I don't think I've had a week this hectic ever before. There's so much that's happened that I'd be at 'War and Peace' length if I was to discuss it all in detail. So, as a brief summary:
Sunday: Spent the day writing and the afternoon standing in my overgrown back garden wearing a frilly white skirt and having shots taken of my muff to illustrate a piece about pubes in the first issue of Scarlet. I'd had to grow them to maximum length for the photoshoot. Strangely, this wasn't quite how I'd imagined I'd be spending my time, when I grew up wanting to have my own women's mag.
Monday: Spent the day at the Xplicit Porn Masterclass making a porn film with Nahid. Our plans to go all female-friendly and safer sex conscious were somewhat kiboshed when it turned out that all the journos from various mags were making one film together, rather than doing separate films. So, we had male TNT pair of journos who wanted a French Maid and policewoman (both female and in suitably pervy outfits, obviously) having 'hot lesbo action'. There was a woman from the Sunday Times who wanted some domination of women in there. We wanted to go with the women being empowered and clearly enjoying what they were doing, and show that the people involved were using a condom. And Loaded wanted a spaceman in it...
Combining that lot obviously resulted in a stunning film that in no way tied into any porn stereotypes - for a full report on it and visuals from the shoot, see the first issue of Scarlet when it comes out in October.
Tuesday: Got a call through from Channel Five asking me if I wanted to be the sexpert on the new Joan Rivers show they're making. I won't be appearing on the show, just writing answers to all of the problems for Joan (if I can be so bold as to call her that) to then add her own inimitable style to. The deadline was 11am the following morning (call came through at about 3pm) Obviously, I had to say yes, despite having a Scarlet editorial meeting to attend before I could get started, and having a million emails to deal with because of Wednesday's planned event.
Wednesday: Was utterly immersed in organising Cliterati's birthday party, dealing with a million requests for guestlist (particularly bad as my email was sulking so half the people I'd invited didn't receive the emails, and loads of RSVPs didn't come through) and doing everything from printing out drinks vouchers to finding a white sheet for us to project erotic images on to. After running round like a mad thing, it all kicked off at 7pm - and God, was it fun (though I hardly had a chance to sit down all night).
Over 200 people came, and much carnage was had. I decided to go for the subtle approach and wore this. (Pictures by the incredible Sauce Goddess.) I felt fab in it, once I'd passed the 'Fuck, is it dark enough in here to hide my cellulite?' stage but God did my arse hurt the next day, from a combination of sitting on the beads and having my arse pinched by random strangers.
I could tell Cliterati is moving up in the world because we actually had celebs at the party - or at least people from Big Brother. Hey, it's a start. They left with bags packed full of sex toys, which is always good for a bit of tabloid interest. Mantric and Trojan were the main sponsors of the party, so there were condoms and toys galore in the bags (the Bedside Bullet proving a particularly good hangover cure the next day. No, really, orgasm is a good cure for headaches.) along with about £100 worth of other random freebies, so it was a bit of a vulture-fest when we started giving them out.
Managed to make a total tit of myself by falling off my stupidly high heels (when will I learn that I can't walk in them?) when dancing with the utterly lovely Paul Zenon (he was a true gent and helped me up, discreetly refraining to mention that maybe I'd had enough to drink...)
Thursday: Recovering from deadly hangover after the party. Got another call from the Joan Rivers show and eight more questions to answer, which was fun in my hungover state. Then landed a commission for Glamour magazine - dead exciting as it's my first from them and it's always cool getting new mags to write for. It was another short deadline though, so I couldn't just laze in bed.
Friday: Got a commission from Men's Health for their Christmas issue. Then had a call about the new Lovers' Guide video script I'm writing. They've done a load of research so I needed to meet up with them to discuss the results and how they would feed into the script. Ended up in the pub discussing it all, and things got rather messy (no, not like that.) I found out that one of the barmen in my local has been in porn films before, so got his card for casting. Just goes to show that the industry is getting everywhere.
Saturday:The weekend - so obviously, I was writing all day. Found some interesting comments about Scarlet on various blogs and ended up replying to them - and possibly recruiting a really talented photographer/writer as a result. Wrote the Glamour piece, and finally managed to finish writing book number two (at 6.20am).
Sunday: Day of rest? Yeah, right. Went through a load of images with Nahid, deciding what we want in the first issue of the mag to illustrate the porn movie cover feature. Then again, there's only so much that you can feel like you're working when you're looking at pics of naked men.
Now, my weekend can start. I've bought magazines and am going to run a bath and collapse. But it's been a fun week.
Today has been quite possibly one of the nicest days of the year so far. To start with, I woke up to the postman delivering a big box of free bath products; always a good start to the day (except that I'm so inept at mornings that opening a parcel which has been taped up with what - always - seems to be the world's sellotape mountain is way beyond my normal functions and I usually have to go back to sleep in disgust at my own ineptitude for at least an hour before I can once again approach the 'horribly complicated to open' parcel. And only then after a stiff coffee.)
I then got a text from Mil - a simple challenge. 'Want to race me to finish your book?' Now this is not entirely fair. He had 1,000 words left to write of his (bound to be fabulous and coming out next October) book. I had 12,000 words of my (not going to be anywhere near as good as his but it's about seduction so hopefully people will buy it for the smut and sex advice) book to write. Now he *is* a careful and considered writer who will agonise over every word that he writes, whereas I'm a 'Press the 'on' switch and start writing' kind of bird. He's also the world's most secretive man when it comes to his books, so despite the fact that I'm a massive fan of his books and despite the fact that he's a top mate of mine, he point blank refuses to show me the book until it's practically hit the shelves.
So I replied 'OK. If I beat you, do I get to see your book?'
He clearly knew that he was on to a winner as he texted back 'Yes'. Cue a day of the most intensive writing I've done in a while. I didn't manage to beat him to it. But I did manage to write nearly 7,000 words in a day, which I'm pretty happy with as it means I've only got just over 4,000 words to write by the end of the month.
Though I do think that he had an unfair advantage, because also spent about three hours on the phone sorting out stuff for Scarlet magazine, and at least two more writing and emailing people on the team.
(I'm particularly relieved that I've got the bulk of it written because I'm now at - wait for the fanfare - number 164,459 in the Amazon chart, through pre-orders (thanks so much if you're one of the people who's pre-ordered). Obviously, being so high up the charts has gone straight to my head, and when the book reviews section of magazines runs to 450 pages, then I'll be there on page 450, towards the bottom of the page. JK Rowling's already been on the phone begging me not to write a kids' book...)
But anyway, writing shed-loads of words is nice thing number one that happened. Nice thing number two is something that just had to happen at some stage.
I'm making a porn film.
Now before you leap to any assumptions, that doesn't mean I'm performing in it (some things are best reserved for the under thirties). I'm writing and directing one. Well, kind of...
The fab people at Xplicit TV are starting a Porn Masterclass, in which people pay £1,500 per couple (or about £75 each for hen parties/stag nights if there's a large group) to learn how to make an adult film; it starts with a champagne reception (as all porn shoots obviously do) and a brief history of porn, and then goes into a day of learning how to make and edit a porn vid, culminating in an afternoon of actually making a film (that gets screened on Xplicit). As it's a new launch, they're having a press day, so on Monday, I'm going along with the Scarlet photographer to take part and do a feature about it. I'm already trying to figure out exactly what kind of thing I'm going to make (other than 'female-friendly' of course) and am really looking forward to it. Obviously, I'll report back on the results here.
I then got a mail that made me utterly bouncy in a way I haven't bounced in a while. My editor for the first book (the one about casual sex) came back to me and said that they love it and don't need any rewrites. It's being published on February 10th next year - I'll post a link as soon as it's on Amazon - and I'm really excited about it because it's the first book I've written that's my idea, rather than a publisher's.
Other than that, it's been a quiet day. I think it's time for bed.
So, I've now recovered from the evil lurgy, which turned out (after terribly dramatic temperatures/trip to casualty/chest x-rays/much whimpering) to be tonsilitis. I was pleasantly surprised and only a bit let down (in a 'God, I'm such a pathetic wuss to laid up by a childhood disease', rather than 'I wish I had something worse' kind of way)
Obviously, as soon as I recovered, the only sensible thing to do (24 hours after getting my voice back) was a day of radio interviews for Trojan condoms (paid for gig, talking about sexual health. I really like Trojan and I needed to earn some money after nearly a fortnight off work so it had to be done)
The second most sensible thing to do was spend Saturday night at Punk Rock Karaoke, bouncing around like a mad thing, bellowing along to various punk songs (in the audience - I'm far too much of a wuss to sing on stage) and drinking until about 4am with a load of mates.
On the plus side, I have been taking my vitamin pills and sleeping a fair bit so there is a degree of 'sensible recuperation' going on. And an awful lot of work.
Obviously, a fortnight off work meant an awful lot of writing to do when I got better. I've now finished the first book (currently waiting my editor's approval) and have got 12,000 words of the second book to write by the end of the month (go on, place a pre-order now. Pleeease.)
I've also got a launch date for Scarlet - the sex mag I'm editing, which New Woman magazine have got a feature about in the current issue (well, it's about porn mags for women, so it mentions Scarlet, Sweet Action, Cliterati and the Erotic Review, but it's still really cool to get press before we've launched.) The first issue of Scarlet is out on 18th October, at newsagents everywhere (hopefully!) so watch out for yet more smut and sex news. You'll also be able to order a subscription from the website soon, if you're too lazy to go down the shops.
When I haven't been writing/coming up with editorial plans/working through my backlog of work, I've been catching up on sex news. You've got to love a story that involves a nun, a priest and a sex act in a car . Though my favourite discovery of the week has to be this.
On which note, back to writing...