The second step to how to use a flashlight warmer is to wrap your vagina around the insert like a glove. By using a mini lotus flower, which is an herbal suppository, you will create an amazing sensation in your vagina. The lotus flower has a warming sensation that resembles a thumb burning through the skin or a hand warming the flesh.

The third step to how to use a flashlight warmer is to insert the insert completely inside the vagina. You can use a sex toy lubricant if you prefer, but make sure that it is water based because water-based lubricants may cause more discomfort during sex. Once the insert is inside, the next step to warming up your sex toy is to wrap a warm cloth or paper towel around the insert to trap heat.

One of the most exciting new intimate apparel items on the market is a fleshlight. This product is a specially designed condom that fits inside the vagina. It covers the vagina, does not absorb liquids, and can be used as a sort of sizer. They are extremely flexible to wear and often come with an adjuster so that you can change the fit for better comfort and more firmness. There are many ways in which you can use a flashlight, but today we will focus on the best way to use it: using an electric blanket.

Heat generation in the vagina occurs at a lower temperature than outside. Therefore, to heat the warmer to the maximum temperature, it is important to wear warm underwear and a looser fitting top. If you choose to use a warm cloth or paper towel, be careful to not burn yourself because you don’t want to transfer the warmth to your skin. Once the insert is at the maximum temperature, just leave it alone. Most people prefer to wear them for about five to ten minutes, depending on how aroused they are.

After you use the warmer for about five minutes, it is important to wash off the warm cloth or paper towels. Most people prefer to use hot water to clean off the cloth because hot water is known to be a lot better for the vagina and body in general. However, do not use any soap when cleaning off the insert. Overall, you can now enjoy using your fleshlight all day and night because your problem with public sweating has been solved.

Vibease are an innovative sex toy company combining sex and tech. They first sponsored Eroticon USA and so I’m delighted that they will also be at a UK Eroticon.

The Vibease was the world’s first wearable smart vibrator that combines audio fantasy and smart vibrator to create an immersive experience.

The Vibease Fantasy platform also gives writers an exciting opportunity to reach new audiences and listeners, and to earn revenue.

You can find out more about Vibease at their website and follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Hot Octopuss is a young, British-founded company that took the sex toy market by storm in late 2013 and 2014 when it launched the world’s first ‘Guybrator’ – PULSE. The toy won four industry awards and sold 7,500 units in its first six months on the market. With just a small marketing budget, word about the toy was spread mainly by sex blogger reviews and social media ‘buzz’, and Hot Octopuss has worked hard to build and maintain relationships with the amazing, sex-positive people who have been championing the toy from the start.

PULSE I was followed by the launch of the PULSE II collection in February this year. PULSE II SOLO is for anyone with a penis, while PULSE II DUO is the first ever sex toy for couples that features two, independently-controlled motors for the tailored pleasure of both partners. The first reviews of the PULSE II collection have been EPIC – most recently top sex blogger Cara Sutra awarded PULSE II DUO a rare 10 out of 10 and said: “The Pulse II Duo feels amazing, there’s no doubt in our minds. In his words, ‘It’s almost as good as you, but not quite’, which in my opinion is a glittering testimonial (!).”

PULSE I and II have also received excellent feedback from older people and those with disabilities, ED and other health conditions that affect sex life.

In February Hot Octopuss launched its #SexNotStigma campaign, aiming to tackle the stigma surrounding male sex toys, while encouraging everyone – whatever their sexuality and level of physical ability – to start honest, open conversations about sex and what works for them in the bedroom.

Adam Lewis, co-founder of Hot Octopuss, said:

“We are enormously grateful to the sex blogger community and all its sex-positive writers, who have been such great champions of PULSE from the start. We couldn’t have done it without you. We are looking forward to seeing many of you in person at Eroticon, telling more of you about Hot Octopuss’s mission and products, and hopefully learning from you how we can best work with you in the future. Plus, the smut. We are looking forward to the smut.”

Find out more about Hot Octopuss at www.hotoctopuss.com.

To find out how your company can be at Eroticon to talk to the best sex bloggers in the UK and reach to thousands of readers and reviewers email info@writesexright.com

As I wrote more and built a network of friends on social media, readers and eventually, found a publisher the pen-name grew in some ways to be a mini-brand name for all these different people to relate to. I am deliberately using the language of commerce to reflect that what began as a private decision evolved into a considered commercial decision.

At first I also used a pen-name as a way to protect my other professional identity as much as to have an outlet that need not be censored by the world’s view of women and their sexuality – if you set up a social media account that stands squarely in the world of sex then one has to trust that readers are smart enough to know what they are getting.

Over the years I’ve knocked down the distinction between the erotica pen-name and the rest of my online identity, I decided early on that I would not attempt to be anonymous, partly due to laziness and partly because I feel strongly that in talking openly, if not necessarily explicitly, about sex then I’m gently pushing the boundaries of how sex and sexuality is talked and thought about.

I believe that trust is an important currency in the commerce of reading; especially in a world where the social media marketing allows writer and reader to engage directly. Especially when writing about sex – where there are so many doubts, fears and judgements passed on writers and readers.

Have I lied to you by using a pen-name? No. I’ve chosen an alternative dressing for my identity.

Would I lie to you? My fiction is just that – fiction. My social media persona is me. I might not tell you all my truths and I might add some gloss or spin, tweak an experience to expose the kernel of truth I want you to see. But mostly it is me.

The important thing is that you know that my writing is fiction, we understand each other. I write stories and you read them.

What if I pretended to be someone else?

What if I created a false persona – someone that had a different life to mine, a life that I fleshed out with experiences that I offered up as truths in my back story, truths that you identified with, truths that you trusted? Or more to the point lies that you identified with, lies that you trusted.

Why would I do this – perhaps because I thought that this is the way to sell books. To create a persona that I think you want.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter – perhaps when I talk about sex and writing and the challenges I face, does it matter if these too are fiction?

I think it does. For me there is a huge difference between taking a pen-name to protect an identity or to be taken seriously by a publishing house or readership and creating and perpetuating a false identity to deliberately hoodwink your readers. But where does the balance tip?

For me it tips when someone actively pursues that false identity without acknowledging that they are playing a character – the transaction between the reader and writer is broken, with only the writer knowing that they are involved in a fiction.

In erotica and romance, genres where women have, traditionally, occupied most space it is especially affronting that men are being advised to take on women’s names and identities to sell their books. I’ve spoken to gentlemen who have been advised that they won’t get published unless they do this. Aside from this being utter bollocks and condescending to the writer and the reader, I also find it dismaying that the space where women have led is being co-opted by men. When for centuries women have had to submerse their identities to get published or taken seriously to have our identities and voice appropriated by men is for me, not okay.

Even more so when the men decide to create identities based on the tired sexist tropes, and choose images that play to a narrow heterosexual, stereotype of sexual attraction – youth, slim, childless, wild unending appetites that are met with no problems and no consequences. Please.  Even when I was young, slim and childless my sexual adventures were not glamorous, unproblematic and without consequences. They were sticky, funny, messy, awkward and sometimes sad, stupid and misguided. People and feelings got hurt. None of us arrived in our twenties with a fully formed sexual lexicon. In choosing a persona that plays to an out-dated formula they are narrowing the available space for the voices working to show diversity in their writing. Where we strive for diversity to strengthen the truths our fictions reveal and the safe places they create for our readers; spaces where they find people like themselves reflected back, others trample that with model good looks skimmed from a quick Google image search.

What’s the worst that could happen if you present an authentic persona to your readers? I know a gentleman that after several conversations with different writers at Eroticon 2014 changed their writer persona to match who they really were. Not only do they now have an authentic voice they also have the trust and respect of their peers.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter as much to others as it does to me?  Perhaps all that matters is that someone writes a book and someone buys it and the name on the jacket means nothing at all? Perhaps, but when the fiction moves from inside the page to asking your readers to relate to a made-up person, when they trust you with their confidences, I think it does matter.

If I talk with someone I trust that they are who they say they are, and that even if the name is a fiction that the experience of life that they show me is authentic; because sometimes all we have for truth is words – just as these are all we have for our fictions.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts – do you care that a writer creates a totally fictitious person to sell their books?

Ageplay:  Seems like anything ageplay sells fast, but particularly if you mix it with another one of the hot themes like Victorian, Western, and Medical BDSM)

Medical BDSM:  We saw a huge rash of medical BDSM books come out and take the Amazon rankings by storm.

Victorian BDSM:  According to RWA, this is the favorite historical period for romance novels right now.

Western BDSM:  Second favorite

Breeding stories:  Hot.

Lactation:  Human cows are quite popular right now

Billionaires:  Still hot. I think it’s funny that money is a fetish, but it makes sense with the whole powerful alpha male thing.  Of course we know shopping/spending money is a form of foreplay for some.

Amish Romance:  I love that this is a hot trend.  It must be similar to the Victorian era erotic stories, where the juxtaposition of naughty against the backdrop of very rigid social mores turns us on.

MMf:  Don’t try Mff– at least not in my genre– the readers only are interested in two doms and a woman. 

Shame Sells

I still think the appeal of many of these hot trends resides in shame. The things that are more taboo, that people are more in the closet about, are the things they’re buying to secretly read on their Kindles. BDSM is most socially acceptable, so it doesn’t sell as well as domestic discipline. Ageplay is an extremely misunderstood subset of BDSM and has a huge following (my ageplay blog posts get thousands of hits).

Should we chase the trends?

I believe authors should write what’s in their hearts and fantasies. I don’t think anyone should shove down an idea because it isn’t popular right now (a vampire story, for example). That said, we all want people to read our books, so if you can throw in one of these trendy elements to sweeten the deal, why not do it?

Try one out as an experiment–use a different pen name if you don’t want to be associated with  Step Aliens who breed Victorian Littles and use them as Hucows. Don’t pour your heart and soul into them if you’re not feeling it, but be playful– you might find the payoff in both book sales and an improved Amazon algorithm ranking as an author (if we are to believe such a thing exists).

What trends have you seen?  Have you written in any of the genres I mentioned?  What were your results?  Please share so we can all learn!

Goodreads to me is one of those necessary evils. You certainly can’t ignore it, however, most authors I know try to minimize their contact there.  Why?  Well…unfortunately the culture there can be rather negative.

Let me just start by saying that I do understand it. Before I started writing books myself, I joined Goodreads and rated the books I’d read.  My thinking was rating them on a grand scale, where a five was a work of literary genius, maybe like Pride and Prejudice, a four was “I loved it, but it’s not genius”, a three was a great read, a two was “I enjoyed it, but it was pretty silly because you know, it was about vampires and they’re not real”, and a one was “I didn’t like it.”

And then, because I considered my job there to be reviewing, that meant criticizing anything that was less than genius.  In other words, tearing it apart.

I’m embarrassed to say that even my first few reviews in my genre when I started writing were like that. I was rather critical. And then I started to realize you don’t give two or three stars to authors whose books you keep buying.  If you like their books well enough to buy every one of them, they’re a five.

What I’ve noticed is that often the star ratings don’t match the energy of the review.  I once had a fan write and tell me she loved my book so much she keeps it by her bedside table and re-reads it every night, but that same fan only rated it a four when she reviewed it.  I guess that’s because I’m not Tolstoy.

What I’m getting to, in a roundabout way, is that reviewers have their own special criteria for how they rate books. They may be judging you on how this book compares to your other books, they may be comparing you to the entire literary canon, or they may be basing it on other books in your genre (the most fair, in my opinion).

So when you get on Goodreads, don’t read your reviews and weep. In fact, I don’t really advise reading your reviews at all. Concentrate on the things you can control, like promotion and the quality of your writing.

With all that said, I’m supposed to be here advising you on how to use Goodreads.  I’ll pretend you know nothing about it and go with the basics for new authors:

1).  Set up an author page:

• Create a Goodreads account under your Author name.
• Using the search bar in Goodreads’ header, search for your author name. Click the author name, not the book title. If you are not listed, add your book to your current Goodreads page via ISBN, thus triggering the automatic import to work, and then search for your name again after a few minutes.
• Claim your author page by clicking the link that reads: ‘Is this you? Let us know.’

• This redirects you to an email form. Type up your author-page request and click submit. In a few days you will receive an email that confirms your upgrade.

IMPORTANT:  This should go without saying, but I was overly critical at first and a friend of mine just posted about this.  If you are an author and have an author account, it does not behoove you to leave negative reviews of other author’s books using that account. You’re just asking for bad karma.

2)  If your books are not already in Goodreads (search first), you can add them by hitting “Manually add a book”.  Enter the ISBN or Amazon number and upload your cover pic and you’re good to go.  You can also add a book in advance of your book release this way and get people to add it to their TBR list.

3).  Mark your own books as read (but don’t add any star ratings or reviews!) and then add categories for your book (e.g., paranormal MM, BBW, domestic discipline, Net Galley Read, cheap smut– whatever you want listed for your book)

4) Add them to any Listopia lists. For my friends in my genre, I just set up the “Best Domestic Discipline Books of 2015.”  Please add yours and any favorites you have so far.

If there isn’t a good Listopia list for you book, create one (e.g., Best Lesbian BDSM of 2015).  Obviously add some other books to that list, so it doesn’t just include your book, and invite others to add to it.

From the Listopia home page click ‘Create a List’:

A form will pop up. Fill it out and click save.

• Title: The title of the new list.
• Description: This is where you tell users what kinds of books to nominate and vote for.
• Tag with a list of keywords that describe the list.

5) Join groups related to your genre and add your books to their libraries.  I always add mine and make an announcement in the BDSM group and the Spank that Romance! group.  Be sure to read the “instructions to authors” because each group has its own etiquette and they will slap you down in a New York second if you break a rule.

To join a group click the Join Group button:

If there isn’t a group for your genre, create one:

• Go to the Goodreads Group Portal.
• Click the ‘Create a Group’ link that’s located to the right of the group search bar and fill out the form to create your group.

6)  Advertising on Goodreads.I don’t recommend it. It’s expensive and I haven’t heard of anyone who got any traction from an ad.  Probably a better option, although still with questionable results is to offer a free book giveaway. To do so, you MUST have a print book that can be mailed to the winner.  It will get you a lot of adds of your book to people’s TBR lists, but again, I’m not actually sure it sells books.7).  Does your effort on Goodreads sell books?Honestly, it falls way below a blog, newsletter and Facebook presence as far as promotion goes. But it is a place to interact with readers, announce new releases or special sales and discuss books in your favorite genre, so I would say yes, it’s worth having some presence there. You can meet beta readers or connect with other authors in the discussion groups.One more reiteration about ratingsDon’t worry about them. Not every book is for every person. Some books appeal more to a broad audience and some have a smaller group of people who love them, and it doesn’t mean the book that has broader appeal is any better than the other. Also, you’ll write more books. You’ll write better books. And you will never, ever please everyone. If you love your book, if it turned you on, that means at least one other person out there will be turned on by what you wrote, and that, my friend is the magic of making art.