Read my final verdict in The 2026 Tournament of Books Championship, featuring The Passenger Seat v. Flesh.
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Angelyne, near Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood, Calif. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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“Art called himself a ‘garbage man.’ An interview with Art Chantry by Es-pranza Humphrey for Poster House.
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“Is a novel that puts you to sleep a bad thing, necessarily? No, or not as I see it.” Read the rest of my review.
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Dildos on table, North Hollywood, Calif., 2000 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“Porn Blind” is a a 10-part series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. (You can subscribe here.) I’m publishing the series on my Substack newsletter, and I thought I would chronicle the project, analytics, and insights here.
SubjectAs I state in the series subheader, I spent almost 30 years writing about the adult movie industry. Along the way, I learned a lot about the business of making pornography—and about myself. This series seeks to reveal what it’s like to write about the adult industry, how being a woman shaped that experience, and how the sausage gets made when you’re writing about one of the most provocative industries in the world.
BackstoryIn fact, I’ve been trying to write this story for years. For some reason, I found myself unable to do it. Last December, I started another attempt. Because I was out of town, I began writing it in Notes on my iPhone. The advantage to this was that it was hard to revise while I was working on it, which was good, because I can get caught up in over revising. The disadvantage was that writing that way made my neck hurt. So, when I got back from traveling, I transferred what I had written into a Word document. Then I spent the next several months doing what I always do when I try and write this story: restarting it, revising it, not finishing it. Finally, on a Sunday night about a week and a half ago, I became extremely frustrated. The problem was that this process in which I was engaged never works for me, or only with great difficulty. What I do like to do is write online. So, I decided, I would write it in installments (using some of what I had written already) and publish it through my newsletter. In the early morning hours of the following Monday, I published part one. This push-to-publish process does not allow for me to stall out. At some point you have to publish.
goalI’m not sure what the goal here is. To write something I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. To conduct an experiment that will reveal what happens when you serialize long-form journalism through a newsletter. To get a book deal. To increase my visibility. To prove that I have something to say about this subject matter.
PUBLISHINGWhile I originally fantasized I would publish the entire series in 10 days, that proved unrealistic. So I settled on a schedule of publishing once a week (the target day is every Monday). The final total length is expected to be approximately 10,000 words. It is comprised of 10 sections, so each section is around 1,000 words. Each installment of the newsletter for this series is one section. As far as promoting the project, after I publish each installment, I share a link to the latest installment on social media and my blog.
analyticsSubscribers: On March 15, 2026, the day before I published the first installment of this series, I had 934 subscribers. A week later, on March 22, 2026, I had 947 subscribers. That was an increase of around 1.4%.
Views: To date, the first installment of the series has 1,056 views, and the second installment of the series, which published yesterday, has 820 views, for a series total of 1,876 views.
Open rate: To date, the open rate for the first installment is 42.1%. I’ll share the open rate for the second installment next week, when I update this data.
What are we to conclude from the undertaking of this project thus far? Really, there isn’t enough data to conclude much on the data front, other than there has been a small uptick in subscribers. So far, I’m enjoying the process of doing the series, that it gives me soup-to-nuts control over the project.
I’ll be back next week with more thoughts, data, and insights to share in The Porn Blind Project #2.
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Adult actress, Las Vegas, Nev., 2013 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
In my newsletter, I’m publishing “Porn Blind,” a 10-part series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. The series starts here. Subscribe to my newsletter here. If you want to support my work, please share a link to it online. Thanks!
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“If, as Socrates contended, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ then Breslin is living hers to the fullest. Lucky for us, she’s written a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book about it.” — an excerpt from The Globe and Mail review of my investigative memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment.
The Kiss star on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Calif. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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A Long Game: Notes on Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken is an advice book for writers who don’t like advice. Organized into a series of short, numbered sections, the book’s interests range from plot and story to character and imagery. There are no right or wrong answers here, just suggestions on how to navigate the marathon that is writing a book-length work of fiction. I loved it and found it inspiring. I expect you will too.
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Adult movie set, Canoga Park, Calif., 2009 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
In my newsletter, I’m publishing “Porn Blind,” a 10-part series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. The series starts here. Subscribe to my newsletter here. If you want to support my work, please share a link to it online. Thanks!
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The Pink Flamingo, a midcentury dingbat in Studio City, Calif. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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“Had I just sat through the most feminist-coded movie of the year, lauded and anticipated by women, written and directed by women, foamed over and frothed at by women, only to find out it actually disses the woman, and celebrates the man?” — a great review of Hamnet from my pal, bestselling author Lydia Netzer
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A statue at a prop house parking lot sale in Van Nuys, Calif. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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“It exploded the idea of what literature can be.” My answer from “What’s the Best Book of the Past 125 Years?”
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