Erotica Writers are...Human.

We authors of smut are as human as anyone else. When we got together we talked about many, many things and you know, a lot of the stuff didn’t have anything at all to do with sex. We had conversations about all kinds of topics. Below follows a list of conversations and happenings that highlight the human side of eroticon2013 to people.

Probably my conversation with Mario Cacciottolo, which turned out to be the most bizarre, as when we started chatting about my Someone Once Told Me phrase, we discovered that we both went to the University of Derby (albeit not at the same time), and that he knew the lecturer whose quote I’d selected and agreed that she is totally dotty. What a small world!

Writing about sex, be it factual, fiction or somewhere in between we are writing about something that is at the core of our humanity. However sexually active we are or however we choose to express that part of ourselves by deed or word, it is a part of us. It informs how we view the world and how we related to others. It is a starting point for compassion and understanding, a way to find comfort and share experiences.
Eroticon is a uniquely human event, a safe space to talk and be ourselves in a way that perhaps is too raw and tender to be in every day life.

Miss Urania’s forbearance with my questions on the attraction of the submissive male. Hazel Cushion’s patience with my contrariness. Harper Eliot’s warm and compassionate company.

I have to give credit for the most human experience to fab photographer, Mario Cacciottolo, who does the wonderful Someone Once Told Me site. Mario had a wonderful way of getting people to open up to him, to think about the things someone had said to them in their life that had mattered, that had been funny, interesting, poignant, or just flat out silly. Mario took all of our pictures, posed behind our hand-written signs of the things that someone had told us, and then in a quiet moment, played group photographer for Lucy Felthouse, Kay Jaybee, Victoria Blisse and me with Lucy’s camera so we could have a shot of us all together. Mario has a wonderful way of putting people at their ease and allowing them to be human.

I told my office that I was going to a writing conference and when they kept asking about it, I told them that it was called Eroticon. I got asked tons of questions on my return, many with raised eyebrows (!) When I said that the “Aural Sex on the Saturday was just incredible” a couple of people misheard. I am sure they still think I came down to London for an orgy!

Football. No, we didn’t play it but I did talk a lot about it. That Mario (he’s a popular lad) flashed his chest at me because he had a Red Devil tattoed there, the symbol of Manchester United, the team we both support. We had a great conversation about how awesome Paul Scholes is. I also chatted with Maxim Jakubowski about the united match that had been played that weekend. It was a delight for me as apart from talking a bit of footy stuff with my Evertonian husband (I know, poor man, someone has to do it I suppose) I don’t get to indulge in it often enough!