Confessions of a Female Dominant follows a Soviet-born mother navigating Stockholm’s corporate world and Berlin’s BDSM underground, who discovers the quiet terror of being needed by everyone and wanted by no one. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

I was standing in a long queue for pizza at a package holiday resort in Turkey. It was hot, and the kids were starving. I was exhausted — alone, yet surrounded by other women with small children. I was hungry too, but I tried to cheer my kids up. And then I heard the song. It was Clean Bandit’s Rockabye. That’s when the idea came to me: we all do what we have to do, and so often we go unseen. But what if, in another reality, it was an ordinary woman who ruled — just like the alpha males do?

Ana’s Soviet upbringing and life in Sweden shape how she understands control, usefulness, and survival. How important was migration to her emotional architecture, and do you see her as someone still trying to belong somewhere?

I definitely do. Despite living in Sweden the most part of her adult life, having kids with the Swedish partner, she still doesn´t feel like she fully belongs there. It helps her to still see and notice the things of the Swedish realities that Swedes wouldn’t notice. At the same time, she doesn´t fully understand that she is no longer Russian. I tried to express it though the language: you could notice the clear Russian trace in the language of someone who thinks and writes in English while living in Sweden. It is hard to belong somewhere, isn´t it?

The novel frames BDSM not as fantasy or transgression but as a logical extension of Ana’s psychology. How did you want readers unfamiliar with kink culture to receive that?

This is the trickiest question I’ve asked myself many times. The book does contain extremely explicit scenes as well as the “educational” chapters where Ana explains the BDSM etiquette. However, BDSM in the book is not only the kink culture, it is the metaphor of power and control. Ana is a dominant who has so little control in her love relationships while literally holding the key to someone’s freedom. And you were right in your review — the real power belongs to the people who withhold and disappear.

What do you hope a reader takes from this book that they wouldn’t find in more conventional BDSM or erotic fiction?

The most realistic description about how things work, ha-ha. This is what bothered me when I tried to read “The Fifty Shades of Grey” as an example: what happened to the toys and towels? Did Christian clean them himself or was there staff to take care of his playroom? The real answer to your question: the character, Ana. A woman who is competent enough to run everything and invisible enough that nobody notices she does.

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