LOS ANGELES—There’s no reason education can’t be fun and entertaining, and author Jordan Rawlins and visual artist F.C. Brandt do just that with their A-B-C book E is for Erotica.
The duo channel their inner Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss for the colorful rhyming primer, which assigns a different fetish to each letter of the alphabet. Readers are guided by a naked, long-bearded wizard name Beardo McWeirdo, who helps present information without judgment.
The pair funded the book’s publication through a successful Kickstarter.com campaign, and showcased it at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas last month.
Rawlins and Brandt answered some questions from AVN about their creation.
How difficult was it to come up with (or maybe it was harder to narrow down) the 26 fetishes?
JR: It was letter to letter. Some we had too many choices and we had to look at what was most visually interesting (and best to rhyme). Others were hard to find anything. I'm proud to say that between us we knew a lot of fetishes, though.
FC: Definitely harder to "narrow down" the words. We wanted to have a good balance of concepts, and also keep things to a "hard R" in terms of rating ... something one might catch on Skinemax in the 1980s. As an example of keeping balance in mind, we had Hentai for "H" and Tentacle Porn for "T" (the latter is already a funny specific version of the former), at first, but didn't want to make it a book just about Japanese-based fetishes (although that might make a fun sequel). Also, there's a balance between the expected and the obscure.
Is this your first collaboration together? Are there more in the works?
JR: This was our first. Hopefully there will be many more, but those will take place on a large yacht purchased with the profits of this first one.
FC: We've discussed sequels. At the very least a trilogy. But, yes, we'll need to be sitting on a yacht, first. We can't go into much detail about what they'd be about. Can't let the competition get the jump on us. :-)
What has the reception to the book been?
JR: Amazing! There's a moment when you realize you've written a poem about having sex with a dead body, and illustrated it, when you worry, but across the board, people from all walks of life have enjoyed it ... kind of like sex, I guess.
FC: We've taken it to several conventions, and there's a huge audience ... we're just trying to find them all. :-)
Where can people find the book to buy it?
FC: We send people to our own website for ease and convenience. I'd love to send folks to Amazon for it, but it shows up sixth on Amazon. It's the only exact title match, and we show up sixth!
In the near future, we'll be uploading a YouTube video with Jordan reading the poems. And there may be a Kindle version coming, too ... it's a lot of work to get it everywhere it needs to be.
What do you want readers to know about the book?
JR: That it's for them. Each and everyone of them. This book is all about inclusion, acceptance, filtered through two things we all enjoy: consensual sex and laughter.
FC: It's tough to do a funny book about enlightened meditation. This was our best effort, and we hope everyone will get something deep and meaningful out of it.
