Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alison Miller. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Alison thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I am not a risk taker. I’m not impulsive and I was raised to save, and hoard my pennies. Because of the aforementioned saving and hoarding of pennies I was able to realistically consider purchasing the fledgling, failing lingerie store where I’d been working for a year before it started to go under.

I opened my first adult store for $10,000 (paid over the course of ten months) when I was 23. For moral and financial issues, my family didn’t support me. I did find support in my boyfriend at the time who promised he could provide for us both with his anticipated, and never realized, inheritance from a tattoo mogul. I got lucky, I say, but I also worked my ass off, and my business quickly prospered and grew.

Three stores and 20 years in, I risked my career, my family and friendships by relocating from Richmond, Virginia to San Diego, California. I risked financial security for the sake of personal wellbeing, happiness, and the opportunity to rediscover my first and primary love–writing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I own three sex positive adult stores on the east coast. The adult industry has made great strides in the past twenty years and Taboo has moved along with them. The shops and myself have always been a vocal advocate for sex positivity. We believe in celebrating all healthy sexual expression. I have long taken pride in being a voice to make members of my community feel comfortable in their bodies, genders, and sexualities.

I am also, and foremost, a passionate writer. I’ve been a writer since the first grade and the most recent decades have found me focusing my creativity primarily on sex positivity. I currently manages my stores from across the country while also editing and publishing a sex positive literary magazine and keeping up with my own writing practice. I maintain a website featuring recently published works and a blog.

Recently, I’ve branched out into visual art. When the pressure to write feels too great I turn to drawing. Upon brainstorming how to best aline my passions of writing and sex positivity, I’ve also created Mindful Sex kits that combine essential oil, a crystal, and CBD enhancements.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The main lesson that I had to unlearn involves the value of success and security. While I was taught that money isn’t everything, I was also made to believe that it’s the foundation of happiness and that a truly successful person is able to afford the things they want, that wanting, itself, is respectable.

I was taught some things that I deeply appreciate, like the idea that you should never charge to a credit card more than you currently have in the bank but I was not taught that there might be times when this isn’t possible. I was taught that successful people attend college, but not about what I could expect if I didn’t.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The resources I wish I knew about earlier in my creative journey are other creatives. Before I moved to San Diego I had already joined San Diego Writer’s Inc. enrolled in Ron Salisbury’s poetry certification course. My first class in that course is the first time I hired a sitter and ventured out on my own in San Diego. Six months before Covid hit full force I sat around a table with writers I’d get to know over the next few weeks and months, some of whom I still meet in workshop and in person. In there three and a half years since, I count fellow writers among my closest friends and without them I would a fraction of the confidence and creative drive that I have now.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.throatstothesky.com www.taboorva.com
• Instagram: @throats.to.the.sky @ttts_magazine

Image Credits
All images are mine.