You know the Showtime series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” from a few years back? Well, before it was a Showtime show it was a British show. Before it was a British show, it was a series of books. Before it was a series of books, it was an award-winning blog  called “Diary of a London Call Girl.” Its author went by the name Belle de Jour and she was quite the anonymous celebrity.

Turns out Belle was an American anthropology and mathematics student who came to the UK for a doctorate in forensic science. While living in London, she worked as an escort in order to make ends meet. And an empire was built.

In addition to writing the book The Sex Myth under her own name, Brooke has since worked in genetic epidemiology and cancer research and now serves as The Telegraph Wonder Women’s sex writer in the UK. So in honor of our new book, 150 Shades of Play, she interviewed us over Skype, one sex writer to two others. Here are some quick excerpts; check out the full interview with intro here!

What was the hardest part of this to write – were there dark corners of kink that you found it difficult to handle objectively? Or was it more, you know what, we’re going to get in there and demystify.

Lo: First we did a lot of online research, and I will tell you that there are now things I’ve seen that I wish I could unsee. [laughs] And I think that was part of why we did this book, for the newcomers, the Fifty Shadesreaders. Because if you go online and do a search, you’re going to be quickly faced with very intense images. Especially if you were just enjoying the gentler scenes.

Em: It’s one thing to see an illustration of a grown man in nappies for the first time, and another to go in at the deep end with some photos or videos of what’s out there.

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Do you two feel that sex ed in schools is doing its job, that it’s keeping up with the internet and what people want and need to know?

Lo: It could be so much better. There’s so much porn online, and also so much bad information.

Em: We need to be willing to talk about everything, because if you don’t talk to someone about anal sex, they are going to Google it. You can’t have a sex ed that doesn’t talk about oral sex and masturbation because that’s what kids are asking about.

Lo: Porn does do a disservice to both boys and girls, by blurring the difference between fantasy and reality, and we need to do a better job of teaching kids that difference. Sex doesn’t have to look like it does online. We need to teach them about the stuff most porn leaves out: about communication, respect, and responsibility. And technique.

Em: Porn also suffers from being visual, like when a book becomes a film. People always like books better because they leave much more room for imagination. And that’s the difference, our generation grew up learning about sex from Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz. Sex ed hasn’t changed to reflect that people are learning about sex in a different way now.

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So you’ve done kink. What’s next?

Lo: We’re going to promote this book hard. We do want to get it out there as much as possible, but also get the information in as many hands as possible.

For the record, Lo originally said “we’re gonna spank the shit out of this book”, but we guess you can’t swear in The Telegraph.