MY BLOG ABOUT THE BWC CONFERENCE IN EVERETT, WA. MAR/APR 2016:
In August 2015 I attended the BWC conference in New York, and was lucky enough to win a registration fee for one of the two conferences to be held in 2016. As I had already been to a New York conference, I chose to attend the new west coast conference in Everett, Washington, to be held in March/April 2016. This is my humble journal offering describing my experience. This is also my first ever blog, and I am not very experienced in writing publicly for others yet, and am a bit worried that my efforts here are not all that good!, so if you are reading it, A) Thank you and B) I hope you enjoy it.
Weds:
I left for the bus station to get my coach to Heathrow, at 5am. My flight took off on time at 11am, and was half empty, so with no one beside me, it was bliss. I settled down to read my book. It was “The Constitution of The United States”. I had to read so much of it over and over due to the flowery language! I had very nearly finished it by the time the 10hrs 15mins was up! I saw white pyramid shapes sticking up through the clouds, realising they were snow-capped mountain peaks. We started going down rapidly, and I saw the land below. It was the Cascades and I was getting closer and closer to Seattle. After a very smooth landing, at 1:20 pm local time, I realised that the last seven hours in the air, were about to be re-lived all over again on the ground! It was like my own personal groundhog day. 😀
I eventually reached the hotel about 3 or 3:30pm, and after checking in and explaining about Rhiannon, who was to be my roommate, arriving late that night and would she be able to get a key from the desk, I made my way to the room and unpacked, and after searching, found a socket behind my bed to plug in my laptop and phone. I sent Rhiannon a message, and she replied she’d be there some time after midnight. I didn’t want to fall asleep just yet, so I went for a coffee down in the lobby, then decided to check out the conference rooms. I managed to track down the suite where the author and buddy meeting was, and Dr Charley opened the door and gave me a big hug, which was nice of her. The meeting was almost over by then, and afterwards, we arranged to meet in the lobby about half an hour later for the minibus ride to the mix and mingle at the Bluewater Distillery. The owner had concocted a drink just for us called ‘Spank Me’, LOL. It was really delicious. 🙂 Quite a number of participants came, some were local, Master Brian and slave Mel met us there. There was food that could be ordered from the other bar and restaurant next door and I had locally made artisan bread and butter with a dip. Tiffany Reisz was there too. She is so lovely. The other highlight of the night, was the amazing sunset. It was stunning! Even Master Brian, who was standing in the doorway, said it was very unusual to be so spectacular, even there. In the space of about half an hour, the sky went through every hue from yellow to orange and then a deep red, until it was dark outside. (See pics above) I took quite a few photos as did some other people. The evening included a talk from the owner of the brewery about the process that goes into producing their wonderful vodkas. Finally the minibus returned to take us back to the hotel, and then I called it a night. I was woken by Rhiannon arriving about 2:30, and I managed to say hello, and tried to stay awake, but I don’t think she got much more out of me that night, lol.
Thurs:
I woke bright and early at about 8ish. Then after washing and dressing, Rhiannon woke up, and I said I was going to go and get some breakfast, and then it was registration until the opening ceremony at 11. All the registered participants received a lovely red bag full of goodies from various authors, including a huge tome called Master of O by Ernest Greene. One of the conference rooms had the vendors of all manner of delightful goodies in the form of corsets, and other clothing, and a large selection of toys! I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a lovely violet wand, and some other goodies. At the opening ceremony, Dr Charley welcomed us all to Everett, and hoped we would all have a great time, and we had a run through of what to expect over the weekend, then introduced us to some of the speakers and workshop leaders. Following the opening ceremony, it was lunch, and those that had wanted to, and filled out a menu form, had lunch up in a suite on the 7th floor, I went to that. After lunch there were six workshops and I selected three of those: Smashwords, about the do’s and don’ts of self publishing, marketing, and just about everything we needed to know about getting our books ‘out there’; Tiffany Reisz, who was the keynote speaker for the conference, and who gave a wonderfully humerous speech about how she got started and the trials and tribulations she faced along the way. As one of the two people who had travelled the furthest to attend the conference, I got a signed poster! J My final talk was BDSM and the Law, with Judy Guerin and Richard Cunningham from NCSF. A very useful workshop not only for writers, but also for all participants of the BDSM lifestyle. After the talks were over, we walked to the mix and mingle at Terracotta Red, a couple of blocks up the street. We met upstairs at first where there was some free nibbles laid on, and wine and beer, which you had to pay for. Afterwards, about 15 of us went downstairs to the restaurant for a meal. I had sweet and sour Pork, which is one of my favourite Chinese dishes. It was a lovely end to a great first day.
Fri:
My first chosen talk, which I really wanted to hear, was called, The Good, The Bad, and The Poly! After that was Rhiannon Ayer’s talk about Female Doms and male subs in relationships, and how to write about them authentically. Then it was a break for lunch. In the afternoon I attended Master Brian and slave Mel’s talk, Dealing With Conflicts in a PE Relationship. Then Dr Charley’s talk, Hypno-Write, which was excellent, and I think all of us there derived great benefit from it, and went away with our heads full of ideas and in some cases solutions to writing problems we might have had, etc. The last talk I attended was, Creating Scenes and Role Playing, with Judy and Richard again, from NCSF. The evening ended with another mix and mingle in the suite upstairs again, and it was very good as we had a discussion about consent.
Sat:
I only had one talk earmarked for the morning sessions, which was the submissive panel. The two following talks were either Shibari, or Impact Play, both of which I already have a fair amount of knowledge of due to my own experiences as a bottom and rope bunny. In the afternoon, my workshop was Jay – Traveling Fool – with his huge collection of violet wand implements. Hilarious as always, – I remembered him from the NY BWC conference last August as well. 🙂 – we were invited to gather round for his demonstration on a willing volunteer, and also to interact and experience the sensations from remote play with multiple participants! After that at 5 o’clock, the last raffle was held, and having not won anything the previous two days, what should happen but the first TWO tickets out were both mine! The first prize was a voucher worth $150 for an Author Advertising Bundle, with BTS Book Reviews! I laughed and said, “Well if that isn’t the best incentive for me to get up off my ass and finish my book, I don’t know what is”! The next one was a purple beginners’ playset! Furry handcuffs, a blindfold, two chrome ben wa balls and a feathered stick! LOL. 😉 After the raffle, it was free time until the dungeon party. 🙂
I chose not to participate in play during the evening as I didn’t have permission from my Dom to do so, but I was really quite happy to just observe. I did volunteer to play ‘victim’ for Dr Charley to demonstrate the ‘Bishop’s Chair’ (?). It was fun. She wanted to show how you can interact with a sub in such a vulnerable position, by touch, and that you don’t necessarily need to use floggers or whips or any other implement, just your voice, and your hands, and your mind, even better if the sub’s mind does half the job for you! 😉 All the equipment was loaned, brought and set up for free by the local BDSM community, and some of them even came to play too. Some of the conference participants even tried rope and being suspended! It was amazing. One lady who had never played at all before, got to experience rope and suspension, and was a real trooper, especially as she was happy to remove her corset to do so. Earlier, Tiffany Reisz also had her first suspension and said it was yet another item to tick off her bucket list. The party ended at 2am and the rest of us all left for our beds.
Sun am:
The last day was also a book fair day, which followed our closing ceremony at 11 O’clock. Dr Charley thanked all our speakers for their excellent workshops, and the merchandise vendors for their presence and generous donations for the raffle prizes, and also the local crew who were busy dismantling the dungeon equipment, for so generously allowing us to use their equipment and for their help at the party. Then it was time for the book fair. I bought a tee-shirt from Tiffany Reisz’ table and also got a signed copy of The Mistress, to take home. It was for my Wednesday flight, but I couldn’t resist getting into it later that day! I also purchased a quantity of Dr Charley’s book, Naughty Games and Activities, a fun book full of assorted puzzles and colouring pictures. These were to bring back to the UK to sell to kinksters over here.
The book fair wrapped up around 2pm, and myself and Mlyn Peters who also wasn’t flying home until Weds. Had arranged to spend a few days together sightseeing in Seattle. So we bid farewell to Everett, and in about an hour it was Hello Seattle…..
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