Erotica By Helen E. H. Madden

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Fantasci 6 - Post-convention Report

I went to Fantasci 6 this past weekend. I had meant to mention something before I went, but everybody in this house has been sick and my truly significant other was away on business all week, so I kind of had my hands full. Anyway, here's the skinny on the con.

The convention was held in the very roomy, very nice Hampton Roads Conference Center. It's a very nice place with all the amenities you could want for a con. Unfortunately, the con didn't get as many attendees as they would have liked, so the place seemed somewhat empty. However, things were well organized when I arrived on Saturday morning. My fan table for EPIC was all set up and waiting for me and my fifty billion boxes of promo materials. Kathryn Lively from Phaze Books joined me and together we chatted with everybody who passed by our table about the wonders of e-books. "Do you like to read? Would you like to be able to carry an entire library in your pocket? Let me show you some stuff on e-books..." We did slow but steady business and met plenty of interesting folks.

I had a lot of fun chatting with the other authors and guests there. The fan tables were lined up on opposite sides of the hallway, which was pretty wide. We came up with some interesting hand signals to communicate back and forth. I'm not sure, but I think the guy across from me was signally that he was either really hungry for lunch, or maybe he was having a gas attack. Who knows?

After spending all day handing out bags of bookmarks and postcards and such, I went home (the HRCC is just right down the road from where I live) and discovered that the kids hadn't yet killed my husband although they were working on it. We got the little terrors to bed in time for Torchwood, and then collapsed in bed ourselves. I had no idea how exhausting it would be to man a fan table all day.

The next day, Sunday, Pamela Kinney (a.k.a. Sapphire Phelan) joined me at the table. Most of the stuff I had left out the night before was gone, which was nice because I didn't want to have to haul everything back. We set up shop again and talked to a few more people. Kathryn Lively joined us a little later and around 2 PM, Kathryn and Pam went off to do a panel on e-publishing. Unfortunately, only a couple of people showed up for the panel, but it's our first outing so we're hoping that at upcoming conventions we'll be able to drum up more interest.

Other points of note, I talked with Marscon staff about doing panels on e-publishing and maybe some adult panels on erotica and sci-fi. I'll be working on that over the next few months. Also, those of us who were working the table discussed the possibility of getting fan tables or dealer tables at other upcoming conventions. It's looking like 2008 could be a very busy year convention-wise.

So, Fantasci 6 turned out to be small, but I think it was a great opportunity for me to learn how to run a fan table, do some one-on-one promo, and make a few good connections at the con.

Best of all, the crazy right-wing religious nuts never showed up with their pitch forks and torches to burn me at the stake ;)

Labels: Conventions And Appearances, Zealots

Friday, August 17, 2007

When Zealots Attack

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