1. What was your experience in writing this book. For instance, how long did it take? Where did the original idea come from? What research did you do? Was there anyone who was particularly helpful in researching/writing the book?
I was a University student in Baltimore, Maryland on a full track scholarship at age 18. I found that while I was away from home I formed extremely tight bonds with the most unlikely people. My American University experience was extraordinarily educational but not in the way you may assume – what I learned from others easily trumped whatever was fed to me in my classes. There are many in Baltimore who made a strong impact on my education but there are three individuals who particularly stand out: a young girl living with HIV that I met through a local mall modeling competition, a homosexual girl who was my age as well as one of my dorm mates and finally a serious boyfriend who took far more interest in respecting my sexuality than I was accustomed to.
I had a wonderful experience in Maryland but I chose not to stay on scholarship since my love for track had dissipated. So, at 19 I came back to my home city, Toronto. I felt like a brand new person and what changed the most was my view on sexuality. At age 16, for several frivolous reasons (friends, media, pressure, stupidity) I became pretty promiscuous. I took this mentality with me to Baltimore but it certainly did not make it on my return flight. My self-sexual education had begun but it was far from over. I began to read books, search on-line and talk to others but I could not find the raw candor I had become accustomed to in Baltimore. To boot my youngest cousin, whom I was extremely close to, was 16 and way too much like me. I did not want her to make the sexual same mistakes based on ignorance or misconceptions.
In what seemed like an overnight whim, I launched a website called Save Your Cherry (www.saveyourcherry.com), a small, poorly designed site that shared my own experiences and encouraged others to write in and tell theirs. I went on Much Music, a National TV show as a contestant for a show wearing an airbrushed marina with the site name and a huge cherry on the front. After that I couldn’t turn back and the e-mails began to poor in. My sex site, which graphically described how I lost my virginity to a near stranger, initially broke my mother’s heart, but it went on to help hundreds of thousands of curious and perhaps a little fed-up young people like myself. Based on the site’s success, I decided to try and turn the collection into a book. I obsessively recruited writers using youth networking services like Myspace, Facebook and Urbis. There is no way to calculate just how many hours I spent telling others about a book that needed their voice.
Everything I have done since opening the site has affirmed my belief in the importance of this kind of sexual education. When I was 22 I got a job at my local TV station hosting a show called High School Rush. I went around to different schools highlighting different aspects of high school life. Not a week goes by that I don’t witness something that makes me think, if only I could pull him/ her aside to really talk honestly about sex. Luckily I won’t have to feel that way much longer because Seal Press has given Laid a megaphone so the truth can speak for itself.
2. Please tell us who you think the readers for your book are. Who do you most want to reach?
Laid is for young people ages 14-22. Youth are being exposed to explicit content younger and younger so they are forced to make decisions on their sexuality earlier than adults would like. The days of beginning uncensored sexual education at 18-years of age are over. 14-18 year olds who are still trying to understand their own sexuality and how it relates to others, need to read this book. The book targets the CosmoGIRL! (8 million readers) and the younger Cosmopolitan (2 million readers) market. Teens who read the wildly successful bestseller, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love and Friendship and teens who read Cecily Von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl series (which CBS Paramount picked up as a TV series) will also read Laid. Readers 14-22 will find the book to be an eye-opening blend of the frankness found in Cosmo-like magazines such as Seventeen, the page-turning gossip found in Gossip Girl with the emotional candidness found in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books. With media and fiction novels targeting even younger audiences with racy and sexually explicit content the non-fiction world is practically screaming for a book like Laid that not only entertains young people but actually dares to trust them with the truth about sex as well.
The book is truly an inclusive North American young-adult effort in many ways. Ensuring that almost every major group was represented in the anthology was a key consideration in choosing submissions. The writers are: male, female, in their teens, in their twenties, straight, bisexual, gay, black, Caucasian, Asian, East Indian, Latino, coming from low-income families, middle class and upper class.
Because of the openness and thorough nature of the book, there are several other groups who may benefit from reading the book: notably, parents, guardians and teachers. For adults who work with teens the book is a sensational link between understanding and guiding the youth.
While not the core market, the book could also be of interest to women 22-28 who are looking for validation from their own sexual pasts. Even though the book is written about teenage and early-adult sexual experiences it is narrated by male and female writers as old as 25, thus they should be considered as a secondary market. The maturity and insight of the writers will attract seasoned minds who may be looking for insight into their pasts and advice on what is the best way to move on from it.
Information is in overwhelming abundance these days and few know how to access it better than the up and coming generation. The problem with that is that the information is coming so fast at adolescences that it is impossible for guardians and parents to protect their young from circulating lies and embellishments. Laid empowers youth to weed out the fictitious rumors and hype about sex on his/ her own. It takes the same scenarios that they read about in Maxim and Cosmo, the same circumstances that they watch on The Hills and The Real World but delivers a thorough, comprehensive and un-glamorized rendition of it.
3. In at least three, separate, brief sentences, please give the major points to stress about the content of your book and, if appropriate, its news-worthiest elements:
Laid is a non-fiction anthology that takes a peer mediation approach to sex education by voicing the monumental sexual experiences of youth ages 18-25 across North America.
Laid’s authors share stories on positive experiences, teenage pregnancy, abortion, STI contraction, hookups, date rape, sexual abuse, abstinence and living with HIV.
Laid is not your typical sexual education book; it’s raw, honest, steamy, scary, inspiring and eye opening stories written by youth about sex.
The editor of Laid, Shannon Boodram, is a 23-year-old who currently hosts a high school show in Toronto called High School Rush and she also works in the communication department of a College. She has spent the last five years of her life working on this book and talking to the demograph that she’s written it for, she could not be more convinced that Laid is the most effective sexual education book out there.
