Girl on the Net

It’s just over two weeks until Eroticon – the UK event for sex writers that has been the highlight of my year since I first went in 2014. I’m simultaneously excited and nervous, because this year I’m helping to organise it. As part of the conf, to help people get to know each other, each year Molly runs a ‘meet and greet.’ So: if you’re coming, copy the questions from the meet and greet post, and fill in your answers. Then share it, tag @EroticonUK, and meet some of the people who’ll be coming along.

NAME (and Twitter if you have one)

Girl on the Net, or GOTN, or ‘Sarah’, or whatever you like. There’s one guy who calls me ‘Netty’ and I find that adorable. @girlonthenet on Twitter.

What are you hoping to get out of Eroticon 2017?

As one of the organisers, my truly honest answer is that I want everyone involved to have an incredible time, and everything to be completely perfect.

A personal answer: I would like to get the chance to meet every single person over the course of the weekend. Someone told me after a previous event that they were nervous about approaching me, possibly because I am anonymous/aloof/mysterious. But in real life I am just some dickhead. Come and say ‘hello dickhead’ and we can chat.

And a practical answer: I’m running a session at Eroticon on pitching freelance articles. For various reasons, I’ll be doing less pitching in 2017, so I would like lots of eager journalists/columnists to come away from my talk ready to steal my job. It should be possible to come to my talk and then walk away knowing how to recoup the cost of your ticket with freelance work.

This years schedule at Eroticon is pretty full on but which 4 sessions do you already have marked down as ones you want to attend?

Emily Rose Yates‘ talk on Undressing Disability – I LOVE Emily and I think she’s incredible. I’ve been following her on Twitter for ages, and this year I finally get the chance to meet her in person, as well as hear about her work with Enhance the UK. WOOOO!

Ruby Goodnight seriously knows her stuff when it comes to the adult industry, so her session on call-out culture for adult companies is going to be fascinating. Likewise Alix Fox‘s talk on podcasting – she’s won awards for her incredible ‘Close Encounters’ cast, and she’s managed to gather a wealth of interesting stories along the way.

Readings – I always adore the readings that wrap up the weekend. Hosted by Zak Jane Keir, who is brilliant, they’re an amazing opportunity to hear some of the work of all the people I’ve just spent the weekend hanging out with and meeting. They’re also usually super hot, and result in much horn on the train ride home.

Also, as this is always the question where people lament clashes, I’ll throw in the clash I’m saddest about – I really want to go to both Meg-John Barker‘s and Sarah Brynn-Holliday‘s talks (on auto-erotic ethnography and feminism/social justice respectively), but at the same time I’m meant to be helping with the sex tech hands-on. All of these things fill my heart with joy, so I will have to split my heart into 3 parts. Or make use of my position as organiser and sneak around to all the sessions. 

Tell us one thing about yourself that not many people know?

Given my job as a tell-all sex blogger, this question is REALLY HARD. The only true ‘secrets’ are mundane things, I think.

Ummm… OK, so something not many people know: I am so in love with Rik Mayall that on my desk I have a snowglobe with his face in. When you shake it, heart confetti rains down around him.

If you made the papers, what would the headline be?

We Tracked Her Down: The Woman Responsible For UK Cider Shortage

If you could have one skill for free (I.e. without practice/time/effort) what would it be?

Visual creativity: I can’t take pictures, draw, or arrange anything on a page without it looking a complete mess. I have the visual equivalent of aural tone-deafness. I would love to be able to wake up one morning and understand how that stuff works – how to frame things, what looks nice and doesn’t, and be able to take at least passably-decent photographs and draw pictures other than stick people.

Failing that, I’d like to be so good at hand jobs that people couldn’t tell the difference between my technique and their own.

Complete the sentence: I love it when…

…people buy me wine.

There’s still time to pick up tickets for Eroticon and write your own meet and greet post if you’d like to join us! Or see past posts about Eroticon to get more of a feel for what it is. And if you’re not joining us, you can totally still support us by buying stuff from/tweeting about/showing some love to our sponsors. Having spent this year basically asking companies to put their trust in us to continue this amazing event, I’ve been blown away by how supportive and brilliant so many have been.