Welcome to my boudoir, dar­ling. Champagne?

Beautiful décor – I love how you’ve dec­o­rated. But tell me, why masks?

Thank you, dar­ling! Masks…because they are eter­nally sexy. Most peo­ple think of masks as hid­ing one’s true self. And that is one func­tion. But I see them also as an exter­nal sym­bol of the mys­tery that exists inside each one of us. And it’s that mys­tery that is the source of attrac­tion, I believe – erotic or oth­er­wise. That mys­tery com­pels us to pur­sue each other, to explore, and to try to dis­cover the other per­son. The mask sym­bol­izes all this.

Plus, they’re sim­ply beautiful.

But you do mask your own iden­tity as well, right?

But of course! If you mean my pub­lish­ing name, it is def­i­nitely a sort of mask. I write traditionally-​published books for New York pub­lish­ing houses under a dif­fer­ent name and in a dif­fer­ent genre. I have friends in that world as well as fam­ily mem­bers who would be quite scan­dal­ized to know I write erot­ica and erotic fic­tion. Thus, the mask.

However, the mask also lets me be in some ways even more myself than with­out it. What you see here and in my books is totally and utterly me – just a side of me that most peo­ple in my other world are never allowed to see.

The les­son is this: other than per­haps with our clos­est friends and lovers, we are never with­out some sort of mask.

So what else can you tell us about yourself?

My name­sake is the Norse god­dess of love and war, Freya. I am striv­ing to be wor­thy of being named for her, though I believe in peace, not vio­lence. Like the god­dess, I love cats. Unlike the god­dess, I have only had one sex­ual part­ner – my lover and friend and part­ner for life, Bear (also referred to on occa­sion as Nanook).

My last name is cour­tesy of my great-​great grand­mother who was Belgian.

Someday I would love to resume my vocal train­ing and sing in an opera.

I love art, dance, the­ater, and music. And roses. And cham­pagne. And all that is ele­gant and beautiful.

I am a veg­e­tar­ian. I like organic, eco-​friendly prod­ucts, and I care about the environment.

I believe in mys­tery, in a know­able and per­sonal Divine Being, and in the super­nat­ural. I also believe in the splen­dor of the nat­ural world and the won­der of what we expe­ri­ence with our senses and our minds. I believe in faith, and I believe in knowl­edge. I see no con­flict between them. All is encom­passed by the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing this human life, and it is all ours to pon­der and know.

Why erot­ica? You seem like an intel­li­gent, well-​educated per­son. Why write erotic fiction?

What are you imply­ing, dar­ling? That erot­ica is not intel­li­gent? That an edu­cated per­son should not be inter­ested in it? Tut, tut. Here, you obvi­ously haven’t had enough cham­pagne yet – your sex pho­bia is still show­ing. Drink up – Freya is quite for­giv­ing of such non­sense, but we do need to chal­lenge your biases.

I write erot­ica because sex­u­al­ity is such a huge part of the human expe­ri­ence. It is fas­ci­nat­ing and mys­te­ri­ous. It can be ter­ri­ble and ugly. But it can also be tran­scen­dently beautiful.

My brand of erotic fic­tion is ded­i­cated to explor­ing the beauty of sex. It’s not just about “get­ting off” on a descrip­tion of a sex act. To me, it’s about detail­ing the way sex­u­al­ity inter­sects with the rest of life – who we are, our dreams, our fears, the choices we make, our faith, rela­tion­ships, and love. This requires a great deal of intel­li­gence and edu­ca­tion to write in an authen­tic and hon­est way.

And if it also arouses and tan­ta­lizes, that is even bet­ter. Great fic­tion teach­ers often state that fic­tion should pro­vide a “pow­er­ful emo­tional expe­ri­ence.” Sexual arousal has got to be one of the most pow­er­ful emo­tional expe­ri­ences avail­able to a per­son, don’t you think? Erotic fic­tion is enter­tain­ing and can sat­isfy a per­fectly nat­ural appetite with­out exploit­ing or hurt­ing any­one. That is absolutely lovely to me, and makes it well worth writing.

Every author has a niche. What makes your style of erot­ica dif­fer­ent from what’s already available?

As I said above, I am focused on the por­trayal of beauty in the sex­ual expe­ri­ence. Beauty is, of course, a con­cept defined by each indi­vid­ual, so I should clar­ify that I por­tray what I per­son­ally find beau­ti­ful about sex. There are things I per­son­ally don’t find beau­ti­ful or arous­ing, and so you will not find them in my books. That’s not to say that other peo­ple don’t or shouldn’t find them beau­ti­ful, but only that I don’t. And if I don’t find them appeal­ing, I cer­tainly can’t make them appeal­ing in my stories.

In addi­tion to beauty, I also believe strongly in the value of con­nect­ing the sex in the book to the larger story and life expe­ri­ences of my char­ac­ters. I have found that some erotic fic­tion and erot­ica down­play the story in favor of detailed sex scenes that lack much con­text or ratio­nale. Personally, I find those works unsatisfying.

I hope that my sto­ries will appeal to read­ers who want not just beau­ti­ful, explicit sex scenes, but also sto­ries that have authen­tic char­ac­ters, intrigu­ing plots, and some­thing hon­est to say about the human jour­ney. And magic! I love fan­tasy and otherworldliness.

So to iden­tify my niche for erot­ica, remem­ber these four words: HOT, BEAUTIFUL, MAGICAL, STORY.

What won’t we find in your erotic fiction?

Anything that I don’t find beau­ti­ful. I am sex-​positive in my out­look, but I know that if I am not able to find some­thing arous­ing, I won’t be able to make it arous­ing for my read­ers. So please don’t take this list as nec­es­sar­ily a con­dem­na­tion of any of these things. They are sim­ply sex­ual choices or ways of writ­ing about sex that don’t appeal to me.

• S&M: I am too tender-​hearted to find plea­sure in the idea of pain or degra­da­tion of another human being, and I don’t like it for myself, either. It makes me sad and depressed, so of course I will never be able to write it well.
• Crass Language and Lots of Bodily Fluids: I think sex scenes can be blind­ingly explicit with­out being crass or using a lot of slang that has neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. At least that’s what I aim for. And per­haps I’m too sen­si­tive, but I’m far more inter­ested in the emo­tions and what a char­ac­ter is expe­ri­enc­ing than in detail­ing their bod­ily fluid out­put dur­ing sex.
• Pornographic Absurdities: If you want to read about a man spray­ing an entire room with his ejac­u­late, my style of erot­ica isn’t for you. I do love magic and fan­tasy, but that sort of improb­a­bil­ity I find dis­tract­ing and rather annoying.
• Cheesy Euphemisms: Please, dar­ling reader, if you ever find that I have – in some bizarre fit of insan­ity – used the phrase “throb­bing man­hood,” let me know so I can destroy the hor­rid phrase! Whether or not “man­hoods” throb is not the point. No one should be sub­jected to eye-​rolling euphemisms like that. I am some­times find­ing it a dif­fi­cult line to walk between no crass lan­guage and no cheesy euphemisms. There are times it doesn’t leave many choices left. Our lan­guage is woe­fully short on beau­ti­ful, direct ways to dis­cuss sex. But I am endeav­or­ing to do the best I can. Perhaps I shall have to add to the lan­guage, yes?
• Anal Sex: I know…it’s pop­u­lar with many peo­ple. But all I can think of is what nor­mally occu­pies that par­tic­u­lar ori­fice of the human body. And that is really, really unsexy to me. I just can­not think of it with­out cring­ing. So sorry.
• Romanticizing Adultery/​Cheating: If a char­ac­ter has made some sort of com­mit­ment to a monog­a­mous sex­ual rela­tion­ship, I can’t jus­tify roman­ti­ciz­ing the break­ing of that com­mit­ment. A betrayal like that is always hurt­ful, and it’s never beau­ti­ful – espe­cially for the one being betrayed. This is dif­fer­ent than a sit­u­a­tion where two peo­ple mutu­ally agree to not be monog­a­mous. But if a promise of monogamy has been made, then break­ing that promise is not only unsexy – to me, it’s morally wrong.

Beyond those things, I am look­ing for­ward to explor­ing in my sto­ries many ways of expe­ri­enc­ing sex. In addi­tion to all the won­der­ful and fun “vanilla” expe­ri­ences (I love the fla­vor of vanilla – don’t put it down!), there will be plenty of edgier scenes as well. I do hope there will be enough vari­ety to sat­isfy a wide range of pref­er­ences and tastes.

You men­tioned your erot­ica is “sex-​positive.” What does that mean?

Essentially, it’s a phi­los­o­phy that views sex as hav­ing the poten­tial to be good and pleasurable.

Too often in Western soci­ety, and in many other cul­tures, sex is viewed as rather dirty, sin­ful, or shame­ful. Often, this view is dri­ven by var­i­ous reli­gions and a desire to reg­u­late and con­trol sex­ual desire.

Sex-​positivity, in con­trast, views sex­ual activ­ity between con­sent­ing adults as plea­sur­able and nat­ural. It encour­ages exper­i­men­ta­tion and doesn’t approach sex as a taboo subject.

If you want a more thor­ough dis­cus­sion about it, I’d rec­om­mend the Wikipedia page on the Sex-​Positive Movement.

Other than beau­ti­ful, scorching-​hot sex, what themes or top­ics are in your erotic fiction?

I’ve already men­tioned the fan­tasy ele­ment – even the sto­ries that take place in the “nat­ural world” have a bit of the oth­er­worldly in them. In addi­tion, some of the themes that fas­ci­nate me or that I want to explore are the following:

• Self-​sacrifice
• Selfless love
• Authenticity
• Intimacy (of the whole self, not just sexual)
• Acceptance and love of one­self and of the other person
• Courage
• Non-​conformity
• Strength
• Boldness
• Grace
• Faith
• Redemption 
• Forgiveness
• Humor and laughter

If some of those sound a lit­tle spir­i­tual, well, dar­ling – they are. Erotica that is only about the body would be dull. The emo­tions, the soul, the spirit – these can be erotic too. We are not just bod­ies. We are whole beings, and an explo­ration of sex­u­al­ity can­not be com­plete with­out includ­ing the entirety of who we are as humans.

One last ques­tion: How much of what you write is based on per­sonal experience?

Why, dar­ling! Don’t you know a lady never…well, no, I’m more of a god­dess than a lady, so I do tell – at least some. Of course it is all based on my own expe­ri­ence – in real life I am a suc­cubus who cre­ates the hottest dreams you’ve ever imagined!

Seriously, if you want the answer to that or want to know more about me, you should sub­scribe to my blog (RSS options are in the right side­bar of every page).

Now that you know all about Freya, dar­ling, why not find out more about my books?

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