BEA was huge. Gigantic. And there are oodles of christian publishers — so many, I couldn’t just pick one to harass. I was one of the (3?) sex authors in the roughly five football fields of book publishers represented at BEA. It’s astounding; sex publishing makes up a really signifigant part of the market but the rest of the book world is super sex-negative — and religious. It was quite a coup to be signing Fetish Sex *literally* in the middle of jesusland; there were over a hundred christian book publishers around the area where I signed. I thought no one would make it through all the god stuff to check out a dirty (sex-positive!) book.
I was wrong. I had long lines of people waiting to see me. Me! People took turns getting their picture taken with me; people exclaimed excitedly about my podcast. They were from Chicago, Utah, Alabama, Tennesee, Maryland, New York, all over. My French publisher came to see me and sign Fetish Sex for a French translation and it’s not even out for three more weeks. They knew who I was in the DC comics booth (and asked me to consider writing for them). I am completely, totally blown away. I spoke with publishers who were freaked out by sexual content and afraid to label their books “erotica”; and I can tell you by my experience today that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. People want their sex. They love sex. They want to be happy and enjoy sex. And no amount of religious pressure will stop them from enjoying it. They made the trek through booths hawking “The Bible Diet” to come see me — and I signed for the smiliest, most excited lines of people I’ve ever seen.
Wow.
I saw Rachel and Jamye and got totally spoiled by Feral House who hugged me and gave me tons of books and hugged again by Disinfo. I got snagged by the Last Gasp crew and babied by SCB Distributors and totally taken care of by Lucky Lana and given beer instead of food. Fuck it, I’ll eat when I get home. After the jump, see my photos and watch a video I took when I got back to the suite tonight @ 2am.
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In the catalog:
They weren’t very nice but I still like all their “hacks” books:
I asked some christians to move out of the way so I could get this photo. I wish I could’ve taken a pic of their faces when I thanked them afterward:
They didn’t have an auditing machine for me to steal, but I hear the Brainwash Dip was delicious:
Me signing:
Lots of people came to see me:
I went to parties but felt like dancing on a table when I got back to the room. I’m going to bed now; goodnight.
AM Update: here is a clearer QuickTime version of the dancing:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/violetblue/test2.mov
Post production done in iMovie; song by Bangers & Mash.
Update: here’s a ten second video I took yesterday from a balcony of just one of three rooms at BEA, to give you an idea of what I mean by “gigantic”:
