Shiver with antici..........pation.

There's definitely excitement in the air this week (which is a pleasant change, for me anyway, after last week's whingefest) as we count down the days to Eroticon 2014. Maybe it's because I feel like I've finally got the hang of Twitter, or at least finally seem to be able to participate in an ongoing discussion without confusing the crap out of myself, but I'm bouncing around in a way I haven't done for years. It's not quite like kid-revving-up-for-Xmas, more the chattering, buttonholing-people, spreading-the-word vibes I've had before going to particularly good gigs or parties.

I don't think I ever got this worked up before the Guild Of Erotic Writers conferences. Runup to one of those was generally a matter of deciding what butties to make and how many boxes of wine to buy from Tescos, and how to make whatever damp community centre we'd booked for the event look a little more cheerful.

Even though our conferences were generally enjoyable once they were actually happening and usually ended with me getting to sleep with yet another of the editors from a particular arthouse publisher I don't recall quite such feverish anticipation beforehand.

It could be just another example of How It's All Changed These Days. We ran the Guild via photocopied newsletters and (in the independent part of its existence) a PO box that letters had to be fetched from once a week. While there was an Internet, it was still rather esoteric and not many people knew how to use it: there was no Twitter to whip up a feeding frenzy, no Facebook to create a group and invite everyone you could think of. I think I like things better the modern way. Better outreach, more fun, faster access and all the rest of it. So I'm counting the number of sleeps till Eroticon. And if I get to sleep with any publishers over the course of the weekend, well, I'll probably keep that to myself, if you don't mind.

Hi ho, hi ho, to Erotica we go..

Perhaps not 'with a bucket and spade and a hand grenade' - in my case it will be with a bag of flyers and quite possibly a sneaky six-pack. I haven't actually been to Erotica for a year or two, and haven't been an exhibitor since 2005, but I am quite looking forward to it this time round.

(flyers will naturally be featuring this. Can't upload the poxy flyer itself as it's a PDF grr)

I was at the very first one, in November 1997. I remember hearing about it that summer, and discussing it with my friends G and L, with whom I ran the Guild Of Erotic Writers. Initially we weren't going to go due to it being about £3K for a pitch, but then we heard that the Whiplash Fetish Market people had booked a massive chunk of space and were parceling it out at £300 a table, so in we promptly leapt. As I recall, we were flogging Guild books (Anthology no 1 and Deadly Strangers, our venture into horror), the opportunity to sign up for Guild membership, and - a bit of a forerunner of what Decadent Media would later become - I knocked up a bunch of 'slave contracts' on the office Mac and put them into clear film pockets and took them along as well.

And it was probably one of the most exciting weekends of my life. The event ran from Friday lunchtime to Sunday evening, as it still does, and on the Friday evening I had to hand the stall over to G and bolt up to Manchester to take part in one of what we used to call 'the regionals' - a late-night live talk show that would feature a panel of experts and an audience spiked with picked contributors who had something to say. I think this particular one was Granada Upfront but it might have been Central Weekend, or something else entirely. I remember trying to articulate what the first day had been like: a non-stop rush of giggly, excited, generally lovely people, all eager to explore what was on offer. I'd said to friends and fellow traders at the time: it's like the start of a revolution.

Part of it was sheer good luck as, only a short time before the event, the BBFC had awarded licences to a couple of porn films. One was called Batbabe, the other was, I think, Pyramid or The Pyramids. When I was setting out my piles of books, I saw a bloke wheeling a trolley piled high with videos (yes, videos - I'm not entirely sure there were DVDs at that point) of these two titles. By Sunday night, nearly all of them had gone. This relaxing of censorship had got everyone talking about porn, sex, acceptability and the rest of it. Also, the people behind Erotica had made a conscious decision to market it to, as Savvas Christodoulou told me later on, women and couples rather than just heterosexual men.

In the late 90s, quite a few shows and events sprang up, hoping to grab a slice of the erotic pie for themselves. Pretty much every one was a disaster - I know because I generally went to them, plugging the Guild and later trying to get Decadent Media going - often because the organisers either forgot or rejected the idea that women like sex too and making an erotic event female-friendly gets higher attendance and more money spent. There was a particularly ghastly one at Wembley which was 'laddish' to the point of being a bit scary; an under-attended weekend in the Midlands that I enjoyed immensely on a personal level (outlaw bikers, charming erotic artists, lovely locals and a hilarious amount of outrage from the local church) but which was financially a non-starter for the Guild.  Erotica, for several years, remained immense fun to participate in, but then seemed to lose its way mid-Noughties. There came a point when the stall prices went up a ridiculous amount, so that most of the smaller traders couldn't afford to take any space. The organisers also took to courting mainstream businesses and offering them free pitches: the Vegetarian Society and the RSPB had stands there one year, along with homeopaths, cosmetic dentists and diet food peddlers.

I'm looking forward to this year's do, though. I know I'm going to be catching up with a lot of mates, potential new friends, clients and colleagues. And not having to lug crates and crates of stock with me will be a relief, as well. Let's just hope it turns out nice for us all.

Writers' gigs, my new favourite thing

Erotica writers are really lovely people. Not just 'normal' people, as the slightly condescending Women Behind Erotic Fiction project insists - Ooo, look! They're not all actually running around with their fannies out and doing strange things with the contents of the bathroom cabinet! - but friendly, witty, kind and thoroughly supportive of one another. I've only met two absolute whangers over the couple of decades since I started getting involved in the erotic fiction business, and one was a walking advert for why Twelve Step programmes are useless, the other a self-aggrandizing silly moo who has long since disappeared.

But over the past few months, as I've been exploring the world of erotic fiction reading events, I've found nothing but fabulous new friends, and I'm remembering and rediscovering all sorts of things I had totally forgotten about.

(pic from the SH! website)

Last night I went along to the Sh! Erotic Poetry and Reading Slam in Hoxton Square, and had a most excellent time, as I had sort of expected. OK, anything involving free drinks and cakes and smut is going to appeal to me, but there was something else going on as well and when I got home I was full of ecstatic tipsy jabbering and sat up till about 4pm telling my long-suffering co-parent about All This Stuff Is So Exciting. Because it is. Way way back - in 1995 as it happens, I was involved in setting up the Guild of Erotic Writers. This was pretty much pre-Internet (yes, I know that there were dial-up bulletin boards and the Net existed, but it was still mainly used by geeks and freaks - I actually devoted about three pages of a book I wrote in '96 to describing the arcane and complex process of going to a Special Internet Café and Sending Someone An Email), and one of the reasons the Guild was begun was in recognition that erotic writers were a slightly lonely lot, and would jump at the chance to meet others of their kind. We held conferences, with panel discussions on a set theme, and there would always be drinks and a buffet afterwards (the fact that these often ended up with me shagging a publisher is quite another matter). The mid-90s was a reasonably good era for erotica, particularly stuff aimed at a female audience: it seemed as though a new imprint was being launched practically every month.

Over the years, though, the whole thing seemed to fizzle out: Headline Liasons, Idol, Sapphire, Nexus all bit the dust, and the Guild had faded away around the turn of the century for various reasons. But now there seems to be a whole lot of new life in the erotica genre, and it's not just down to EL James; the momentum's been gathering for a while. And these days, there's so much more opportunity for people to get their fantasies and feelings and filth out there to a wider audience.

I'm looking forward to whatever's going to happen next.