Eroticon 2012 - Sex Bloggers and Erotica Writers Conference

Want to meet the Lovehoney team and enjoy a day of sexy inspiration, advice... and fun? 

The first ever sex blogger and erotic writers' conference, Eroticon 2012 promises to be a day packed with inspiration, advice, networking opportunities... and fun!

What's included?

Delegates at Eroticon 2012 will get 12 hours of discussion, inspiration, workshops and demonstrations from the very best in the business. They'll have unparalleled opportunities to network with publishers, sex toy retailers, writers and other sex bloggers.

There's FREE WiFi, breakfast, lunch, coffee throughout the day and FREE wine, entertainment and sexy readings after the conference.

Each delegate will also walk away with a goodie bag worth over £30, as well as £50 to spend on anything they like at Lovehoney!

Session highlights

There are 12 sessions and workshops across the day, with something for everyone including:

Identity, Ethics and Sex Blogging - with Zoe Margolis (Girl With a One Track Mind), Lori Smith, Molly Moore, Mina Lamieux.

Publisher's Panel - with Hazel Cushion (CEO of Xcite Books), Maxim Jakubowski, Lucy Felthouse, Andrews UK and Total E-Bound.

Marketing & Promoting Your Work - with Lucy Felthouse and Victoria Blisse.

Sacred Kink Demonstration - with sex-positive Dominant London Faerie.

Practical Workshops - including self-publishing, blog hosting, SEO (search engine optimisation), photography, podcasting and more.

See the full Eroticon 2012 schedule.

Meet the Lovehoney Team!

As sponsors, we're coming along and we're looking forward to meeting you!

We'll be bringing along loads of high-end toys like the Minna Ola, Rock Box and a Violet Wand for you to have a play with - and Baconlube for you to taste! You can grill us about being in the business of pleasure and how to get your hands on free sex toys...

I would like to go, but really I can't afford it. With transport, travel, food, and paying the fee for the day, it would just be too much for me.

It looks fun/ helpful, and I look forward to reading about it. Will LH be blogging about it?

Oh wow yes Id love to go too, but its too far for me to drive. What a great idea and you have some great writers there it will be a great day if you can go.

I love Maxim Jakubowski writing and to go to his workshop would be awesome.. You really have excelled yourselves in getting so many brilliant people under 1 roof.

Blondii wrote:

Oh wow yes Id love to go too, but its too far for me to drive. What a great idea and you have some great writers there it will be a great day if you can go.

I love Maxim Jakubowski writing and to go to his workshop would be awesome.. You really have excelled yourselves in getting so many brilliant people under 1 roof.

Eroticon has been completely arranged and organised by author Ruby Kiddell at Erotic Notebook. We're sponsoring and will be there on the day, but all the hard work has been done by Ruby!

I would like to go, but cannot for two reasons:

1: I'm too darn shy and would feel awkward there;

2: It's too darn far away.

It'd take 3-4 hours for me to get there by train. I'm actually surprised there's only one change between trains.

I am actually planning on writing a novel which, unfortunately for me, contains sex scenes as I want to be relentless about this particular story. Having this story without any sex scenes would simply ruin the relentless approach I have for it. Plus, even though the sex scenes would mostly be bizarre and disgusting, I want to write it as if it's actually erotic. I ought to practise writing short erotic stories...

I might go, though. There's a lot of time before the event.

 Hello everyone!  

Thank you for being so enthusiastic about the conference and thanks ot Lovehoney for the support.

I'm sorry that distance is a difficulty for attending but I'm sure there will be lots of people blogging about the day and what they learnt so I hope those that can't attend will be able to access some of the learning and fun of the day.

Ginger Ninja Minge - don't be shy! Lots of people will be in the same boat as you and you know that a conference full of sex bloggers just HAS to be a friendly place!

If anyone is on twitter then do please follow the chat @eroticon2012  

If anyone has questions then do please ask away, here or on twitter.

And thanks again for the warm welcome!

Ruby 

Ow... £60 for tickets...

And hi Ruby! I know not to be shy, I'm just an awkward person.  I'm seriously considering to go, but it's just the length of time to get to Bristol and the costs.

What time exactly does the even start and finish?

Oh, sorry, I need to read... 8:30-6:00.

What's with price £100 and fee £3.15 on 'Register Now'? Sorry, I seem to be easily confused here...

 Hi GNM!

Doors open at 8 for breakfast, mingling, sussing out where the loos are and all that faff that comes under the heading "registration"

The first session with Zoe Margolis of Girl With a One Track Mind fame is at 9.30

The last session, the fantastically named "It's kink Jim, but not as we know it!" ends at 6.

Then there are drinks, readings and hopefully a little burlesque that goes on till 8.

The full schedule can be found here though I'm still putting the finishing touches to it > http://conference.eroticnotebook.co.uk/schedule

The ticket price includes all food, wifi, as well as some secret surprises that I'm lining up ;)

AWWWWHHHH!  The event sounds so cool and fantastic! For a start, there's the writing workshop which would definately help me for my own writing. Then there's the other writing workshop when writing in a completely different perspective, which would also help me so much as there's lesbian and gay sex as well as straight. And, of course, the whole bizarre and strangeness of the sex scenes...

With the marketing and promoting your work, does that apply with any stories, whether erotic or not, or just apply specifically for erotic stories?

I'm intrigued with what exactly the secret surprise is.

So the £100 is simply the ticket price and the £3.15 fee is the delivery costs and suchlike? That's fair enough.  I'm a mere, poor university student, so I should try to start saving up right now if I want to go! Wow... thanks so much for putting all this together! It sounds so exciting!

And lol, I'm sure you can tell that I value things which would help me as being priceless.

 GNM - if I told you what the secret surprises where they wouldn't be secret now would they! But surfice to say that as Lovehoney HQ are supplying some of them then they will DEFINITELY put a smile on your face and a bounce in your step!

The marketing & promoting your work would apply to any kind of writing - I've not seen the session content yet, but I've a feeling it will cover things like social media, guest blogging and all the other kinds of self-promotion that you can do as a writer/blogger.

Yes £100 is the ticket price, £3 whatever is the admin fees. 

I've not got much time left today but I'll try to pop back this evening to try to answer any other questions.

Tr'a for now

Ruby

I didn't ask you what the surprise was, though. I know how surprises work!

I read the part hinting the surprise involves Lovehoney.

Anyway, bye for now!

As an amature writer I would love to go to eroticon to learn a little from the masters but like everyone else it is just to far away and to exspensive. I would love especialy to hear about getting some of my work published.

I have been for some time now working on turning one of my sort stories into a full book and I would like to try and become a published writer.

I know I might be boxing above my weight class but I really believe in what i'm doing.

Anyway I can't wait to hear all about everyones experiences, it  sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun.  

Leon, there's nothing wrong at all with doing that. Trust me. I was, I'm guessing, 13 when I decided I want to be an author and just went straight at it and began writing for a full length novel. To say the least... I scrapped it. But it had allowed me to see what I did wrong and to improve on that, and that's what I'm constantly doing. If you aim high, you get much, much better results than if you don't.

To be fair, I was thinking of buying an iPod since I don't have an MP3 and I simply want to see what's 'so good' about it. Not like I want to be an Apple fan or whatever. I despise Apple. That's £160. So I think I can safely scrap that and never think about it and use that money for something so, so much better.

Seems like everything works out in the end. Im the other way around. It was never ment to be a full story but as I have written probably a couple of books worth of short stories I thought it was about time for a seriouse chalenge. Having read one or two errotic books I feel more comfartable in my writing and combined with some of the responses my stories have gotten on free post sites like this one I thought it would be a good idea to go for it. 

So far I know were it begins ends and were everything in between comes into play. I have the charectors all figured out and the only ting left to do now is write it. My problem is actualy being motivated to write it. So far im have way down page one and I don't know if ill ever get it finished but i really hope i do.

Good luck with your writing and have a real good time if you decide to go.

And the only real diffrence between an i pod and my mp3 player is the amount of music an i pod can hold is much more. And as they say too much of a good things ruins it.  

Well, if have a whole hoard of albums, you're not really going to listen to them many times over. So... I suppose.

Just saying this because I feel it's important, never, ever underestimate planning a story. It's a mistake I've done, which is why I've scrapped various ideas. It just provides a backbone to the story and makes the whole process much more pleasant. I'm trying it myself as I've finally decided that planning is best for me. So far, I have 28 pages of my disjointed plan and I intend to get a lot, lot more. I say disjointed because at this moment in time, I'm sketching my ideas down and seeing what fits and what doesn't. Funnily enough, I'm incredibly happy with all I've done - well, almost all... there were a couple of ideas I stuck in and thought later that it just wouldn't work. The piecing together will come later.

I would suggest that, since you have the characters worked out, write what exactly you've worked out. Just so that it's absolute concrete. Just so that you're absolutely certain you know the characters and won't be forgotten, since they're written down.

Having the motivation... yeah, I get that problem too. In the beginning, ideas simply flew into my head and now I've just halted. Problem is, I'm still aiming high and I'm creating this complex, hopefully clever novel where I'm trying to get literally hundreds of characters in my plan, even if they're just very, very briefly mentioned. I think it's because of the type of story I'm creating that I feel I need to do that. For an ordinary novel, I'd think differently.

Sorry, I feel I need to post more, but I've taken sleeping pills, considering that I seem to struggle to get to sleep and always seem to go to sleep at like 3:00am. Right now, I just can't think about what I'm saying and... for the second time in a row, I feel shattered right now. This is my second time taking sleeping pills. Think I may get addicted...

I hope all goes well for you with writing anyway. I think it's the apparent lack of progress that's sapping your motivation. I merely created rather plotless stories, or part of it, so progress was rather easy for me, so I kept going and going until I found out it's absolute trash. It's not really trash though, since it's practice, and I can see my strengths and weaknesses.

Oh well, I'm turning in for the night. Goodnight.

By the way, I've just had a quick peek at Testing the Waters because I'm intrigued with how your writing abilities are. From the looks of the first paragraph, I am pretty damn impressed. I would (or wouldn't say anything of the whole matter) otherwise. I'll take a much better read of it tomorrow. Promise.

Leon Bellmont wrote:

As an amature writer I would love to go to eroticon to learn a little from the masters but like everyone else it is just to far away and to exspensive. I would love especialy to hear about getting some of my work published.

Hi Leon,

I was lucky in finding my publisher, someone recommended me on to them, but in talking with other writers and publishers the best advice seems to be:

1 - find a publisher and read some of their stories - this will give you an idea about what the styles, genres and types of story they publish and you'll be able to tell if your work is a good fit.

2 - read their submisssions page, this page tells you what they do and don't publish and how to send stories to them.

3 - read the submissions page again and stick to the guidelines of content and formatting for submissions - if you don't all your hard work is likey to end up in the bin.

4 - rinse and repeat as many times as needed.

A good way to test the water is to submit short stories to anthologies as they tend to require shorter pieces, around 2,000 words and if accepted you benefit from rubbing shoulders with more established authors.

I hope that helps!

Ruby

Thank you very much for the advice Ruby. I have read a couple of books from a publisher called Xcite and there works tend to be alsorts of diferant  genres so it seems like a good start. I don't have any problems writing to a specific genre or theme although i like to incorparate difrent aspects into my work i could stick to a specific breif.  

Just throwing out an idea but wouldn't it be good if love honey did a sort amature submit your short stories ting here. Everyone knows each other more or less and people seem to get a good response when blogging there stories here.we send our stories to love honey and the best of the best get gathered together into a book. there could be several diffren't catagories of story and It would be a great way to test the waters as you say. 

Any way just an idea. Will certianly check a few sites and see what i can see. Thanks again for the advice.

 Hi Leon

Xcite are an excellent place to start, they publish such a wide range of stories and pay good royalties (always good to know) They publish shorter pieces, starting from 3,500 words, so a great publisher to start with.

The Xcite CEO, Hazel Cushion is on the publisher's panel at the  Eroticon conference, a very helpful lady.

Here is the link to their submissions page - you might have to cut and paste it to your browser.

http://www.xcitebooks.co.uk/ebookguidelines.html

I think a Lovehoney collection is a fantastic idea, there certainly seem to be lots of lively imaginations in the forums!

Cheers for the link just had a look at it now and the guidlines and deteails of what they are looking for have given me a big scare. I think im going to try and submit a short story in the contemperary catagorie or mabey one with vampires and see how i do. Celebrating female sexuality in all its forms is particularly nerve racking as it means so many diferant things but I will try to give it a go.