Write Sex Right site. Also, I will write about Saturday night’s reading event, Aural Sex, in the next few days, so watch for that post. AND… don’t forget to send us your soundbites and mini-reviews for the podcast!

Edit: I’ve noticed, on twitter and Facebook, that a lot of people are experiencing what I identify as ‘drop’ in the wake of Eroticon. So just in case it’s helpful to anyone, I’m adding a link to my article on how to survive drop alone. ‘Drop’ is a BDSM term, but I do also address other forms of drop as well.

The post Eroticon 2013, in review appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Name:

Twitter ID: @HarperEliot

Must attend Eroticon 2013 session: Gosh – there are quite a few! but one I’m particularly looking forward to is Polyamory 101 with Lori Smith and Amanda Jones.

Bloggers you’d like to be trapped in a lift with: How big is this lift? Lori Smith, Zoe Margolis, Remittance Girl, and Molly Moore. (Assuming Miss Kiddell would be present over the intercom, seeings as this is her event.)

Erotic writer you’d like to dramatize your life story: Oh! Remittance Girl. Undoubtedly.

Expected bigest fangirl/fanboy moment: I feel blessed that this is a difficult decision to make simply because I have met so many of the wonderful people who will be at Eroticon. But if I can elbow my way to Cindy Gallop I will. I’m also really looking forward to meeting Justin Hancock.

What keeps you awake at nights? My never-ending to do list, impending coursework deadlines, addictive TV shows, and, I’ll be honest, men – although, I hasten to add, almost always in a positive, if distracting, light.

• • • • •

I have actually been meaning to write about Eroticon for a while now but due to those impending coursework deadlines and deliciously distracting men, I’ve had trouble finding the time to do it. Nevertheless, better late than never, and for those of you who aren’t down to attend yet tickets are still available here! So if you want to mingle with some of the finest talent in sex blogging and erotic fiction, Eroticon 2013 awaits you!

Last year Eroticon proved to be so much greater than the sum of its parts. Between excellent seminars and thought-provoking panels I met more people than I can remember (off the top of my head), and came away with not only a long list of new connections, but months worth of writing material. Inspiring and endlessly informative, Ruby Kiddell pulled off something that we were in great need of – and this year is looking to be even better.

I also want to mention that I am organising an evening of erotic readings on the Saturday night. I would be thrilled to see you all there, and I can promise some truly wonderful entertainment set in an atmospheric venue complete with alcoves and alcohol. Watch out for more details coming very soon.

Please do leave me a comment and say hello, and I will see you all in March! – that is, if I can get my coursework done by then, of course.

See who else is coming to Eroticon 2013 in the Meet & Greet link up

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Sex sells. There are no two ways about it. It’s why Bond girls adorn the opening credits in, at most, skintight catsuits. It’s why Sophie Dahl caused such a stir posing for YSL (above). It’s (at least in part) why The Sun is Britain’s biggest selling paper. It’s why this blog – at it’s highpoint – got 32 comments per piece, and my other blogs are lucky to get 100 views in total. Per month! I have hugely benefitted from this simple human truth. In fact, when I was starting out as an erotic fiction writer a good friend suggested I take part in HNT to boost my readership – and it worked like a charm.

But my consciousness of this fact has changed. Where at eighteen I was keen to take advantage of eroticism as a selling point, feeling that taking control of my sexuality empowered me, and that I was somehow more evolved than my peers, it is now obscuring my intentions.

Within the fact that sex sells there is also another problem, which I would like to touch upon briefly. When it comes to Bond girls, and Sophie Dahl, and The Sun, and, well, me, there is a painful imbalance. It would seem that our only recognised sex symbol is female. Whilst I can appreciate the beauty of the YSL advert – as a photographer and as a designer – and may have found it intriguing as the naïve 10-year-old I was when it appeared on a billboard near my house, being a (mostly) straight female it is not actually a sex symbol that appeals to me. This is an extremely important point, and as I make the move into publishing my work, I will certainly be fighting for covers that don’t perpetuate this imbalance. But for now I will leave it to others to expose and discuss: Zoe Margolis expounded upon this with her talk Under Cover: Erotica and Sexism at The Lost Lectures (which you can watch in full – and I highly recommend that you do – by clicking the link).

But I digress.

It is widely accepted that mainstream publishers, and film production companies, etc. look down upon erotic art. Every day I read about erotic artists struggling against these attitudes, but rarely do I see a discussion that talks about why this is. Elsewhere in the world this may have much to do with religion and the stronghold it has on so many nations, but in the UK that is far less true. Whilst many people living in the UK are religious, it is not so pervasive that we won’t elect an atheist Prime Minister, or that we swarm to church every Sunday. It’s different here. Perhaps our prejudices are still based in a religious background, spanning thousands of years, but I believe a large part of the reason we reject sexuality from the mainstream now is that there is an idea that an aroused mind is a less cognitive mind. And to a certain extent, I agree.

When we seek to indulge our arousal, we are rarely looking for something that will stimulate us intellectually. In fact, I can speak to this from personal experience: I’ve been known to visit Literotica (which holds possibly the worst sex writing available) because it is easy to find the subject I want there, and when I’m aroused I don’t care as much about the quality of the writing. When we have sex and when we masturbate very few of us – I believe – are using this time to consider the financial crisis, or the state of the music industry. And why should we? Part of what makes sex so wonderful is the fact that it allows us to escape from the humdrum of our daily lives. The fact that this state of arousal is looked down upon by so many is utterly unfair. It is a large and important part of human experience, which ought to be explored with open minds.

But what happens when we do actually want to deal with sex critically? More often than not it is sold as titillation, taking us right back to where we started: setting up reader/viewer expectations to no more than material for sexual arousal, and if arousal makes it hard to think objectively, then that puts erotica amongst the most difficult arts to view critically. This then becomes a whole other issue, seeping into the huge problem we have with the vast amount of poorly written erotica and badly made pornography. People rarely complain about something that makes them come. (Additionally, even when sex is discussed by the media in cases of rape or abduction it is often done with a tone of sick fascination, playing to a similar type of arousal, which really displays the worst in human nature.)

It is an argument I have with myself at this time every year. With less than 30 days until National Novel Writing Month I am story plotting and character building and part of the NaNoWriMo form asks you to choose a genre for your novel. For the past three years I have used NaNoWriMo to write fiction that involves a lot of eroticism and for this reason I have felt compelled to put my novels into the Erotic Fiction category. However, the public perception that erotica is written to arouse makes this genre seem rather exclusive, and when I am writing novel-length fiction, eroticism is not the only thing I want to explore. Given that my plans for this year’s NaNoWriMo appear to be in a similar vein, the debate continues.

But my problem runs deeper: I do not write erotic fiction to arouse and it does not arouse me to write erotic fiction. For me, writing erotica is a way of exploring sexuality through my chosen media – literature. I long ago embraced the fact that my writing arouses people. I am not unhappy with the fact that people enjoy my work as something to get off to. However, nothing pleases me more than a response to my work that is reasoned and intellectual and opens up a discussion. It is through those conversations that I feel we learn the most about sexuality. In fact, I would go so far as to say that often I write pieces that push people’s boundaries in the hope that they will be too much for my readers’ arousal and force them to consider it critically rather than sexually.

In the extreme, the fact that sex sells not only pervades my work as an erotic author, but also me as a human being. Via email, in comments, on twitter, I am bombarded with sexual innuendo and come-ons as though the fact that I write about sex makes me available and eager to take part in others’ sex lives. Of course, I am the only one who can control the way I present myself, and I am the only one who can take action against the way I am perceived – and I won’t deny that I do on occasion provoke those reactions. But even when I don’t do it directly I am still subject to these kinds of responses and so I think it bears mentioning.

There is nothing wrong in creating with the intention to arouse. In fact, with more and more marriages ending due to a lack of sexual fulfillment I feel we now, more than ever, need porn and erotica that opens people up sexually. On the other hand, this trend makes it very difficult to engage critically with the erotic arts and for me, at least, this is a real problem. The one thing that everyone seems to be able to agree on when it comes to Fifty Shades of Grey (and, actually Twilight as well) is that the cover (above, right) is brilliant. It is not at all explicit, but if you know anything about the book – and everyone now does – it is still appropriately erotic. Whilst we cannot dictate what will arouse people and what will not, covers and promotion and advertising do play a huge part in setting up consumer expectations, and so perhaps this is the first step in creating a sub-category of erotic fiction which deals with its subject critically, rather than using it to arouse. Because I cannot be the only one who feels this way.

The post Erotic Fiction Without Sexual Arousal: Attempting the Impossible appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Oh where do I begin!

Like many of the people who could be found at Armada House, Bristol on Saturday 3rd March, I had been looking forward to Eroticon 2012 for close to a year. That is quite some build up! And with the amount of hype and excitement that preceded it, the bar was high.

Organised, hosted, run, (and many other verbs) by Ruby Kiddell, the day was divided into sessions, the topics of which ranged from Identity and Ethics, to Publishing, to Photography, to Podcasting, to Writing itself – the whole schedule is still up on the site for the time being, – and between which there was plenty of time to meet and talk to the other delegates.

I personally attended: Identity, ethics and sex blogging (Zoe Margolis, Lori Smith, Molly Moore, Mina Lamieux), Writing workshop (Maxim Jakubowski), Convincingly queer, writing beyond our experience (Aisling Weaver, Josephine Myles), Publishers panel (Hazel Cushion, Maxim Jakubowski, Paul Andrews, Monique Roffey, Richard Eadie), and Sex and the media (Lori Smith, Zoe Margolis, Rubyyy Jones, Matt Bateman).

All of the sessions either brought up topics which I will discuss in articles to come, or provided me with insights which I hope will enhance my writing in general.

The day ended, for everyone, with a demonstration from London Faerie on Sacred Kink, wherein he “whipped [Lori Smith] into a state of ecstasy’; I’m paraphrasing but I believe that is how he himself described it. After a day of thought-provoking discussion and debate, this was not only an incredible experience, but also a welcome relief. But I don’t think anyone quite expected what they saw. Watching the demonstration was deeply affecting, not to mention the intensity of sharing that experience with the rest of the audience. The whole room took on a strange kind of quiet focus wherein we were all drawn into their connection and what they were, so kindly, sharing with us. I think also, on a more political level, it is always good when a large number of people are able to see the consent, the intimacy, and the enjoyment of both parties when they engage in this kind of socially transgressive play.

As I have mentioned, Eroticon not only sparked great discussion and ideas, but brought a lot of people together, and I was thrilled to meet so many erotic artists whom I have admired, followed, and read for so long: I was thrilled to meet Aisling Weaver and Wyeth Bailey and get, well, never enough, but a significant amount of time to talk with them. It was also a delight to meet the illustrious Mina Lamieux. Of course, many of the usual Erotic Meet crowd were there, which is always a delight, and I also spent a lot of the day with the people behind Something Dark magazine – to which you can now find a permanent link in my sidebar. There were so many people there, many of whom I am now sharing my twitter timeline and my email inbox with, that I couldn’t possibly name them all now! but if you visit Write Sex Right, you will find links to many of their own accounts of Eroticon.

As I left Bristol, riding back to London late on Saturday night, one phrase continued to circle in my head: “Eroticon needed to happen”. It needed to happen because you can never have too much support and inspiration as a writer; it needed to happen because erotic writers need an excuse to get together; and most of all it needed to happen because we are all writing outside what is socially accepted. We are all pushing boundaries and making use of our freedom of speech. And to see so many other people in exactly the same situation as ourselves was empowering, inspiring, and incredibly comforting. I have never felt so at home with a group of strangers.

Finally, I would like to raise a metaphorical toast to Ruby: Eroticon went far beyond any expectation. It was perfectly organised, allowing us all room to grow and learn. A spectacular event, hosted with professionalism and style. My mind is still reeling. And I sincerely hope that it happens again. To Ruby!

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