The interview was conducted by the fabulously witty Thomas S. Roche. Here is his intro:
I first encountered Amelia G through Blue Blood, the magazine she and Forrest Black published starting in 1992 -- in other words, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In those days, the idea of combining horror, goth, sci-fi, comix, firearms, gaming, pornography and fetishism was just about unheard of. In fact, there were only a few dozen of us doing it.
Back then, I had like two professional publications plus a couple dozen pseudonymous porno novels and a substantial wad of published gay leather porn. The latter two categories I rarely bothered to tell anyone about, mostly because I kept writing porno books and stories and then forgetting about them as soon as I'd cashed the checks. I was far from being a high-profile writer. But the fact that I was so quickly welcomed into the fold -- despite my dorky eyeglasses and the fact that disks by Billy Joel sat between Jarboe and Joy Division on my CD shelf -- was testament to the fact that the goth/fetish/porn/BDSM/sci-fi/horror crossover community, in those days, was a very, very small world.
To be sure, sci-fi/horror and sex had enjoyed a long, lush flirtation, as had goth and horror -- the phenomena would explode over the next ten years precisely because fetish, fashion and fantasy are so undeniably right for each other. The BDSM community -- in San Francisco, at least -- was already overrun with comic-book-obsessed freaks of all genders whose pasts included frenzied adolescent wanks spurred on by everything from John Norman's Gor novels to Ziggy Stardust to Boris Vallejo to the Borg Queen to Frank-N-Furter to Darth Vader's erect syringe to Japanese anime to Philip Jose Farmer's Flesh. But at the time, the explicit connection of perversion, counterculture and science fiction/fantasy/horror drew puzzled looks from some fans -- and quivering streams of drool from others.
Blue Blood, along with Cecilia Tan's Circlet Press, Lisa Palac's Future Sex and Nancy Kilpatrick's The Darker Passions, among others, paved the way. Following close behind in a hurricane of mouth-breathing fanaticism were about ten bazillion pervy nerd boys and saucy geeksluts secreted after hours behind the gates of Ren Faires everywhere and locked in basements trying to rewire their N64s to shock their nutsacks. May the dark gods of science fiction fandom and eternal safe, sane and consensual torment just, oh, shower love upon you all. It makes me misty.
Anyway, screw the visit to the old folks' home. Let's talk monsterfucking.
Nowadays, horror porno is de rigeur, baby, de freakin' rigeur, but Amelia and Forrest are still crankin' out high-class commercial erotica with a countercultural edge and the flavor of damnation. In addition to Blue Blood, their sites include Gothic Sluts, Barely Evil, Rubber Dollies, and Scar 13, among others.
I caught up with Amelia for a late-night chat on horror and hoochies, porn and perversion.
You are going to have to visit Eros Zine to read Thomas's hysterically funny questions and my answers to 'em. Go there now.
PS The free photo gallery shot by me and Forrest Black which is featured with the interview is exclusive to Eros Zine for this fine holiday season, 2005. You gotta go there to view it.
