You definitely get the chance to get to grips with your author research at Smut events: I haven’t forgotten my own first time back in 2014. This year, there was even less pussyfooting involved as the venue for the day was a lovely little kinky club in the corner of a light industrial estate, which gave me immediate joyous flashbacks to my scene reviewing days.
I’d prepared a workshop loosely themed around the idea of going beyond dominance and submission so we talked about the more unusual fetishes around (you know, sneezing, engine oil, trees…) and table-turning scenarios. There may well be a new anthology call going out fairly soon.
If anyone was inspired to dream up a story whose protagonists got excited by the sort of thing you wouldn’t normally consider particularly arousing, it wouldn’t be the first time by a long way. One of the day’s highlights was the official launch of the new KD Grace novel The Tutor which was written after last year’s Smut Manchester and, in particular, Kay Jaybee’s workshop featuring a tin of pears in heavy syrup. While I do remember certain dubious suggestions from my student days about ‘101 things to do with tinned peaches… 102 if you eat the bastards’ I wouldn’t necessarily have considered tinned fruit as a starting point until now.
The most practical of the demonstrations came a little later on, when hostess Victoria Blisse took several for the team in the form of allowing herself to be whacked with a variety of implements in the dungeon space. This was an opportunity for those who had never actually seen or felt or tried impact play to witness the real thing, hear the sounds, see the marks and study the techniques. Of course, later on, anyone so inclined got the chance to have a go for themselves, and many of us got gleefully stuck in (even those of us who knew perfectly well which whacker does what but are never averse to a bit more practice.)
A wholly fabulous day all round, then. And I even won a lovely spiky torment wheel on the World Famous Smut Tombola, which will be getting put to very good use some time soon.
Thanks to all concerned, especially the Smut crew for hosting and the venue team for having us.