Romantasy Event - Guest Post By Sarina Langer

How I Write Romance as an Ace-Spec Author
© Sarina Langer 2025

Disclaimer: while I am an author on the ace spectrum myself, my experience is but one of many. The spectrum is vast. I have written this post from my own perspective, and I’ve had several ace-spec friends chime in, too, to make it as inclusive as I could. If something below doesn’t match your experience, that’s okay. It doesn’t make your experience (or anyone’s, any less valid.
 
So that we’re all on the same page, let me start with an explanation: what does ace-spec mean? Simply put, ace-spec describes people on the asexual spectrum. This is someone who either doesn’t feel sexual attraction to people full stop (more on the ace end) or who does feel sexual attraction but only once an emotional connection has been established (the demi end). This is different to someone who prefers not to sleep with someone until they’ve built more of a connection. To someone on the ace-spectrum, everyone is equally attractive/unattractive—we’re just not into you no matter how pretty you may be. To complicate things a little: aesthetic attraction is a thing, but it doesn’t mean we want to sleep with you. So, we might think you’re pretty, it just doesn’t do anything sexually attractive for us (or, for some people, it does very rarely). You might liken it to an art gallery: you might see a pretty painting, but that doesn’t mean you want to take it home and nail it to the wall.
I hope that clears things up. If you want to learn more, there are plenty of great books out there that dive into all the details we don’t have time for here. (If I may recommend one: Ace Voices by Eris Young is a good start.)
Now, you might be wondering how someone on the ace spectrum writes romance or sex when it’s not something many of us are all that interested in (I’m generalising - it’s called a spectrum for a reason).
By the time I realised I was demi, I’d already been writing and publishing for roughly eight years. The entire time, romance either didn’t exist in my stories or it wasn’t a priority, more of a side story that developed slowly. My main characters just weren’t that bothered about dating or sex, and they’ve always needed a strong emotional connection before they developed any feelings or found anyone attractive.
Folks, my characters knew we were demi and didn’t tell me.
Some of my readers might have had an inkling, too: I once got a comment from someone who’d read two of my stories and praised the ace representation (this was before I knew), so I saw the comment and just thought ‘oh wow, that’s great, I didn’t know I did that but yay!’ and moved on.
Now that I know, however, representing the ace spectrum (and really the whole rainbow, but we’re talking about ace-specs today) is really important to me. We see various romance tropes on TV and in books all the time, and it’s usually about how handsome, beautiful, and unbearably hot the characters are. Book covers with half-naked guys come to mind (sorry, but those do literally nothing for me; if anything, I find them extremely off-putting; I don’t even know this dude’s name yet and he’s already got his shirt off? wtf?? calm down, hun). If that doesn’t fit with your own orientation, though, it’s harder to see yourself in those characters.
So, I’m more focussed in the way I write romance and sex now. I can make sure my ace-spec readers feel seen and understood, whether they’re straight, bi, gay, pan, etc. (and yes, you can be any of those and ace/demi at the same time—but that’s another post we don’t have time for today).
As a demisexual author, I write romance slowly, and rarely as the focus of the story. It takes a lot for my characters to develop feelings for someone. They never know if or when it might happen. People seeing someone pretty and wanting to have sex with them because of it? My characters and I don’t feel that. Since I started writing my debut novel around 2015, I’ve written romance the only way it made sense to me (who doesn’t?), though I didn’t realise until 2023 just how much I had in common with my characters. Once the feelings are there, though… Then, and only then, does the attraction hit. Not having sex before the emotional connection has formed isn’t a preference—the interest and sexual attraction simply aren’t there any earlier. I’ve had a few readers comment on how sudden it seems—rest assured, it’s sudden for me and my characters, too. My characters have no control (and I mean no control) over who they’ll end up finding sexually attractive.
Here’s a comparison for my fellow gamers: falling in love as a demi-sexual only happens when the other person has completed a very specific set of secret side quests, except we don’t know what those are either. Unconditional trust, mutual respect, and communication are the bare minimum. Once the secret achievements have been unlocked, it’ll either hit us or it won’t. We have no control over this. Likewise, I don’t always know who my characters will fall in love with. Sometimes I think I know when I’m still plotting the story, but then I write it and my characters just don’t see each other that way, or they might but they’re not there yet. That’s fine. Other times it surprises me as much as it surprises my characters.
It’s also important to me to show different kinds of intimacy in my writing. In current media, intimacy is often equated to sex, but there are so many ways to be intimate. Your characters might hold each other after a rough day—no expectations around sex, only snuggles for the sake of snuggling, and it’ll be everything. They might have a deep conversation without judgement and support each other unconditionally. They can be vulnerable with each other in whatever way is relevant in that moment. Intimacy doesn’t have to be physical—it can be emotional or even spiritual, too. It all counts.
So, you’ll see a lot of slow-burn romances in my books, and not a single instance of ‘that stranger is hot, want’. My main characters and I don’t relate to that. It actually feels really foreign to us.
This isn’t to say I write the same thing, over and over. As writers, we should push ourselves, so I’ll try to write out of that comfort zone on occasion. I’ve written bloody battles where magic gets flung around left and right, too, and I’ve never been in one of those. (shocking, I know) It’s a lot harder for me, though, to write two main characters who see each other once, immediately fall in love because of their good looks, and then get married. I wouldn’t know where to start with their thought processes. So, writing main characters like that wouldn’t feel very authentic, and I don’t think I could do it very convincingly. It’s easier with side characters, where I don’t need to go into detail beyond ‘I saw her and knew she was the one’. My main characters and I will be happy for said side characters, we’ll just also be confused.
It’s my job as a writer and author to write words I believe in, that my readers can believe in and feel seen by. It’s not my job to write something just for the sake of it. That I get to represent an underrepresented minority of the population—roughly 1%—makes this all the more important.
And that is how I write romance and sex as an ace-spec author: very slowly, with purpose, and to represent.
For further reading, check out The Trevor Project, What Is Asexuality, and Asexuality.

Sarina Langer is a dark fantasy author of both epic and urban paranormal novels. Her characters knew she's queer (demi and pan) and has ADHD before she did (and they didn't say *anything* to her).
She’s as obsessed with books and stationery now as she was as a child, when she drowned her box of colour pencils in water so they wouldn’t die and scribbled her first stories on corridor walls.
(‘A first sign of things to come’, according to her mother. ‘Normal toddler behaviour’, according to Sarina.)
In her free time she usually reads one audiobook, one ebook, and one paperback (one for every occasion), plays video games, and obsesses over mythology and languages.
She has a weakness for books on writing and pretty words. (Specificity, anyone? Or perhaps nebulous?)
Sarina lives with her partner in the south of England.

Sarina's Website