Last night, we attended the IPPY Awards ceremony in NYC to receive our silver medals for all-around awesomeness in an independently-published sex & relationship book.150 SHADES OF PLAY: A Beginner’s Guide to Kink is now an award-winner!

While sipping our complimentary cocktails (yay, open bar!), nibbling the mediocre passed apps (free food, eh), listening to all the award announcements (there were over 100 categories!), and waiting for our 10-second turn in the spotlight, we made friends with the gold medalists in the Humor category. Husband-and-wife team Dr. Ted Eisenberg & Joyce K. Eisenberg penned The Scoop on Breasts: A Plastic Surgeon Busts the Myths. As the world-record
holder for most breast augmentations, Ted supplied the info; Joyce supplied the jokes (guess you have to have a sense of humor when you’re married to a man who’s up to his elbows in boobs all day). We’re no big fans of fake tatas, but we must say The Scoop is really nicely designed. And they win for best award photo of the night: each of them held the cleavage-festooned cover up to their chests.

When the winners in the Poetry category were announced, they were each asked to read a poem from their collections. Admittedly, we braced ourselves for major cringing. But Marty McConnell, silver medalist for Wine for a Shotgun, made us poetry converts. After asking the crowd “We’re all adults here, right?” she recited the last poem in her collection — an ode to the body and all the kinky things you can do with it — with the perfect blend of performance and restraint. Stay tuned for an excerpt of it on our site soon!

We forgot to bring a copy of our own book to hold up for our award picture, so we accosted the winners of the Outstanding E-Book Achievement Award who hadtheir book (which is actually an app) on an iPad. Peering over their shoulders before pouncing, we got a good look at Psychometry, a super cool interactive digital collection of photographs by Carol Golemboski. She and her designer kindly let us pull up a picture of our book cover and borrow the iPad for our photo.

All evening we were looking for the telltale ponytail of the co-author of Great Sex Made Simple, the Tantra book that edged us out for the gold in Sex & Relationships (damn you, Tantra!). But we didn’t meet Mark A. Michaels and his partner Patricia Johnson until our category was announced — which of course was the 69th category of the night. Talk about a long-time coming! (Bud dum ching! Speaking of which, we would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t also mention the gold medalist in the Erotica category, The Harder She Comes by D.L. King)

After our award photos were taken (which, in usual fashion, we tried to ham up as much as possible), the gold medal winners Mark & Patricia generously gave us a copy of their book Great Sex (which we’ll also excerpt on this site soon). You can tell from this gesture (and the photos in their book), they’re very giving in all areas of life.

So stayed tuned for the fruits of our networking. And don’t forget to get your copy of our AWARD-WINNING BOOK!