Tiffany Reisz: Are sex and religion strange bedfellows? Maybe not

Tiffany Reisz, author of The King (book six in the Original Sinners series and out this week), joins HEA to explore the notion of sex and religion in romances.

Tiffany: It's a popular and bestselling series of books that mix sex, violence and religion. One of the heroes in the series is a sadist capable of mind-bogglingly intense acts of love and compassion. Another character sleeps with as many women as humanly possible. The female characters in the series often use their bodies to seduce powerful men for reasons pure and not-so-pure.

I am, of course, talking about The Bible. God the Father is quite the sadist in the Old Testament. King David had at least seven wives and supposedly King Solomon had 700. Ruth seduces Boaz by engaging in a sex act with him on the threshing floor in order to get him to marry her and thus elevate her and her late husband's mother out of their abject poverty. Esther impressed a king with her skills in the bedroom and saved the Jewish people from slaughter. Tamar seduced her own father-in-law to get the husband she was rightfully owed from him.

What series did you think I was talking about? If you assumed The Original Sinners series, I won't hold it against you. After all, when I started writing The Siren, book one in the series, I was halfway to getting a dual master's in theology and biblical studies at a Methodist seminary in Kentucky. I read a lot of erotica while in seminary. It was the closest I ever got to rebel against the strict rules of the school. When I conceived of my series heroine, writer and dominatrix Mistress Nora Sutherlin, the first thing that I did was make her Catholic. In my mind I pictured a beautiful off-duty Dominatrix sitting in the choir loft of a church all by herself — it was an irresistible mental image. I had to know why she was there and what she was thinking of, and more important who she was thinking of. Then the who became the most important person in the series. Once I realized the who was her ex-lover, a Catholic priest she'd been in love with since she was 15 years old, mixing religion with the erotica became inescapable in the books. My characters are kinky. My characters are religious. These are not mutually exclusive ways of being.

The question I'm most often asked in interviews is, "Have you gotten in trouble with the church for your books? Any hate mail? Any backlash?" No. Not a bit. Apart from the occasional review that claims I mix sex and religion for shock value (I'm religious — trust me, religious people are not shocked that easily). First of all, I am Catholic so the religious elements in the books are treated with respect. Yes, I have a sexually active Catholic priest in my books, but you probably have a sexually active Catholic priest in your diocese. It's very common for priests to secretly have lovers, men or women. I'm not writing about anything the church hasn't heard about. What's far more common is for me to receive an e-mail from a reader who is grateful to read about characters who have found a way to be religious and sexual beings all at once without guilt or shame. One reader who struggled to find a balance between faith and sexuality confessed she was homophobic until reading The Angel. Another reader said she started praying again for the first time in years after reading my books. Reader after reader said they would go to church again if they had a priest or pastor like Father Stearns. I get more letters like that than I do from people who discovered they were kinky by reading my books. Sex and religion aren't strange bedfellows after all.

If you still don't believe me when I say sex and religion aren't strange bedfellows, ask one of my Twitter followers about it. He took his extra copies of my books to some friends of his. When he saw them again, they asked for more copies of the books and all the sequels. This group of friends of his? All Catholic nuns.

Here's the blurb about The King (Original Sinners book six):

Cunning. Sex. Pure nerve. Only this potent threesome can raise him to his rightful place as ruler of Manhattan's kink kingdom.

Bouncing from bed to bed on the Upper East Side—handsomely paid in both bills and blackmail fodder—Kingsley Edge is brilliant, beautiful and utterly debauched. No carnal act or chemical compound can relieve his self-destructive apathy—only Søren, the one person he loves without limit or regret. A man he can never have, but in whose hands Kingsley is reborn to attain even greater heights of sin. He plans to open the ultimate BDSM club­: a dungeon playground for New York's A-list that'll change the scene forever.

The club becomes Kingsley's obsession—and he's enlisted some tough-as-nails help. His new assistant Sam is smart, secretive and totally immune to seduction (by men, at least). She and Kingsley make a wicked team. Still, their combined—and considerable—expertise in domination can't subdue the man who would kill their dream. The enigmatic Reverend Fuller won't rest until King's dream is destroyed. It's one man's sacred mission against another's…

Find out more about Tiffany and her books at www.tiffanyreisz.com.