Did you attend Eroticon 2018?
We’d love to help you promote any work that’s been inspired by it, whether that be fiction, art, opinion pieces, round-ups of the event etc. By gathering them all in one place it means that all delegates can find them and also serves as resource for the wider community.
It also means that we can find your work which means we can both see what inspired you all and, we can help promote it by sharing in on our social media channels.
Even if you have already linked your post into another meme you can still add it here too as long as it is Eroticon related. You can also link in multiple posts so for example if you write an Eroticon roundup and then a separate piece inspired by a session you went for you can link them both here. Of course and don’t forget to click through to see what others are talking about too!
If you didn’t manage to attend this year, don’t panic as there will soon be announcements about the 2019 event. We have not quite settled on a date yet but it will definitely be in London in March. If you did attend this year we hope that you had a brilliant time and will be joining us again in 2019.
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I’m home from EROTICON, an annual weekend conference for sex writers, bloggers, educators, and fans of sex toys (which all need to be tested and reviewed – someone has to do it). It was held in London, England, March 16-18, in Arlington House in Camden, an historic shelter for homeless men which provides resources for the residents to find jobs and regular housing. The building has conference space, and every organization that rents the space is helping to support the shelter.
(My spouse Mirtha, a board member of Carmichael Outreach in Regina, Saskatchewan, brought home a full sheaf of brochures from Arlington House as inspiration for coping with poverty.)
I’ll try to sum up the experience of attending Eroticon for those who weren’t there. In the lead-up to the event, Resonance Press (one of the sponsors) put out a call-for-submissions for attendees to send in short works of fiction or non-fiction on the theme of sexual truth or honesty. My new story, “Rendezvous,” was accepted. Truth, edited by Zak Jane Keir, was available for sale at Eroticon. The cover image was by Tabitha Rayne, who was also at the event.
Attendees were welcome to read their work during the dessert-and-readings session on the Sunday. I read my very short (under 1K), very Canadian story about staying indoors and masturbating to recover from a breakup, “Hibernation.” I was amazed at the variety of flash-length stories that were read, including one about body acceptance, and one about a male-on-male encounter which was clearly still raw for the writer. He got two rounds of applause.
On Friday, March 16, there was a meet-and-greet in the Holiday Inn at Camden Lock, very close to Arlington House. (I tried to get an on-line reservation there for Mirtha and me, but by the time I did this in January, it was already full.)
The event was held in the Glass Room, which offered a dazzling view of a canal which reflected the lights of the city by night.
Service at the bar didn’t live up to the view, but the Eroticon crowd was friendly, and we had some interesting talks about sex-blogging as a goal in itself, not simply as a means of promoting print publications. We met up with Remittance Girl, formerly of the Erotic Readers and Writers Association, who gave two talks during the weekend. (Read on.)
I would have liked to figure out the public transportation system, or even walk through Regents Park to Arlington House from the Danubius Hotel in St. Johns Wood, where we were staying. There just wasn’t enough time. We learned that London taxi drivers identify neighbourhoods by post code (e.g. from NW1 to NW8, or vice versa).
Plus the weather didn’t encourage leisurely walks. We came from the snowy streets of the Canadian prairies to the snowy streets of London.
Stay tuned for my post on the events of Saturday, March 17. (Note: I wore green for St. Patrick’s Day, but apparently this is not a tradition in England. I should have guessed.)
See more of my report on Eroticon 2018 on FaceBook!
Jean R. Hillabold (“Jean Roberta”)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157531755451151
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157533061041151
https://www.facebook.com/jean.hillabold/posts/10157538069716151