Autobiography of Eve Howard January 05 2026, 2 Comments

Biography of Eve Howard

I was born in 1953 in New York City and graduated from Vassar College in 1975 with a B.A. in English.

In 1979, I started as in-house editor at American Art Enterprises, the largest producer of adult magazines in the San Fernando Valley, ground zero for the new and booming hardcore porn industry.

This publishing company was the distributor for H.O.M. (House of Milan) fetish publications, to which I soon began to contribute stories and articles.

In the early to mid 1980’s, I freelanced for publisher Lenny Burtman, whose Jennifer Jordan line of magazines covered many aspects of the fetish market, including: cross dressing, bondage, spanking and foot worship.

After writing all the copy for a tribute magazine called In Praise of Bettie Page, I came to the attention of Lyndon Publications, a sister company to H.O.M., that specialized in soft fetish magazines, including one called Spank Hard, of which I became the editor in 1984.

As a lifelong spanking enthusiast, my qualifications were perfect for this position and the readers immediately noticed that an actual female spanking was now editing the magazine. They showered me with their love and support from the first issue.

In 1985, I reached out to Ed Lee, the owner of Nu-West/Leda, a publishing and video company devoted to corporal punishment erotica. NuWest was the first authentically American spanking producer and no one replicated distinctly male spanking fantasies better at that time.

I was the go-between who introduced Ed Lee to Lyndon Publications, who immediately struck a deal with him to distribute Nu-West and Leda magazines to adult bookstores nationwide. 
Meanwhile, I began to visit the Nu-West studio in Oceanside, CA., to make audio tapes and perform, initially as a submissive, in a series of videos for Ed Lee. We became friends and I started doing a little writing for him. 
Through my first and only ad in Ed’s Home and School Discipline Review, I met my late husband, Tony Elka, who would become my partner in Shadow Lane.

Ed suggested I start putting out my own videos and offered to shoot and edit my first three titles in exchange for Tony and I doing some videos for him. He encouraged me to get a DBA, start my own company and gave me free ad space in his publications for about a year. I began selling my Shadow Lane stories in pamphlet form, by mail order, in 1986.

Clearly, there was a need for erotica designed to please female spanking enthusiasts as well as men, where some effort was made to supply attractive male tops to give the spankings to those pretty girls. And I was in right place at the right time to fill that need.
Tony took me to play at his favorite club in Hollywood, Private Quarters, which was owned and run by the then 23-year-old Stephanie Locke, whose intelligence and cheerful benevolence charmed me so much that I started working at her club that same week, this in the summer of 1986.

Stephanie Locke possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of human sexuality, fetishism and hands-on techniques, and was willing to share her knowledge with anyone who wanted to learn how to play. Moreover, no young lady stayed submissive for long at her club, for Stephanie immediately introduced every new staff member to the art of disciplining men from her first day.

While still editing Spank Hard, I edited a photo spread on Private Quarters that ran in the magazine, inserting a pretty good plug for myself, the newest submissive on staff. Within days, spanking enthusiasts from all over started coming to the club to get or give the spankings they’d been dreaming of all their lives.

A steady stream of spanking talent began making their way from Hollywood to Oceanside to film with Nu-West, some of whom also performed in the first Shadow Lane videos.

I spent just about a year at Private Quarters, but that was enough to supply me with the seed material, inspiration, friends and connections in the scene, for all of the subsequent novels I would pen.

In 1990, Butch Simms, the art director who had laid out all my magazines at the porn factory, joined Tony and I to form Shadow Lane Productions and Publishing company. Butch had been trained in graphic design and advertising at Cal Arts, and brought a polish to our publications and one-sheets unusual in our industry.

In 1991, Barney Rossett, legendary founder of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review, began to bring out my stories in book form, under his Blue Moon imprint. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to be recognized as worthy by this stalwart protector of our first amendment rights, a man who had gone all the way to the Supreme Court to secure them. Between 1986 and 2024, I produced thirteen Shadow Lane novels. (My URL on amazon for these books: shadowlane_spanking_evehoward)

Although my Shadow Lane novels are filled with hands-on spanking scenes, they aren’t composed of exaggerated fantasies, but rather depict the intimate lives of people who work in the fetish entertainment industry, putting out books and movies, doing sessions, running clubs and organizing parties. My characters already know they’re into it and their pursuits revolve around it, in a playful but realistic manner.

By 1992, when we hosted our first Shadow Lane spanking party, Tony, Butch and I were regularly publishing our magazine Stand Corrected, along with our Scene One personal ads.

Because magazines like Spank Hard were only sold in adult books stores, women never saw it. But as soon as I began placing ads in Cosmo, Penthouse Variations, The New York Review of Books and Harpers, female spanking enthusiasts started emerging, to buy magazines and books, to place and answer personal ads, to come to parties and even to volunteer to be in videos. A genuine spanking scene was forming and it flourished with exceptional speed and smoothness.

Shadow Lane hosted gala spanking events for twenty-eight years, in Studio City, Palm Springs and later, Las Vegas, holding our last party in 2019. Our parties were classic spanking mixers, with music, dancing, spanking and most of the intense play happening privately, behind closed doors. They were free form, with less planned activities and lots of time for one-on-one intimacy, often between people who had been corresponding for months or even years before finally meeting at an event. The importance of both the personal ads and bi-annual parties cannot be overstated as the twin forces that transformed our naughty secret into a flourishing social scene.

In 2004, Shadow Lane relocated to Las Vegas and continued as a publishing and production company until 2020, when my beloved husband Tony passed away at age 60, having edited and overseen all of our 240 movies, save for the few Ed Lee shot for us at Nu-West.

Tony was irreplaceable and Shadow Lane could never have existed without his heart, soul and brain working 100% of the time to make our company the best it could be.

Having completed my thirteenth and final Shadow Lane novel, American Spanking Story, in 2024, I am currently working on a semi-autographical “key” novel about my life in the adult industry and spanking scene. I hope to live to complete it!

Eve Howard

Las Vegas 2025