Erotica By Helen E. H. Madden

It was bound to happen at some point. Earlier last weekend, someone from the zealot community attacked me.

Perhaps I should explain. I'm heading up the Virginia chapter of EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection). As part of that job, I've been looking for promotion opportunities for our members, and for EPIC itself. I got wind of a science fiction convention coming up in the local area and decided to see if I could get a table for the group. Before I had even filled out the online form to get the table, someone got wind that EPIC was interested in attending the convention, and that individual went on the warpath.

I found out that said someone posted a message on the convention's online forum that stated EPIC was an erotica writers group that purveyed filth and garbage, and therefore we should not be allowed at a family-oriented convention. This person also went on to state that if EPIC was allowed to attend, he/she was going to boycott the convention and attempt to persuade others to do so as well.

I decided to respond, posting on the forum that the "E" in EPIC stood for "Electronic," and that while we had members who wrote and/or published erotica, EPIC also represented publishers and writers in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, inspirational, children's fiction, non-fiction, and every other possible genre out there.

My response was met with a heated attack on me personally (of the "You're going to hell!" variety)and on EPIC too. EPIC president Brenna Lyons weighed in with a post similar to mine, stating that perhaps a look at the EPIC website would reveal that EPIC was indeed not a "porno" site as my attacker claimed, but a site which contained information on electronic publishing and marketing e-books.

The convention realized what was going on in their forum and deleted all the posts in that thread. They also apologized to me for letting the original post stay up there so long (it was up for maybe 48 hours; in my opinion, not really long at all considering it was the weekend). I've since discussed EPIC's presence at the convention and have made arrangements to have an info table all that weekend, and possibly a panel on e-publishing as well. Yea EPIC!

The event was hardly a disaster, really more of a minor dustup, but it illustrated to me that even in this day and age people will go nuts over erotic material. They must attack erotic art, writing, and films, and those who create such works. All in God's name, of course, because you know God hates sex which is why the human body is designed to have sex.

How best to respond when such attacks occur? Calmly. It does no one any good to get pissed because some knucklehead who hates sex gets all up in arms because I wrote a dirty story. By staying calm, I showed the convention that I was not interested in turning their event into my own personal battleground. Instead, I told them to let me know what materials they'd like me to bring, and I'd bring it. Since the con really is a family-oriented affair, they asked for nothing over the PG-13 limit, and so that is all I'm bringing. I've sent out a notice to all EPIC members who write for the PG-13 and below crowd to send me their stuff and I'll happily hand it out at the con. I won't be able to promote my own work, of course, but I still think I should be there, because EPIC really is about more than erotica writers. It's about supporting e-publishing and indie publishing as a whole, and if I support EPIC, I know they'll support me. I've got the evidence of that already, right here.

Labels: How To Promote, Zealots

Friday, August 17, 2007

When Zealots Attack