Tiffany Reisz: The Original Sinners0

by Nicole Powers

“I started to write erotica as this sort of quiet rebellion.”
– Tiffany Reisz

Tiffany Reisz has just lured me over the edge of a cliff and is letting me hang. If I didn’t love her I’d hate her. When I ask her how she could do this to me, she responds: “I’m a sadist. It’s what I do.”

Fortunately I’m a glutton for punishment. Having already devoured The Siren and The Angel, the first and second books in Reisz’s Original Sinners gothic romance series, I’ve just reached the suspenseful end of the third installment, The Prince. The fourth climactic novel of the tetralogy, The Mistress, won’t hit bookstores until August 2013, and the anticipation is sweet torture.

The Original Sinners is set in the underground world of the 8th Circle, an illegal S&M club where anything goes as long as the members stick to the strict codes of the culture. Thanks to the staggering popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, BDSM has been dragged out of the proverbial dungeon and into the glare of the mainstream. However, fans of Reisz laud her work for being more accurate in its portrayal of the scene, and far superior in terms of plot and prose.

Like Reisz, the central character in The Original Sinners series, Nora Sutherlin, is a writer of erotica with a penchant for pajamas in the living room and power play in the bedroom. But while Reisz’s leading man is brunette SG blogger Andrew Shaffer, Nora’s is an enigmatic tall, blonde and handsome Catholic priest called Søren who’s blessed with some seriously sadistic predilections. Other characters that jump off the page and stay with you long after you’ve put the book down include Zach (Nora’s cautiously curious editor), Wesley (her virginal houseboy), Kingsley (her complicated confidant), Griffin (a playboy with a heart and a Rolex both made of gold), and Michael –– a bisexual young man whose journey from tortured teen to self realized submissive is the subject of the second Original Sinners book, The Angel.

Though laced with lashings of romance, Reisz’s fiction also exposes and explores the more extreme and contentious aspects of carnality. The underlying message is one of acceptance without judgment, which might seem at odds with the author’s stated strong Catholic faith. However religion, like human sexuality, is full of contradictions and nuance. We caught up with Reisz, ironically on a Sunday just after mass, to talk about sex, love, original sin, writing, romance and erotica –– though we never did find out why there are no good synonyms for thrust [a pet peeve of Nora’s].

Read our exclusive interview with Tiffany Reisz on SuicideGirls.com.