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From late 2006 until late 2012, a high-class call girl named Kattia captivated the minds of readers in Costa Rica with titillating prose and highly erotic writing style. Kattia’s experiences as a highly paid prostitute who was eager to please her clients in Costa Rica appeared in the defunct magazine SoHo, published by the Grupo Nacion media empire.

Kattia was one of three Ticas who wrote columns about sexuality on the pages of SoHo, a glossy men’s magazine (or lad’s mag) published in Colombia by Publicaciones Semana, SA. In Costa Rica, SoHo’s print run ended abruptly in 2013, when Grupo Nacion unceremoniously announced that it would no longer publish the monthly.

It so happens that nearly two years after SoHo’s demise in Costa Rica, it fell upon national newspaper La Nacion that the three sexual libertines who wrote sexually charged columns for SoHo were all fictional creations of a single Tica author. Arts and culture journalist Priscilla Gomez Arce of La Nacion recently interviewed Paula Piedra, a woman with a talent for delivering clean and elegant prose characterized by balance, alliteration and proper cadence. As it happens, Ms. Piedra has compiled her fictional columns in Seis Años de Sexo (Six Years of Sex), a new book published by Editorial Germinal.

Speaking to La Nacion, Ms. Piedra delivered shocking revelations:

The [three] editors of the magazine were very helpful in creating Caridad, the first woman we made up. The rules were simple: I would always write in the first person, and the stories would end in a sexual encounter.

From that meeting on, I took up the challenge of writing prose, because until that moment I had only written poetry. I had to put myself in the shoes of a woman with such a mentality.

The second character was supervised by [another editor] and was named Sofia. So this girl did not talk about her sexual experiences; she rather told about what she though about. I was able to easily identify with her since I could bring forth many ideas I have, and it was liberating to express myself in this [fictitious] manner.

For the third persona I had [another editor]. He told me that I could not have an opinion on this character, who was called Kattia, and she was a “chica prepago” (call girl), like a high-class prostitute, so to speak. Without bringing up morality, it was really hard for me to empathize with this character. Thankfully, I did not write too much about her.

I can fantasize about going out on a weekend and sleeping with any man, but to charge for sex is something else altogether. I was really walking on eggshells when I wrote about Kattia.

For the record, prostitution in Costa Rica, unlike in other jurisdictions such as most of the United States, is not a criminal act. However, pandering and living off the proceeds of prostitution as an oppressive or opportunistic third party are considered crimes.

SoHo was in a category similar to publications such as Maxim or Playboy, which means that it prominently featured pictorials of scantily-clad Ticas in suggestive poses; nonetheless, hidden among the curves of the attractive models pictured therein, a good amount of quality prose and incisive reporting could be found. The Costa Rica Star mentioned SoHo’s Page 115 as blog of the year in 2011, and part of an investigative report on the rise of Scientology in our country was adapted from SoHo.

In terms of retail distribution, SoHo ran into difficulties with placing their issues in the magazine racks located near the supermarket check out stands, where they could have been purchased as impulse items. Alas, store owners often objected to the magazine covers, deeming them too racy for their establishments.