I’ve got a bit of a sad face on right now because I’m back home after an absolutely fabulous weekend. All good things and all that…
So, what did I get up to today?
First session I joined was on photography – both taking and editing photos. I think I won the “best excuse for not currently using an SLR” with “my SLR takes film” (it’s true! It was a 21st birthday present and it’s lovely and a really nice piece of kit, but unfortunately I turned 21 about a year before D-SLRs became really affordable so I’ve never really got to grips with it properly. However! I now feel more confident about taking it up again someday, whereas a week ago I was thinking of selling it. So yay! Many thanks to Molly of Molly’s Daily Kiss for everything in her session. She’s a fabulous lady. Seriously, the people you meet at Eroticon are worth the ticket just to hang around with the fabulousness :-)
Anyway, next session I was torn (happened a few times today). Made my mind up based on who everyone else was fangirling about, and went to Remittance Girl‘s session “Writing Jouissance: Pleasure Pain and Madness”. Not an area or concept I’ve really been aware of before, and like the rope session yesterday there was a lot of psychology, but really powerful, thoughtful stuff for contemplation both in terms of writing and in terms of life.
Actually, both of the sessions I attended which focused on psychology will really help me with building and understanding my fictional characters. Absolutely stunning insights which I hadn’t expected from a writing conference.
On to the afternoon… again, I was torn. I had planned to go to the session on internet security followed by Ruby’s session on newsletters, but then I learned the Kink Craft workshop was making a set of handcuffs. Mmm…
Hope I don’t live to regret choosing handcuffs over learning more about security? Very, very fun. Most amusing that it took far too long for me and Josephine Myles to work out which line was which on the tape measures (honestly? I think she’d have been ok if I hadn’t confused the issue by asking, since she does lots of sewing and other crafty things, oops!) and very surprising to learn that my wrists are smaller than an XS, at a touch over 6″ / 15cm (at least 2 other people had similar sized wrists but because my palms are quite square I’d never realised how small my wrists were before)
After that I went to Ruby Kiddell‘s session on newsletters. Definitely something I’ll be setting up at some point but one thing at a time… :-)
The day ended with discussion of the future (should it be the same format? should it change? would people still come if it was 1 day instead of 2?), and then readings from a huge variety of erotic fiction from the comic to the truly subversive.
My handcuffs*, sitting on the box the kit came in (pretty tissue paper!), and since there was a reasonable bit of para-cord left over and I was bored on the train home, I started playing a little to see if I could make anything else…
*it’s late, I’ve not had time to apply very much of what I learned in Molly’s photography session!