eroticbooksociety.com so I truly think I was exposed to every erotic title that was out there. People were just creating some amazing stuff. And yet when you left the big cities on either coast, few people knew that erotica even existed. When the Book-of-the-Month Club people launched the Venus book club (for erotica), people living between the coasts became more aware of us and our books, but they were still fee-
ling compelled to hide the books under their beds, or what have you, when company came, you know? Erotica is something a lot of people have always been ash-
amed of reading. But in those days, the writers were taking such beautiful risks with lang-
uage and erotic ideas because they had publishers willing to back them. Masquerade was probably the biggest, but there was also Carroll & Graf, Blue Moon, the awesome Black Books, a few others; and there is still Cleis, and Circlet Press.

But anyway, I wanted to honour all this greatness somehow. I wanted to give out awards to the publishers, and cash awards to the writers who can always use all the cash they can get. Giving out Lifetime Achievement Awards was very important to me hon-
ouring our predecessors. And I also felt that if we banded tog-

ether, it would raise our profile, give us more press opportunities and help us sell more books and, hence, get bigger advances.

The EAA’s founding members are a who’s who of writers in the contemporary erotic genre – were you pleased at the level of response you had and who came onboard in support?

It was a little like pulling teeth to get the writers onboard for the EAA. But I did my usual “terrier” routine: I wouldn’t let it drop! Emails, letters; showing up at readings to badger writers into joining. These were my friends and colleagues so I don’t think I was ever truly annoying, but they just never saw as much of a fin-
ancial future in writing erotica; they never believed we could be taken seriously enough to have a formal “Association” that gave out awards. Jack Fritscher, in California, was instrumental in helping me get the EAA off the ground, along with Rob Stephen-
son in New York. The other writ-
ers did get onboard, obviously, but they sort of sat back and had a bit of a “wait-and-see” attitude.

What was the EAA Signature Series and why did you stop publishing it after you courage-
ously testified in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) trial in Philadelphia in October 2006?

The EAA Signature Series was
our publishing arm – ebooks and print-on-demand. I wanted to publish the erotic books that the other publishers wouldn’t touch. Books of high literary quality but that also explored the taboos. I think we eventually covered them all: incest, sex with dogs, eroti-
cised rape, underage sex. Topics that ordinary people think about; perhaps fantasise about; topics that are technically legal to write about (though not legal to photo-
graph or practice) and that are usually totally off limits in literat-
ure: the EAA published it all and
it was all really well written.

We also published reprints of great erotica titles by our mem-
bers that had gone out of print and deserved a continued audience.

I stopped publishing the EAA Signature Series once the US Department of Justice got wind of what I was up to and made me exceedingly nervous about per-
haps going to prison.

You were terrified during the COPA trial, but you were not new to making a statement against censorship: in 2002, “at the last minute” (you’ve said),

you pulled the plug on an exhib-
ition, Marilyn’s Room – Cyber-
erotic Recreation, which was organised to aid the launch of The Museum of Sex in New York. What were the issues that led to you taking such action?

As the president of Marilyn’s Room, Inc., I was on the board of advisors for the Museum of Sex in its early stages. I was at all the New York meetings and fundrai-
sers; I smiled, shook hands, and drank more cocktails than you can possibly imagine. I was very gung-ho. When the launch for the museum was underway, I had all kinds of incredible erotic art ship-
ped in from all over – photogra-
phs, paintings, drawings. These were all to be exhibited the night of the big launch. But the backers of the launch – some liquor prom-
oters – got really nervous about the content of these works of art. They were more interested in Todd Oldham’s fashion show that would be going on and the sexy kitten go-go dancers or whatever else it was. But real sex-related art to help launch the Museum of Sex was not gonna happen. The heads of the museum came to me and proposed that they would be willing to have JPEGS made of all the art and have computer monit-
ors on hand for people to look