With only a few days to go, everyone’s getting deliciously sticky with excitement for this year’s Eroticon. Even though we are aware that, as someone said, it will be a matter of fewer hugs and more handwashing this time.
Part of the run up is posting a spot of self-introducing and answers to similar-but-always-slightly-different questions, so here is mine.
NAME (and Twitter if you have one)
Zak Jane Keir and my Twitter handles are either @decadentmadamez or @dirtysexyworld. The former’s a bit more personal, the latter tends to be more 
about bookselling and events.
Tell us 3 things you are most looking forward to at Eroticon 2020
- The annual catch-up with the people I only ever see in the flesh at Eroticon. You know who you are. We are all in touch online but it’s extra-special to be in the same room.
- Selling some books! Now that I am taking my bookdealing more seriously, I’ve put some thought into what to order, and ordered in plenty of time. So there will be copies of the last three Eroticon anthologies which hopefully will appeal to those of you who haven’t been before, along with my own new collection of Brexit-ish themed kinky fiction.
- Buying some books and discovering some new writers. If you have something in print, come and find me and tell me about it.
Sadly with a change of venue this year for the Friday night meet and greet we won’t be compiling a play list but I know that everyone enjoys that bit so…. What is a song that always makes you want to dance?
I thought of saying Vuoma-Pertti’s Mazurka by the Committee Band (also known as the Rosza Tune) but I can’t find any kind of link to it online. So instead I’m going to go with my new favourite get-up-and-kick-arse stompy anthem Wolf Totem. Batshit growling Mongolian death metal, anyone?
What is the best book you have read in the last 12 months?
Have you lot any IDEA how many books I read per week, let alone per year? I’m currently working my way through Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith (which seemed a good pick to follow The Five). Those are two impressive books and I’m glad to have them, but not sure either of them would be ‘favourites’ so to speak. But the one that ‘spoke to me’ the most so far this year has been Hacienda: how not to run a club by Peter Hook (from New Order.) It’s hilarious and horrifying and infuriating and fascinating all at the same time, particularly if you are old enough to remember Joy Division themselves. I’ve read tons of fiction in the past year, as usual, but most of it has tended to be a bit… disposable and samey: perhaps I’m getting old. Honorable mentions should probably go to Ben Aaronovitch, though, and also Becky Chambers’ A Close and Constant Orbit. And if I have to recommend an erotic book that isn’t by me, I’d have to say Lust In The Dust, the post-apocalypse anthology Janine Ashbless compiled. (You can buy your own copy from the bookshop
As you sit writing this post what are three things you are grateful for?
- The money. Definitely the money. To be specific, the sum of money that I got my hands on a couple of months ago: not ‘let’s buy all the Ferraris and a helicopter’ amounts, but enough to feel… human. Enough to buy in stock for my bookselling, and chuck a tenner at someone’s Patreon or GoFundme; enough to stand a round of drinks now and again, and enough not to be losing sleep over whether I can make the rent this month.
- My own reasonable health.
- Frys’ Raspberry Creams.
What is your mobile (cellphone) wallpaper or home screen image?
I have two phones, and the images are fairly similar, though they were taken about six months apart: my kid, midway through a walk in some woods, grinning at the camera.
If someone gave you £5000 today which you were not allowed to save but had to spend within 24 hours what would you do with it?
A desktop printer for me, a guitar for the kid and probably something like a Pullman dining car day out, depending on how much there was left.
Complete the sentence:
I need..
To sort out the house and garden and get on with all the everythings.
Catch up with everyone else’s answers here