Thoughts on the Bristol Erotic Meet

This post originally on the fabulous Erotic Meet website.



So it turns out that local legend has it that there is real human skin on the door of The Hatchet. Many thanks to Lucy Felthouse for pointing out that slightly grim bit of history.

Annie has already done a fabulous job of summarising what went on at the recent Bristol Erotic Meet, so I shall point you at her rather than rehash what she's said. I’m just adding a few points about what I got out of the meet.

It was really great spending the evening with Annie, Erotic Moonbeam and Smut Muppet as we're all coming at erotica from different angles. I spend a lot of time thinking about writer craft and publishing these days and it was really good to discuss those themes. I imagine I shall ask the same questions at the London meet as I don't tire of talking about these subjects! We talked about other stuff too (such as website coding and honesty when reviewing work by other people) but these are the things that stood out to be as particularly interesting:

Fiction vs Real Life: A reader doesn't know whether what you're writing did or didn't happen. Which is quite freeing, as it means you can write whatever is in your head, real or otherwise.

Professionalism vs Enthusiasm
Lots of people write erotica simply because they want to, and other people write it because they want to make money out of it. There is nothing wrong with either camp, but the attitude that goes behind each camp is different. What bothers me is there is generally no way of telling between one and the other when you're buying fiction until you start reading.

I left feeling rather patted on the back in many ways. It's nice to bounce ideas off other people and find that you've been going in the right direction all along. Especially when the company is so attractive. ;)

It was really good of Annie to come all the way over for the meet and there had been a lot of interest so the number of people that turned up was a little disappointing. I guess it's still early days for the Bristol meet and I hope we'll have lots more fabulous people at the next one.

Posted in: advice,erotic meet,opinion,publishing