* * *
CYNDY: I think that’s what’s always drawn me to your books. You walk that tightrope SO well of, “Okay, this is seriously going right to the point of where I’d DNF [Did Not Finish]” but it just puts, like, a toenail on that line.
* * *
TIFFANY: I love straddling the line. It’s where art lives. And people love having their buttons pushed. That’s why we ride roller coasters.
* * *
CYNDY: The scenes I think I was closest to having to put the books down are that [dub-con] scene in The Prince and, yes, the Daddy Kink. Where I’m saying out loud as I’m reading, “No, she’s not. She’s not... OMG, she is.”
* * *
TIFFANY: SHE IS. My editor DID NOT like the Daddy Kink scene in The Queen and I fought for it. Glad I did though because I had a lot of great reactions to it from readers. When one reader tells you that you wrote her most forbidden fantasy and a reviewer says, “I get Daddy play now and I never did before,” then I felt like I made the right choice. And honestly, I thought that scene was so freaking hot to write. TMI? Don’t care.
* * *
CYNDY: Which is what makes this series so amazing. Like, after The Siren, I remember our mutual friend [name redacted] going, “But you don’t read [this type of stuff]…or this...or this...” and me saying I KNOW BUT YOU HAVE TO [READ THIS].
* * *
TIFFANY: Thank you! I love when readers read despite themselves. Like I do NOT read World War II books so if you catch me reading one, you know it’s amazing.
* * *
CYNDY: Because it does walk that line, and the reactions of the characters to the scenes are so authentic and the fallout of those to-the-edge scenes... I have no words. Ever.
* * *
TIFFANY: I try. It helps that I’m kinky and I’m a Switch so I have felt what they’ve all felt at one point or another.
* * *
I love moral conundrums. One came up recently after the great David Bowie died. A woman wrote a blog post about how she lost her virginity to David Bowie in the ‘70s when she was about 14 or 15, and she loved the experience and considers it a very positive experience.
* * *
CYNDY: OMG. I missed that post. I think I’m glad I did.
* * *
TIFFANY: What do we do when someone says they enjoyed and consented to something society and the law says they cannot enjoy and cannot consent to? We say a 15-year-old girl doesn’t have the sexual agency to consent to sex with an adult man but now she is an adult woman and says she was not sexually assaulted and considers it a good experience. Do we take her agency away from her as an adult woman by telling her what she feels and believes is wrong?
* * *
I don’t know the answer. That’s why I write these books. Not because I want to know the answer, but because I want to explore the question.
* * *
CYNDY: Which was why I DID recommend The Siren to so many people even with so many of the usual things I don’t read. Are some kids at 15 okay to have a relationship with adults? Probably. But we legislate because we can’t assume maturity levels at a given age.
* * *
TIFFANY: Just a note to readers: All my books are beta read by women with teenage children. (A beta reader is someone, usually another professional author, who reads a book before it gets published and gives the author feedback.) So all the sex in the book is run by an actual parent of actual teenagers. Not that that makes it okay, just saying I do get a parental POV before I publish anything [that includes teenagers].
* * *
CYNDY: And Michael was a unique case.
* * *
TIFFANY: EXACTLY. And let me pause and just go...Mick! I love that kid. Anywho, back to the discussion.
* * *
CYNDY: The character who’s always been bigger for me in the books than even Søren... (Cyndy waits while Tiffany blinks and wonders where she’s going.)
* * *
TIFFANY: Where are you going, Cyndy?
* * *
CYNDY: The Church.
* * *
TIFFANY: A-ha! The Roman Catholic Church. Yup, there is no Original Sinners [series] without the Church.
* * *
CYNDY: So, Søren (like you) is a convert. Mick and Nora are cradle Catholics, with Mick originally let down by the Church, and Nora returning to the Church. And then Kingsley has an adversarial relationship the entire time with Catholicism. [“Cradle Catholic” refers to someone born to Catholic parents, raised in the Catholic Church who likely also attended Catholic schools. Tiffany is an adult convert to the Roman Catholic Church, not a cradle Catholic.] For starters, how much does Søren’s faith journey parallel your own?
* * *
TIFFANY: Søren’s faith journey is something I really want to explore more. I’ve written ABOUT it, but I haven’t written IT yet. Although I want to.
* * *
Side note, I’ve talked to my editor about writing a book with 14-year-old Søren converting [to Catholicism] and deciding to become a priest, and she said she’d love to read that. But back to the convo here...
* * *
My faith journey is nothing like Søren’s. Luckily he and I have almost nothing in common. I had a good childhood for example and the Catholic Church was my father’s church and my grandparents’. It just wasn’t my mom’s, ergo I didn’t go to the Catholic Church growing up. I became a Christian in college and then read a lot of Philip Yancey who turned me on to G.K. Chesterton who turned me Catholic. Chesterton will do that. So Catholicism was an intellectual journey for me and a way of me connecting with my father’s family.
* * *
Meanwhile Søren...he was adrift on a dangerous sea and the Jesuits were his lifeboat.
* * *
CYNDY: And yet you were in a Protestant seminary and then went to Catholicism...
* * *
TIFFANY: Right. I went to a Methodist seminary and while there I did more reading of the Church Fathers, etc., and really felt that eventually I would convert to Catholicism. And I did. I was 32, I think...? Søren was 14. So very different journeys.
* * *
CYNDY: Is it the same kind of thing for Søren as a problem child heading off to boot camp and becoming a career officer? Jesuits are pretty hardcore.
* * *
TIFFANY: I think that’s a great analogy. Jesuits are known as “God’s Army” and “God’s Marines” and “God’s soldiers.” I’m 99 percent certain the discipline along with the caring combined to make joining their ranks very attractive to him.
* * *
Also, his father shit a brick when he did it and God knows that was probably a big deciding factor too. Not even Søren is immune to the desire to rebel against a parent.
* * *
CYNDY: And yet you gave all these other characters so many different ways of interacting with and feeling about the Church. How much of a conscious decision was that?
* * *
TIFFANY: It would have been intellectually dishonest if I hadn’t done that. First of all, there are GREAT reasons to hate the Catholic Church. I’ve dated too many atheists and agnostics to pretend those reasons don’t exist. And I know too much about the sexual abuse in the clergy to ignore those reasons.
* * *
CYNDY: That was so key.
* * *
TIFFANY: So it was a very conscious decision to include detractors of the Catholic Church. And I’ve been there. I probably would have called myself an agnostic in high school. Any big huge group of men telling people, especially women, how to behave will raise my hackles.
* * *
CYNDY: And honestly, at least in my experience, there has always been a chasm between cradle Catholics and converts, yet you seemed to develop these characters who totally GOT the issues those of us who left have, and those of us who have questioned.
* * *
TIFFANY: That’s the great fun of being a writer, is getting to crawl inside the souls of so many d
ifferent people, people I may have nothing in common with.
* * *
CYNDY: Which is so ironic to me, because high school was when I was thumping my Bible and quoting Scripture.
* * *
TIFFANY: And here I am a churchgoer and you quit the Church (for very good reasons, I might add). We are proof God has a sense of humor. I’ll believe that to my dying day.
* * *
CYNDY: I think that was what drew me so much to King—he hates the Church. For more than just taking Søren from him?
* * *
TIFFANY: King hates the Church for a lot of reasons. He’s a rebel. Born rebel. Don’t tell him what to do. Don’t tell him how to behave. He hates politicians too. Anyone who moralizes will get the stink-eye from King.
* * *
And he’s of the “what a waste” school of thought when it comes to Søren. It’s like when you hear someone has gone gluten-free and you know they don’t have Celiac and you’re like, “Why are you torturing yourself by giving up bread FOR NO GOOD REASON?” That’s how King feels about vows of celibacy.
* * *
Of course my own private theology is responsible for the very different relationships every character has to God. And that’s the theology that’s not so private anymore because I gave it to Nora in The Saint when she talks about how God is a writer and we are His characters.
* * *
CYNDY: And I agree on the vows of celibacy, but I also agree with Nora (and OMG, you are so great at segueing very neatly into my topics here): Søren isn’t Søren unless he’s a priest. If there’s a devil and an angel on Søren’s shoulders in that regard, they are Nora and King.
* * *
TIFFANY: Kingsley doesn’t believe in God really. Well, Kingsley also doesn’t believe in me. He doesn’t know I exist. But I love him.
* * *
CYNDY: And their relationships [with Søren] are two sides of a coin. How hard was it to build them [Nora and Kingsley] to be so alike and yet so different?
* * *
TIFFANY: Søren is not Søren unless he’s a priest. Which is why I didn’t just have him quit the priesthood. There goes the drama. There goes Søren. He is a man born to walk the knife’s edge, not the handle, not the flat part of the blade. The edge.
* * *
CYNDY: For instance, Søren/Nora are what we’d view as pretty much traditional D/s with a sadist who only goes to a point with her…but Søren/King is walking that very, very sharp edge we talked about earlier.
* * *
TIFFANY: Kingsley was not originally intended to be as important a character as he turned into. He started stealing scenes in The Angel. Then he stole all of The Prince.
* * *
CYNDY: I remain convinced you had this entire thing written in your head before you wrote your first line.
* * *
TIFFANY: You can believe that. I want you to believe that. I think we all have people in our lives who bring out the best in us and those who bring out the worst in us. And it’s scary how drawn we are to those who bring out the worst in us.
* * *
For Søren, his best is him being a responsible, caring and CAREFUL sadist. His worst is being the sadist he would be if it were suddenly proved the heavens were empty and there is no God. When he’s with Nora, God’s watching. When he’s with King, God is not looking. Or at least Søren hopes God isn’t looking. Hence the “God closed his eyes” line in The Prince.
* * *
CYNDY: OOOH. I love that analogy. I’m using that to explain my dating history, BTW (“how drawn we are to those who bring out the worst in us…”).
* * *
TIFFANY: What changes with Søren and Kingsley in the series, and why they ultimately start sleeping together again, is because Kingsley learns boundaries for himself. When he knows he’s finally going to be a father, and Nora tells him to start taking care of himself [in The Mistress] it finally sinks in with Kingsley. God comes into the relationship with him and Søren. It’s not a free-for-all anymore. Consequences exist again. Søren can play safely with Kingsley now because Kingsley has boundaries where before he didn’t.
* * *
Someone thought I was being unfair to Kingsley by making him wait so many years for him and Søren to reconcile. But Kingsley was being a little unfair to Søren by pushing Søren to do things Søren didn’t want to do. CORRECTION: Søren wanted to do them but he didn’t want to want to do them.
* * *
CYNDY: The other thing I liked about them is that I think it explained to a lot of readers what RACK was. After That Certain Book [Fifty Shades of Grey], there was a lot of confusion about RACK vs. SSC and an insistence that SSC was the only way.
* * *
TIFFANY: For confused readers, SSC means “safe, sane, and consensual” and RACK means “Risk-Aware Consensual Kink.” [These are two different philosophies/attitudes toward BDSM play.] The Original Sinners do RACK. RACK adherents accept that you can’t always be safe.
* * *
CYNDY: Do you think it was an unconscious decision on your part to show the difference [between RACK and SSC]?
* * *
TIFFANY: I think it was fairly conscious because I sympathize more with RACK myself than SSC. Not that there’s anything wrong with SSC. But if you’re the kind of person who likes bloodplay there’s not really an SSC way to do bloodplay. The skin will be broken. There will be blood.
* * *
I wish There Will Be Blood had been about actual blood and not oil.
* * *
CYNDY: The Prince [explored the theme] “here’s where RACK can go awry.”
* * *
TIFFANY: Exactly. The Prince is not a “how to” guide. It’s more of a “how not to” guide. Actually it’s just a story, a forbidden love story. But we hear horror stories all the time in the news about teenage boys engaging in shocking acts of violence toward girls and often toward each other. At that age, part of the brain that understands consequences and empathy is [temporarily] shut down for construction. This is not an ideal state for engaging in BDSM.
* * *
CYNDY: And here we are back to teens having sex and agency… I think it meant a lot to have THAT (the Søren/King scene in The Prince) AFTER the scene with Nora/Mick in The Siren.
* * *
TIFFANY: And I don’t know the answer. Again, it’s the questions that matter more to me. Mainly because the answer is different for everyone.
* * *
CYNDY: Because each is an individual circumstance.
* * *
TIFFANY: Right. And Nora and Mick in The Siren is a moment of profound healing for Michael. Did it make people uncomfortable? Well, sure. But did it make Michael better? Yeah. In this fictional world it did. Michael had been through more at age 15 than I had by age 30.
* * *
CYNDY: I also think a lot has changed for kids in terms of discussing sexual agency and identity than when Søren and King were teens. Mick has had a completely different era to grow up in. I didn’t know what BDSM was at 16.
* * *
TIFFANY: Yes, I had to remind someone recently that Kingsley and Søren were born in the mid-’60s. They are both over 50 now (or would be if they existed). If you watch movies from the ‘70s you’ll see Jodie Foster AND Brooke Shields both playing prostitutes in movies. And they were about 12 at the time. Brooke Shields even had a nude scene in the movie Pretty Baby when she was 12 or 13. That would not happen today.
* * *
CYNDY: Brooke Shields was nude a LOT back then. Way before she was 18.
* * *
TIFFANY: True! Brooke, God bless her.
* * *
CYNDY: And we’ve talked about this, but my first experience [with BDSM] was more or less having it thrown in front of me and being absolutely horrified that people did this to each other. It took a lot more soul searching to get to a point where it was like “OMG, this is something it’s okay to talk about.”
The Confessions Page 8
