Living two lives comes naturally to me. For my daytime job, I’ve long worked in higher education, but in my off-hours I publish racy fiction under a pseudonym. It’s not the kind of writing I could talk about in my usual literary circles. But I love describing how my prim and proper Victorian characters get unabashedly down and dirty — and I love that my words are likely helping others get off as well. But I didn’t always express such wickedness in my work. In fact, once upon a time, I was as vanilla as an Edwardian.

Back when I was 25, I had my eyes opened to a whole world of literary and sexual possibilities. It all started with a certain learned man who taught a senior seminar and mentored grad students. I’ll spare you the specifics, but this guy was kind of a big deal in academia.... Read More