In May, I finally had the opportunity to attend Book Expo America, the publishing industry’s premier trade event. To say was Booklover’s Heaven is an understatement. It filled the huge Javitts Convention Center. And heaven isn’t for the idle. BEA was three days of constant walking, scouting out books and publishers, and schmoozing with industry people whose interests were similar to my own. People travel from all over the world to attend Book Expo America, and the event attracts not only writers and industry vendors but librarians and educators too. I never saw such an amazing array of people whose livelihoods revolved around books. As busy as BEA was, it has its benefits, the best of which is FREE BOOKS!

The TBR pile — books from BEA.

Which brings me to the photo you see here. It shows the books I accumulated at BEA that are related to erotic publishing. Some are hot erotic romances, some are GLBT memoir, fiction and nonfiction, and a couple of them are how to’s. They represent about a third of the books I brought home for BEA, but they constitute what’s going to be an entertaining summer-long project for me here at Pursed Lips. I’m going to blog about these books either individually or collectively by publisher as a way of illustrating just how vibrant the erotic word is today. I wasn’t surprised to see this much libris eroticis at BEA, but I was surprised by how open and enthusiastic people were about my particular authorial calling.

In fact, when I handed out my business card almost everyone wanted the card that featured Pursed Lips naughty illustration on it! And everyone was quite interested in meeting a blogger who focused on erotic literature.

So keep an eye out for upcoming entries about my discoveries. They won’t be the only thing I’ll blog about this summer but they will represent a fun summertime project.

First up? Gloria Vanderbilt’s much-anticipated novella, Obsession.