August Erotic Meet, Soho

There are now a number of write-ups of the Erotic Meet around the web, and you can find some of them here:

Annie
Joe/John
JoshJilly Boyd

And here's mine: It was great to see so many people, most unfamiliar but some I knew. It is a real credit to Annie that the Meet has come on such a long way since there were eight of us in a pub in May!

The new venue is fantastic, cosy but large enough, and you can actually hear yourself think. As great as everyone has said the bar staff were, I wasn't all that impressed, but that's not really important – the drinks weren't hideously expensive, so what else do you want?

Starting the evening by getting everyone to introduce themselves was an excellent idea. It's amazing to see so many different uses of erotica represented.

My most valuable conversations were with Rebecca Bond and her friend Parv, and Daniel Doherty, and were about websites. I'm still trying to work my way around hosting and HTML and how to establish a brand that truly represents me. I've been talking to a lot of people with websites - Annie built her own from scratch and Rebecca paid someone to do it for her but was very clear about she wanted. I think I'd like to build mine but know I need some help...

I would have liked to have spoken to a few more people about self-publishing and writer craft, which are my pet subjects. It is becoming apparent that the best way to get stuff out of these meets is to have some stuff you know you want to bring up but to be flexible because you never know who you're going to meet. (A particular highlight was Inky. He's a cuddly legend.) Since you're all reading this, I shall ask now: what kind of blog posts about self-publishing and writer craft are you interested in reading about? I like to talk about editing (and often lack thereof) in a general sense but I also like to use other people's work to demonstrate my opinions – is that the kind of thing that would be useful to people?

One thing did become clear – I could do with a business card. People kept asking for one. So I guess I should definitely get my website sorted out in time for the next Meet!

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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.

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Erotic Meet, 29th May

Better late than never!

It's already Wednesday, I realise, but I've only just found two minutes to myself to write about my experiences of the Erotic Meet I attended on Sunday in London. Please excuse me if I ramble...

I began this blog as an experiment with a friend in order to write more but as I hide behind this pen name I get a bit nervous about giving away too much about myself. I'm starting to realise that this is totally ridiculous, nobody is going to find me here if I don't want them to, so I'm making a decision to be more open. I feel (and various friends have encouraged me) that my writing is reaching publishable quality, and I'm starting to look at publishers and how to submit things and what to submit etc.

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