April 6 marks International Asexuality Day, and we’re celebrating by championing books all over the ace spectrum. For even more recs, check past years’ International Asexuality Day/Ace Week posts!
There’s the part of me that doesn’t understand kissing or cuteness or attraction, and then there’s the part of me that feels so lonely. How do I make sense of those two parts? Maybe I’ll never make sense of them.
What do you do when there’s a question inside you that feels so big, you don’t know how to put words to it? How do you even begin to ask it?
Fourteen-year-old Lizzie is experiencing a lot of change: her family had to move after the incident with their neighbor, leaving behind not only her beloved apple tree, but what feels like her childhood along with it. Lizzie’s brother is too busy for her in his first semester of college and her friends are more interested in dating than dolls. It’s hard not to feel left behind, especially as she tries to explain the fact that she still has zero interest in boys, girls, or the baffling behavior known as “flirting.”
But just as Lizzie’s world feels like its closing in, a class lesson on asexual reproduction in plants piques her curiosity, leading her to look up whether people can be asexual too—and suddenly, her world opens up. Lizzie finally finds an identity, a word for all her messy, unnamable feelings that feels like it fits, although she quickly realizes that a label isn’t enough if no one believes it’s real.
Today on the site I’m delighted to kick off Asexual Awareness Week with a peek inside the new anthology Being Ace, ed. by Madeline Dyer! The collection released earlier this month from Page Street, and we’re about to dig into the contributions. But first! A little more about the anthology:
Discover the infinite realms of asexual love across sci-fi, fantasy, and contemporary stories
From a wheelchair user racing to save her kidnapped girlfriend and a little mermaid who loves her sisters more than suitors, to a slayer whose virgin blood keeps attracting monsters, the stories of this anthology are anything but conventional. Whether adventuring through space, outsmarting a vengeful water spirit, or surviving haunted cemeteries, no two aces are the same in these 14 unique works that highlight asexual romance, aromantic love, and identities across the asexual spectrum.
Forward by Cody Daigle-Orians
With Stories by: Linsey Miller, Rosiee Thor, Moniza Hossain, Akemi Dawn Bowman, Emily Victoria S.J. Taylor, RoAnna Sylver, Kat Yuen, K. Hart, Jas Brown, Lara Ameen, S.E. Anderson, Anju Imura, and Madeline Dyer
“No Such Thing As Just” follows Halcion, a nonbinary ace who despite their flamboyant public persona is not out as ace to anyone in their life, and the mysterious threatening letters they begin to receive that seem to be chasing them away from their best friend. The story features examples of emotional abuse from a partner, mentions of drug use, and clear instances of manipulation. It was important for me to write this because as a writer and a person I don’t think that we can ignore the dark parts of the world. However, as with the story and its hopeful end, I want to show people that you don’t have to remove the pain or the darkness, or hide it. Light is there, even if that light looks far different than expected. People who have lived through abuse and trauma rarely see their darkness and light co-exist. I wanted to show, for all of us dark creatures out there, that it can and does, and for every other ace regardless of background to know that we don’t have to squeeze ourselves into a specific mould of love just because we think we should.
“Moonspirited” by Anju Imura
“Moonspirited” has a lot of Ghibli-esque charm to it that I didn’t quite intentionally write into, but I think was needed to balance out the rawness of its core: Grief and alienation from an aroace gaze. There is a scene in Isao Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) that stuck with me since the first time I watched it. Kaguya, a mystical foundling child taken in by a humble old couple who turns out to be from the Moon, is embraced intimately by the Emperor himself—and she rejects him. You see her revulsion, something visceral crosses her face, causing her to call for the Moon to come take her back. To me, it was asexual repulsion, the first representation of that feeling, coded and synthesised from one of Japan’s oldest science fiction stories. Are we, asexuals and aromantics, Moon People? It’s the fascination that started me into imagining deep space worlds ruled by spirits and gods, and where an aroace might be able to reflect, bravely despite all the grievance held in, who she is in a world that divides itself so easily into negative spaces of absence and want. Moonspirited has shifted and transformed since its first iteration, but I hope these ideas can still be found in spirit if not in name.
“Give up the Ghost” by Linsey Miller
“Give up the Ghost” is a story for the aces who made every plant, robot, and ghost joke before anyone else had a chance to. It features Cassandra, an ace girl who has repurposed the assumptions her town has made about her into a job only she can do—ferrying people through a haunted forest to speak to their dead loved ones in the town’s cemetery. The pay is more than good, but what she’s really after are their secrets. Someone murdered her best friend, the friend she never confessed to due to her fear of being rejected for being ace, and she’s determined to find out who before she leaves for college. This story is spooky and hopeful, and it allowed me to explore ace tropes in media. We aren’t ghosts, but sometimes we cling to what haunts us for protection. We’re self-deprecating. We say the jokes first. We force ourselves into uncomfortable situations to prove our worth or our aceness or both. This is a story about laying those ghosts to rest.
“Well Suited” by Rosiee Thor
In “Well Suited,” compulsory allonormativity takes form as a belligerent suit of armor. I was inspired by what the personification of compulsory allonormativity and compulsory heteronormativity might look like in a fantasy world where something like a human construct can really come alive. It was especially compelling to me within the context of the antagonist being of the characters’ own making. Sir Guy, the suit of armor, is created for the sole purpose of being a fake fiancé for Brindle, a young lady who must find a suitable male escort to her coming out ball. When her best friend, nonbinary wizard Fig, brings Sir Guy to life, they’re left to question whether armor is really a shield or more of a cage. This double edged sword is something that has popped up in my own experience of being ace time and time again, and I loved having the opportunity to explore it within a fantasy setting.
“The Witch of Fest Falls” by S. J. Taylor
“The Witch of Festa Falls” is a historical fantasy steeped in Norwegian folklore. Seventeen-year-old Birga is out to avenge the death of her beloved cousin Rúna. A monster in the woods took Rúna… and now it’s after other girls. Birga vows to end the creature. But there may be more than one way to mend her broken heart, and more than one heart that needs healing. I’ve become fascinated with working traditional folklore into modern fiction, playing with old tales we’ve created to explain the world to ourselves–and, ourselves to the world. Birga is able to use the traits her neighbors fear and despise most about her to fight back against a monster terrorizing her home. Bonus: Revenge via fiber arts! Come and visit the Norwegian forest with me.
“Sealights” by Emily Victoria
When I was a teen, the relationships that really defined me were those of my friends and my family. So, that’s what I wanted to write about in this story. “Sealights” is all about a young ace woman who’s been doing her best to keep her father’s legacy alive by skimming sea magic to power her town’s lighthouse. However, the sea magic is failing, and it’s not until she meets an industrious earth magic girl that she realizes the answer to all of her problems might have been there all along. I hope my stories connect with all teens who are figuring out who they are and who their friends are. And I hope everyone enjoys my little cinnamon roll characters!
“The Hazards of Pressing Play” by Lara Ameen
This story was first conceptualized in 2019 as I worked on a pitch of it with author Dana Mele for an anthology she was putting together about queer authors writing sci-fi thrillers. So, originally, this story was a sci-fi thriller. That anthology died on submission and by the time it did, I hadn’t written much of the story anyway. When I decided to use the story for Being Ace, it became a contemporary thriller and the technological/sci-fi aspects of the story were removed. The main character’s name also changed. I was also inspired by a TV drama pilot I had written and shelved in 2019, a contemporary thriller about disabled vigilantes taking down a eugenics institution. While I didn’t end up using that storyline, the main character, Violet, in “The Hazards of Pressing Play” gets her name from the main character, Violet, of that TV pilot script. As a speculative fiction writer, writing this YA thriller story for Being Ace was a new experience for me. I loved writing Violet’s determination to save her girlfriend as well as her friendship with Felix. When writing disabled characters, asexuality is usually portrayed as a negative stereotype implying that disabled people are denied bodily agency and cannot or do not experience romantic or sexual attraction. However, it is Violet’s love for her girlfriend Nova that drives the heart of the story as well as the external and internalized ableism she fights against. I view Violet’s relationship with Nova as one that is built on trust, consent, and romantic rather than sexual attraction. I wanted to show that disabled characters who are asexual can be the heroes of their own stories. I hope disabled ace readers can see a piece of themselves in Violet and in this story as a whole.
“The Mermaid’s Sister” by Moniza Hossain
I chose to do a fairytale retelling for this anthology because I’ve always wanted to do one. I chose The Little Mermaid because despite its overt heterosexuality, it is inherently a queer tale. It’s a story about doomed and illicit love, a painful reflection of Andersen’s own life as a closeted gay man. I have always found it very difficult to relate to the little mermaid. There’s just something so ridiculous about how romantic love is portrayed in the story (maybe deliberately so, since romantic love as Andersen knew it was extremely heteronormative and exclusionary). According to the sea witch, the little mermaid would only have successfully won over the prince if “he is willing to forget his father and mother” for her sake. And the mermaid on her part is more than happy to leave behind her father, her grandmother, and her five sisters for someone she has never even spoken to. When I was a kid reading the unabridged story for the first time (complete with a horrific illustration of the little mermaid turning to sea foam when she dies at the end), my sympathies lay entirely with her family. Her poor sisters gave up their hair to save her only to have her kill herself for a random man. Absolutely not! So I did a retelling with the focus firmly back where it should be — on the love between sisters — because there is more than one type of love in the world. And all love is equally important. And my little mermaid is not going to kill herself for a man, no thank you.
“No Cure for Doubt” by Jas Brown
It’s hard to be brave enough to make your own decisions when it feels like your entire life has never belonged to you. I think a lot of the time we can feel like prisoners of our trauma or disabilities, and sometimes we need somebody else to tell us that we’re allowed to choose something else. So is this story about grief or is it about forgiving yourself for the wrong you’ve done in the past and choosing to do something different going forward? Really, it’s about how love might not always be the answer (but it is the reason), and that we are all worthy of it no matter who we are or what we’ve done. Also that we deserve happy endings!
“The Third Star” by RoAnna Sylver
My story is a weird, cosmic, very queer expression of so many raw, blazing, blistering feelings at once – and it all kind of came out in a howl.
It’s about breakdowns in communication, especially from a very neurodivergent POV. Loneliness, listening, figuring out relationships (romantic, queerplatonic, polyamory, family) and their infinite beautiful varieties. Environmentalism, honoring the universe as a living thing even as we struggle to live in it. Norse myth, galactic disaster, prophecy, and gigantic-ass space wolves in all their cosmic-horror and glory. And it’s about monsters: chasing them, fearing them, becoming them – and what makes a “monster” at all.
“Nylon Bed Socks” by Madeline Dyer
In my story “Nylon Bed Socks,” Amelia is desperate to escape—both the psychiatric hospital she’s found herself in and life itself. I wanted to write an emotional examination of the inner conflict and trauma that follows acephobic violence and the disassociation this can lead to—but it was important for me to also include positive messages about healing and my main character finding those who are accepting of her asexuality too. I also chose to write this story in verse and employ a spiral plot pattern; this narrative mode allowed me to examine the rawness of emotion in a way that mirrored how Amelia’s unprocessed trauma was growing, unchecked, in her mind, and how at the end of the story, community with other ace-spec individuals helps her feel less alone. It’s ultimately a story about the power one finds in being believed and accepted—both in terms of finding others like yourself and in healing from acephobic violence.
Happy International Asexuality Day! Today we’re celebrating books with main characters all along the ace spectrum, so check out these titles and find your perfect next read! As usual, all links are affiliate and earn a percentage of income for the site, so please use them if you can!
Please note this roundup only features titles that were not previously featured [with covers] in past International Asexuality Day/Ace Week posts, so make sure to check those out too for even more recs!
Online, MauveCat (a cool, confident, glittering pixie cat) has friends and a whole supportive furry community that appreciates her art. At home, Maeve Stephens has to tiptoe around her hoarder mother’s mood and mess. When her life is at its hardest, Maeve can always slip into Mauve, her fursona, and be “the happy one,” the bubbliest, friendliest artist in her community—it’s even how she made her best friend, Jade.
With graduation around the corner, Maeve is ready to put her lonely school days behind her and move on with her life. And while her father hasn’t been home since the divorce, he does offer her a dream come true: an all-expenses paid trip to the regional furry convention.
Furlympia will have everything Maeve’s been missing—friends, art mentors, and other furries! So when her mother forbids her from going, Maeve decides to sneak out on her own.
Between hitching a ride with Jade, getting a makeover from a young furry she inspired, and connecting with an art idol who could help Her get into her dream school—the furcon is everything Maeve hoped for and more. A single weekend away shows Maeve how wonderful her life could be, but breaking free of the hoard means abandoning her mother, just like everyone else in their life. And Maeve isn’t sure if she can—even if it destroys her, too.
At nearly thirty-one years old, Pittsburgh Griffins captain Elias Karlsson’s hockey years are numbered. Everything is changing around him, including his eleven-year friendship with Nikolai Sidorov. Elias would give anything for Nisha to be a permanent part of his life, but their once bedrock-strong bond has broken into a million pieces, and Elias doesn’t know why. More than anything, Elias wants his friend back, but if that isn’t an option, maybe it’s time for him to look outside of hockey for someone to be there with him when hockey isn’t an option anymore.
Nisha’s world is splintering apart. He’s been in love with his two best friends for years, but now one of them has someone. The other, Elias, is searching for everything Nisha wishes he could give him… but he’s looking for it in anyone but Nisha. The farther his friends slip away, the deeper the loneliness sinks in and the bleaker his empty future looks. What can he do but numb the pain in the only ways he knows how?
On the eve of the season opener, Nisha’s unexplained absence threatens the cohesion of the team and puts him and Elias on a collision course of strong wills, broken hearts, and shattered trust. In the end, they may lose the very thing that matters most to them both: each other.
Phoenix Murray has had enough. Enough of her incompetent boss. Enough of her addict father always asking for money. Enough of the struggle to survive. So when her aunt offers her a job as a cook at the South Pole, she jumps at it. Even when she’s asked to avoid casual sex to keep the peace in the tiny community.
Astrophysicist Ashley Bennett can’t wait for her year at the South Pole. Not only will it allow her to focus on her PhD research, it’s a key step in her plan to become a Mars colonist. Avoiding the complications of dating in a society that doesn’t understand asexuality is a bonus.
When Phoenix and Ash meet, they can’t help but push each other’s buttons. Phoenix doesn’t understand that her confident sexuality puts Ash on edge while Ash’s curt formality triggers Phoenix’s insecurities about her upbringing. But living at the bottom of the world means there’s nowhere to run, and as they find common ground, their differences aren’t nearly the hindrance they thought.
Paxton McKee, Clover Hill’s rideshare driver and handyman, is known by his customers as responsible, dependable, and loyal. On first dates, though, he’s known by another word: boring. His dates never seem to appreciate his in-depth knowledge of famous aviation disasters or his LEGO expertise. His book club buddy, Mrs. Sawyer, keeps trying to set him up. But after so many failed dates, Paxton’s given up on finding someone who can accept him, special interests, stims, and all.
Hand-crafter Remi Sawyer put Clover Hill in their rear-view mirror to sell at craft fairs across the country. But being a traveling artisan is harder than Remi thought. With mounting bills, they’ve ended up back home. Being in their old teenage bedroom is weird. Weirder, their mother keeps trying to set them up on dates, even after they’ve made it clear the homecoming is temporary.
To get Mrs. Sawyer off their backs, Paxton and Remi agree on a scheme: they’ll go on three dates. When it’s over, Paxton can pretend to be heartbroken, and Remi can get back on the road. They even shake on it. But awkward dates lead to the realization the two have a lot in common. Kissing is gross? Check. Spending quiet time doing projects together is enjoyable? Double check.
But Remi is still hell-bent on leaving Clover Hill again, and Paxton is dead-set on staying. Can they find a new vision that doesn’t involve Remi leaving their kindred spirit behind, or are they both destined to lose the person who might be their perfect companion?
Hesper Stallides and Felix Morlan have been best friends for as long as they can remember, bonding over their troubled home lives. When a horrible sports injury derails Felix’s promising career and results in the loss of his scholarship, Hesper offers a proposition: a year-long marriage of convenience so he can get free tuition at the college where she works.
It isn’t supposed to be complicated…until they fall in love for real. When Hesper reveals that she’s asexual, Felix must reassess everything he thinks about love, and ask himself what he’s willing to sacrifice for a future with Hesper—before the past she’s spent her life running from can take her away from him forever.
Iris Galacia’s tarot cards do more than entertain gamblers.
With the flip of her fingers she can predict the future and uncover a person’s secrets. Under the watchful eye of her mother, she is already on thin ice for pursuing a passion in the family business, but then cracks start to form, and eventually she falls through.
She is given an ultimatum: earn a thousand coins or leave the business, and the family.
Enter Marin Boudreau, a charming young person who can scale buildings and break off doorknobs, who comes for her help to rescue a witch who’s been falsely imprisoned in Excava Kingdom.
And Marin is willing to pay a high sum for her talents.
But saving a prisoner from royal hands isn’t easy, nor is leaving home for the first time in eighteen years.
Now Iris must learn to trust in herself, Marin, and this new magical world, while racing the clock before the royals decide the fate of the witch, and before any secrets catch up to her.
Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown
Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong.
The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.
In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the “A” in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer–despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise.
With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience–and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people.
Valentina “Vale” Castillo-Green’s life revolves around soccer. Her friends, her future, and her father’s intense expectations are all wrapped up in the beautiful game. But after she incites a fight during playoffs with her long-time rival, Leticia Ortiz, everything she’s been working toward seems to disappear.
Embarrassed and desperate to be anywhere but home, Vale escapes to her beloved childhood soccer camp for a summer of relaxation and redemption…only to find out that she and the endlessly aggravating Leticia will be co-captaining a team that could play in front of college scouts. But the competition might be stiffer than expected, so unless they can get their rookie team’s act together, this second chance―and any hope of playing college soccer―will slip through Vale’s fingers. When the growing pressure, friendship friction, and her overbearing father push Vale to turn to Leticia for help, what starts off as a shaky alliance of necessity begins to blossom into something more through a shared love of soccer…and maybe each other.
Less than a year away from graduation, seventeen-year-old Joy is too busy overachieving to be worried about relationships. She’s determined to be Caldwell Prep’s first disabled valedictorian. And she only has one person to beat, her academic rival Nathaniel.
But it’s senior year and everyone seems to be obsessed with pairing up. One of her best friends may be developing feelings for her and the other uses Caldwell’s anonymous love-letter writer to snag the girl of her dreams. Joy starts to wonder if she has missed out on a quintessential high school experience. She is asexual, but that’s no reason she can’t experience first love, right?
She writes to Caldwell Cupid to help her sort out these new feelings and, over time, finds herself falling for the mysterious voice behind the letters. But falling in love might mean risking what she wants most, especially when the letter-writer turns out to be the last person she would ever expect.
By sinking a fleet of Imperial Warships, the Pirate Supreme and their resistance fighters have struck a massive blow against the Emperor. Now allies from across the empire are readying themselves, hoping against hope to bring about the end of the conquerors’ rule and the rebirth of the Sea. But trust and truth are hard to come by in this complex world of mermaids, spies, warriors, and aristocrats. Who will Genevieve—lavishly dressed but washed up, half-dead, on the Wariuta island shore—turn out to be? Is warrior Koa’s kindness toward her admirable, or is his sister Kaia’s sharp suspicion wiser? And back in the capital, will pirate-spy Alfie really betray the Imperials who have shown him affection, especially when a duplicitous senator reveals xe would like nothing better?
Meanwhile, the Sea is losing more and more of herself as her daughters continue to be brutally hunted, and the Empire continues to expand through profits made from their blood.
The Rusel family is famous throughout Enderlain as breeders of enchanted horses, but their prestige is no match for their rising debts. To save her family’s ranch, Mikira Rusel is left with only one option: enter the Illinir, a cutthroat, cross-country horserace known for its high death rate as much as its flashy prize money.
To have any chance of success, she’ll have to recruit Arielle Kadar, an unlicensed enchanter who creates golems in place of enchanted animals, and Damien Adair, a lord in the midst of a succession battle. Both her accomplices have reasons of their own to help Mikira – and their own blood feuds to avenge.
In a world as dangerous as this, will hidden agendas and conflicting desires butcher their chances of winning the Illinir. . . or will another rider’s dagger?
Discover the infinite realms of asexual love across sci-fi, fantasy, and contemporary stories
From a wheelchair user racing to save her kidnapped girlfriend and a little mermaid who loves her sisters more than suitors, to a slayer whose virgin blood keeps attracting monsters, the stories of this anthology are anything but conventional. Whether adventuring through space, outsmarting a vengeful water spirit, or surviving haunted cemeteries, no two aces are the same in these 14 unique works that highlight asexual romance, aromantic love, and identities across the asexual spectrum.
Now that Wren Martin is student council president (on a technicality, but hey, it counts) he’s going to fix Rapture High. His first order of business: abolish the school’s annual Valentine’s Day Dance, a drain on the school’s resources and general social nightmare—especially when you’re asexual.
His greatest opponent: Leo Reyes, vice president and all-around annoyingly perfect student, who has a solution to Wren’s budget problem. A sponsorship from Buddy, the anonymous “not a dating” app that’s swept the nation. The theme: 21st Century Masquerade. Suddenly, Wren’s plan for a dance-less senior year has turned into heading the biggest dance Rapture High has ever seen. He’s even secretly signed up for the app, determined to make good on his promises to improve the school, even if that means going into the belly of the beast.
When Wren accidentally starts up a conversation with one of his matches, he realizes things might be getting out of control. He never meant to like his anonymous match, and he certainly didn’t mean to develop a crush on him. Wren decided a long time ago that dating while asexual wasn’t worth the hassle. With the Valentine’s Day Dance rapidly approaching, Wren isn’t sure what will kill him first: the dance, his relationship drama, or the growing realization that Leo’s perfect life might not be so perfect after all.
Hannah Rosenstein should be happy: after a lonely childhood of traipsing all over the world, she finally has a home as the co-owner of destination inn Carrigan’s All Year. But her thoughts keep coming back to Levi “Blue” Matthews: her first love, worst heartbreak, and now, thanks to her great-aunt’s meddling will, absentee business partner.
When Levi left Carrigan’s, he had good intentions. As the queer son of the inn’s cook and groundskeeper, he never quite fit in their small town and desperately wanted to prove himself. Now that he’s a celebrity chef, he’s ready to come home and make amends. Only his return goes nothing like he planned: his family’s angry with him, his best friend is dating his nemesis, and Hannah just wants him to leave. Again.
Levi sees his chance when a VIP bride agrees to book Carrigan’s—if he’s the chef. He’ll happily cook for the wedding, and in exchange, Hannah will give him five dates to win her back. Only Hannah doesn’t trust this new Levi, and Levi’s coming to realize Hannah’s grown too. But if they find the courage to learn from the past . . . they just might discover the love of your life is worth waiting for.
Sophie Chi is in her first year at Wellesley College (despite her parents’ wishes that she attends a “real” university) and has long accepted her aromantic and asexual identities. Despite knowing she’ll never fall in love, she enjoys learning about relationships and putting that research to use to help people. And what better way to do that than by running an Instagram account that offers advice to the students at her college, somewhere in between classes, morning runs, and extracurriculars? No one except her roommate knows that she’s behind the incredibly popular “Dear Wendy” account.
Meanwhile, Joanna “Jo” Ephron is also a first-year student at Wellesley but when they create the account “Sincerely Wanda” to show one of their roommates why she needs to dump her boyfriend, they don’t expect it to amount to anything more. After all, Jo’s account isn’t meant to be serious—not like Dear Wendy’s. But it seems more and more students appreciate her humorous answers to followers’ dilemmas, and she may end up encroaching on Wendy’s territory a little. And now the two accounts might have a rivalry of sorts? Oops. As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over the fact that she’ll never truly be loved or be enough, gender, and her few friends finding The One and forgetting her!
Tensions are rising online, but Sophie and Jo start getting closer in real life, especially after they realize their shared aroace identity. As their friendship develops and they work together to start a campus organization for other a-spec students, can their growing bond survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover of yet another ace offering by Amanda DeWitt! Wren Martin Ruins it Allreleases November 7, 2023 from Peachtree Teen, and here’s the story:
From the author of Aces Wild comes a hilarious and compassionate romantic comedy for fans of Casey McQuiston and Netflix’s Love Is Blind!
Now that Wren Martin is student council president (on a technicality, but hey, it counts) he’s going to fix Rapture High. His first order of business: abolish the school’s annual Valentine’s Day dance, a drain on the school’s resources and general social nightmare—especially when you’re asexual.
His greatest opponent: Leo Reyes, vice president and all-around annoyingly perfect student, who has a solution to Wren’s budget problem—a sponsorship from Buddy, the anonymous “not a dating” app sweeping the nation. Now instead of a danceless senior year, Wren is in charge of the biggest dance Rapture High has ever seen. He’s even secretly signed up for the app. For research, of course.
But when Wren develops capital F-Feelings for his anonymous match, things spiral out of control. Wren decided a long time ago that dating while asexual wasn’t worth the hassle. With the big night rapidly approaching, he isn’t sure what will kill him first: the dance, his relationship drama, or the growing realization that Leo’s perfect life might not be so perfect aftfter all.
In an unforgettably quippy and endearingly chaotic voice, Wren Martin explores the complexities of falling in love while asexual.
And here’s the gorgeous cover, designed by Lily Steele and illustrated by Ella!
But wait, there’s more! Behold an exclusive excerpt from Wren Martin Ruins it All!
1:
THE DANCE
There’s something about decision-making and running full tilt down an empty hallway that doesn’t pair well. I have approximately five seconds to get to the student council room. I can make it in four if I don’t slow down. If I’m lucky, the new faculty advisor won’t be there to see my dramatic entrance. If I’m not—well, I’ll worry about that later.
It’s this overconfident mindset that leads me to believe I can yank open the door and enter the classroom at the same time. Which might have worked. If the door hadn’t been locked.
Rest in peace, Wren Martin. You will be missed.
I collide with the door, my forehead smacking neatly against a solid inch and a half of lacquered wood with a clunk! that reverberates through my entire skull. I stumble backward, clutching my forehead like my hands are the only thing keeping my head from splitting open.
Well, that’s one way to knock.
The door opens. “Oh,” Leo says, peeking through the doorway like he’s expecting a package to be delivered. I can actually feel his eyes skating downward, taking in the entire scene. “Are you okay?”
Of course it’s Leo, six feet and two inches worth of perfect teenage boy. Somehow it’s always Leo when it comes to my humiliations, like fate arranges to put us in the same place at the same time of disaster. I’m not sure if I was cursed at birth to screw up or if Leo was cursed to witness it. Considering I’m the one who physically hit the door, I suspect it might be me.
I close my eyes and exhale through my nose. “Why was the door locked?” I say in an exemplary display of patience and restraint.
A pause. “The door was locked?” I hear its futile clicking as Leo tests it. “Oh, I guess it was. Sorry, Wren. Are you sure you’re okay?”
My eyes snap back open and a vein throbs in my forehead. Or maybe that’s just the cranial trauma.
Okay, before you think badly of me, it’s not just the door. Or that fact that I made a fool of myself. Or that I was running late in the first place, necessitating the fool-making. There’s more at play here that you need to understand.
Reasons why I hate Leo Reyes:
He’s tall. I don’t trust tall people. Ryan is five eight in her boots, and that’s pushing it. And she’s my best friend. Leo is not my best friend.
He’s a morning person. A morning person who goes for runs. In the morning. Worse than that, he talks about doing it like it’s normal.
One year in middle school, his locker was directly above mine. This is unforgivable.
He’s just . . . too much. Too pretty, too charming, too tall (did I mention that?). Too perfect. Teachers love him, he got elected to student council without even trying, and he’s the MVP coder of the robotics team, which has awards hanging up in the school’s front office. He doesn’t even have to try to be the best person at this school. It’s like looking at a photo that’s been airbrushed to hell and back. People are meant to have flaws. When they don’t, they make your animal brain go feral.
Once I saw him eat a banana without pulling the strings off. Like—excuse me?
New: he witnessed me run into a locked door.
So you see, nothing about this situation is ideal.
“I’m fine,” I say, brushing past him and into the classroom with whatever dignity I have left. Once my back is to him, I probe my forehead gently with a wince. Oh, that’s going to bruise.
Amanda DeWitt (she/her) is an author (Aces Wild) and librarian, ensuring that she spends as much time around books as possible. She also enjoys Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons-ing, and even more writing—just not whatever it is she really should be writing. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a master’s in library and information science. She lives in Clearwater, Florida, with her dogs, cats, and assortment of chickens. Find her on Twitter @AmandaMDeWitt and Instagram @am.dewitt.
Happy Asexual Awareness Week! I’m thrilled to be celebrating it with some great ace authors, who’ve gathered together for a roundtable moderated by author Rosiee Thor! I’ll let them take it away!
***
Happy asexual awareness week! I love this week every year–not only is it an affirming celebration of people who share my identity, it’s also a great time to take a look at the growth we’ve seen in ace representation across media. This year has been an amazing year for ace books, so I sat down with a few of my favorite authors writing ace stories to talk about the state of asexual representation and what it means to them as storytellers.
Rosiee: Thank you so much for joining me today for this asexual-spectrum roundtable! I’m excited to chat with you all about ace representation, writing while ace-spec, and the future of asexual fiction. To start us off, could you each introduce yourselves and tell us a little about what you write?
Naseem: I’m psyched to be here; thanks for having us! I’m Naseem Jamnia (they/them), a nonbinary trans gray-ace Persian-Chicagoan currently living in Reno, NV. I write fantasy across the ages, but my debut novella, The Bruising of Qilwa, is adult. It’s about an aroace nonbinary refugee healer who is trying to cure a magical plague in their new home while hiding their blood magic. Heavily inspired by Dragon Age 2, Qilwa introduces my queernormative, Persian-inspired secondary world!
RoAnna: Hi y’all! Really happy and excited to be here, thank you Rosiee! So I’m RoAnna Sylver, a nonbinary gender-weird chronically ill writer/artist/musician/heathen. I write really weird queer SFF books (Chameleon Moon, Stake Sauce), and interactive fiction (Dawnfall from Choice of Games, The Great Batsby upcoming from Tales Fiction). I also have a soft spot for horror, so my next projects lean that way too. Also Naseem, your book sounds legit awesome and I want to check it out for sure. (For many reasons but also ahhh, more love for Dragon Age 2!)
Finn: So happy to have the chance to join in with this! Hi, I’m Finn (they/them), a queer disabled author and medievalist currently living in Cambridge, UK. I write all sorts of genreweird stuff, but my debut, The Butterfly Assassin, is a YA thriller about a traumatised teenage assassin trying and failing to live a normal life in a fictional closed city. And by failing, I mean she kills someone in chapter one. So, you know, doing a great job there.
Carly: Hi everyone! I’m Carly Heath (she/they) a writer, teacher, Libra and horse girl from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living on the West Coast of the US. My debut YA novel is The Reckless Kind out now from Soho Teen and out in paperback November 1. Like me, the main character in The Reckless Kind, Asta, is hard of hearing, ace, and wants pigs not babies. I write (mostly historically-set) novels about characters who push back against the restrictions placed on them by society and I hope to inspire teens and young people to question and resist authority in all its forms.
AdriAnne: Hi all! So happy to be here. I’m a queer (panromantic gray-ace demigirl) author (she/they) of queer dark fantasy about monstrous or perceived-to-be-monstrous teens just trying to get by. I live in both Alaska and Spain (I just got back to Spain and am super jetlagged so pardon me if I make no sense), and my books are Beyond the Black Door (with a biromantic ace main character, ace love interest), In The Ravenous Dark (pansexual MC, ace side character), and the forthcoming Court of the Undying Seasons (demigirl pansexual MC, ace SCs), all published with Macmillan.
Rosiee: Yay! I’m so glad you’re all here to chat with me. Let’s jump right into it. Most of us were readers before we became writers, so I’m curious to know about your first experience was with asexual characters. Where did you first see an ace character in fiction? What was it like to see your experience reflected in a book?
RoAnna: Hmm… I believe the first ace character I ever read was either Henry from Viral Airwaves, or Hasryan in City of Strife – both by Claudie Arseneault! And highly recommended for fans of hopeful-dystopian/”solarpunk,” and sweeping fantasy, respectively. And the feeling I got was a sense of combined excitement and relief, if that makes sense? Like “oh wow thank God, someone else gets it/this is real… OH WOW THIS IS REAL!” So, really validating for myself as well. Online community is so important, but there’s also something about seeing yourself on a page, in a story, that’s just so wonderful.
Carly: I did not have anything ace-spec when I was growing up, so I think the any time I was first introduced to an ace character was when I was learning about Greek/Roman mythology and encountered Diana/Artemis who I was obsessed with for quite a while because she was not only a “virgin” goddess, but the goddess of wild animals—which I totally identify with (as someone who regularly befriends the neighborhood raccoons and possums). I was also drawn to horse girl books when I was younger—The Saddle Club and Thoroughbred series—I think because they focused more on the relationships between the characters and their horses rather than on romance.
AdriAnne: I didn’t find any ace-spec books as a kid or teen either, so the first time I came across an ace character was as an adult when I read Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. Not only is the book an amazingly unique take on portal fantasy, but the main character is explicitly ace. I’d only recently discovered my own labels through internet research and AVEN (the Asexual Visibility and Education Network) and it made me feel so seen and not so alone. I can only imagine what it would have felt like to read this book as a teen, which is one of the reasons I wrote Beyond the Black Door–a book basically for teen-me.
Finn: I think the first book I ever read that used the word asexual on page was Quicksilver by RJ Anderson. Although the character’s experiences weren’t particularly similar to mine, since they were fairly specific to her circumstances, it was really validating to see the word in print, when before that I’d only ever seen it on Tumblr and in other online communities. Like, okay, this is a real thing, this is something that people know about. After that one, it would’ve been Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, which has a demisexual character. As someone who really struggled at university, I found that book Extremely Relatable in a lot of ways, possibly more even than Loveless, Oseman’s more recent book that deals much more directly with ace/aro experiences.
Naseem: I actually didn’t realize I was ace-spec (I’m somewhere on the demi/gray side of things) until a few years ago because of the conflation between aromanticism and asexuality. So I don’t honestly know when I first encountered ace characters, since often due to that conflation I didn’t recognize myself in those characters, if that makes sense.
Earlier this year I read We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu. Besides it being utterly beautiful, one of the main characters is a sex-repulsed ace (not aro), and while I’m sex-neutral, I really loved how Cole grappled with the character’s relationship with sex. Noemi really tries to get over her aversion to sex in order to please her partner, because she cares about her partner, and I thought that was handled with such tenderness and care, especially because these are teens who don’t necessarily have the language of healthy relationships and boundaries yet.
I also really love Kylee in the Skybound trilogy by Alex London. I was especially drawn to her because for her, it at first feels like a matter of priority rather than identity. Kylee isn’t thinking about romantic or sexual relationships because her brother is, and she needs to make sure they have enough money to put food on the table. It’s not until we get into her relationships with others that we see it’s not just a matter of responsibility but a matter of who she is, but I appreciate someone for whom such relationships just… aren’t on her radar because she has so much on her plate. Honestly, as someone who was constantly crushing on someone while being torn about all the other things I needed to do, it’s really nice to read someone who pieces together this part of herself in the midst of a war and all the other stuff going on.
Rosiee: Phew! My TBR always grows so much during these conversations! Can’t wait to read some of those. AdriAnne, you talked a bit about this, but what about the rest of you–what inspired you to write about ace characters? What has it been like to write ace-affirming books as an ace-spec author?
RoAnna: Really natural, actually – after a while, I realized that I basically write all of my characters (or at least the POV ones) as some flavor of neurodivergent, and many of them a-spec just automatically. Like that’s my brain’s default setting apparently, and it takes a bit of effort to turn it off and go “wait, how do you write sexual attraction again?” (I think a lot of ace writers are actually very good at writing sexual stuff though, because… we often have spent a lot of time pondering it from a unique perspective, ha!) So it’s partly super natural and freeing for me personally, but also the response from ace readers is always incredible, so I’m also very much writing for y’all too. I want everyone to have the feeling I mentioned last question, the “holy crap, I’m in a book!” rush of joy and relief. I obviously can’t speak for/give that to everyone, but I still want them to have it from somewhere.
Finn: I feel that about automatically writing ace characters, RoAnna… I sometimes joke that The Butterfly Assassin is not a queernorm world so much as a singlenorm world, because I accidentally forgot that people, like, have partners, and so almost every character throughout the trilogy is single. Whoops?
I didn’t really sit down to write An Asexual Assassin Novel, but that element of the book really arose from my frustration with other media, which at the time was full of sexy assassins who (a) never seemed to actually kill anybody and (b) could be distracted from their deadly missions by somebody being a bit hot. I was also frustrated that in order to get dark, complex upper YA stories, it felt like you had to have romance/sex as a major plot element, and if you wanted friendship-focused stories, well, then, back to MG for you. Not that there’s anything wrong with MG, but when I was seventeen or eighteen, I wanted a generous helping of murder and swearing, hold the sex, thanks. So I decided to write an assassin book that was “all murder, no sex”, where platonic relationships were prioritised and not treated as less important or less mature. And where the “emotionless” character wasn’t “humanised” by sexual attraction because… ew. I read too many of those; they always made me feel like an alien or a monster.
I do worry sometimes that my book is less marketable because of the lack of romance/sex (let’s be real, in marketing terms those are often treated as interchangeable!), but I’ve seen a couple of reviews where people have said they don’t normally like books without romance but didn’t feel like anything was missing from mine because they found the platonic relationships just as fulfilling. So I’m very glad that those people are giving it a chance, and that it’s speaking to them.
Naseem: Okay, I’m screaming, Finn—I need your book yesterday!!! Like RoAnna and Finn, a lot of my characters nowadays definitely sort of naturally fall under the ace spec. I started writing at a young age, and I look back on those stories and I see the ways in which things were ace but also how I tried so hard for them not to be—there were romantic partners in my stories, but I didn’t know how to grapple with sexual desire because I didn’t understand how that was separate from romantic desire.
Nowadays, I have to choose to write a main character who experiences sexual attraction and hope that they… come off as realistic?? The novel I’m about to turn into my agent has three POV characters—a demisexual lesbian who suddenly finds herself in love with a boy; an asexual aro-questioning/demi-aro anxious bean (aka the boy) who’s been in love with his best friend but has denied it and Suddenly Now Has A Crush On Someone Else, aka the demisexual lesbian; and aforementioned best friend, an allosexual enby who doesn’t understand the difference between romantic and platonic attraction but doesn’t think they experience romantic attraction, but does want to sleep with the people they care about. (Love triangle that resolves in polyamory, anyone??) Anyway, it’s been a TIME trying to get the aromantic and allosexual components down. Since all of my secondary worlds are queernormative, these conversations in the story happen differently than they do in real life, because the surrounding context is different. But I hope they still hit home.
AdriAnne: First off, WHEW, I also need The Butterfly Assassin! Anyway, writing an ace character didn’t come naturally to me at first because when I first began to write, I assumed everyone wanted characters who experienced sexual attraction. Realizing who I was and the breadth of possibility out there was eye-opening. (I, too, despite being married, have been baffled by the relationship between attraction and sex for a long while, but just figured I was “weird” and sexual attraction was “normal”–you can see that therapy also helped me.) So while there are many more ace books around now (YAY!), what first inspired me to write ace characters is that I didn’t often see myself reflected on the page. It felt very affirming to write Beyond the Black Door especially, where the MC Kamai is a sex-repulsed ace but also biromantic and interested in romance like I was as a teen. It’s confusing for her, and her journey from confusion and doubt and into wholeness and confidence in herself healed something within me. It was very cathartic. (And YAY for relationship resolutions that involve polyamory and ace folks! I did this in In the Ravenous Dark.)
Carly:The Reckless Kind was a book where I was just learning how to write, so I think it was also a book where I was figuring out my identity through Asta. The first draft was like—I want this girl to have very meaningful, close non-sexual relationships with these boys she loves… and then in later drafts I was realizing “oh, she’s ace” and then now I’m starting to realize “oh, she’s aro.” Like, I think society puts so much pressure on people to believe any type of closeness is sexual or romantic, and in writing and rewriting the book I sort of unpacked a lot of that baggage both in my characters and in myself. The followup books I’ve been writing do feature romances and allo main characters, but I also wanted them to be ace-positive so in many cases they have important relationships with ace characters and their interactions are very affirming. Like I have one character who’s in a romantic relationship with an ace boy and he pushes back against those “it’s not a real relationship if you’re not having sex” sorts of statements. And in the adult romance I’m writing, the main character has a relationship with a woman who’s aro and curious about some types of sex but repulsed by nudity and other types of sex and the conversations they have around those topics and consent are super important. I’d really like to see more characters in media and literature who reflect the reality of the spectrum of human sexuality and nuances of different types of relationships.
Rosiee: I love how much common ground you all have here! That’s the cool thing about the ace community and identity. But the asexual experience isn’t just one thing–we all experience this identity in different ways. So, what are some ace experiences you’d like to see more of in fiction?
Naseem: A lot of people conflate being aromantic with being ace, so I’d definitely like to see characters with all kinds of nuanced ace (and other!) identities. Not all asexual people are sex-repulsed, and some asexual people have sexual partners, and I imagine the same can be for aromantic-spec people—so let’s see the range!
RoAnna: Oh wow definitely seconding Naseem here. I want to see all the intersections and interactions between identities – trans aces, aro and allo aces, sex positive and negative and neutral aces, aces of color, disabled and neurodivergent aces – all of them! I also have a special soft spot for polyamorous narratives, and love to see navigation and negotiations there, between both people and identities. This is something I really got into in Stake Sauce Book 2, which is largely about Jude (our gray-ace, demi-aro and disabled/autistic trans guy MC) figuring out his feelings for several partners. Amid the Vampire Drama, he’s also sorting out which attractions are sexual, or romantic, or neither, and how it’s all rolled together with neurodivergence… it was a complicated, cathartic, fascinating, and deeply personal story to write. And also has queerplatonic witchy girlfriends, and cute chubby punk vampire boys, if y’all are into that.
Finn: I’d echo what the others have said about the range of ace attitudes towards romantic and sexual relationships. And I’d definitely like to see more books that explore the overlap between ace, trans, and disabled identities. Like, for me, so many of my feelings about my body are bound up in all of those things, and they can never be fully separated. On a related note, I think it’s also important to explore how things like trauma can impact on our sense of identity and self (and how that doesn’t negate the identity) – this is something I’m exploring a bit in the sequel to The Butterfly Assassin, but there are infinite angles somebody could take on this, looking at how we’re shaped by our experiences.
I think I’d like to see somebody explore faith and asexuality, too, though it’s not a topic I think I personally could do justice. I’ve left my childhood church behind, but having grown up in an evangelical Christian environment where things like sex were wreathed in shame and guilt, there was a lot I had to process and work through before I could separate my asexuality from that shame and work out how I actually felt, all while also having a gender crisis (which I also felt guilty about). I imagine it would feel quite healing and cathartic to read a book that grappled with that – as long as it did it well!
Naseem: I’m once again screaming that I haven’t read all of your books already, because I need them desperately!! And severely want to echo what Finn said about the intersection of these identities and also trauma—the way I feel about my body is directly tied to both my gender as a nonbinary trans person and the way I inhabit my body as a fat person and someone with a history of eating disorders, among other things.
One thing that’s been frustrating for me is how many fellow aces conflate ace and aro identities. I mean, you identify how you identify, but just within the last few weeks I’ve talked to several people who have ID’d as ace, and when I’m like oh I’m ace too, we talk some more and I realize while they may also be ace, they really are talking about being aro. (Which is 10000% valid!) So more representation that dives into the nuances of these identities can only be a good thing for all of us! People who object to labels don’t, I think, understand the power they can have when we choose those labels for ourselves. It’s partially about finding other like-minded individuals but more about how we learn to describe ourselves.
Carly: I share what you’ve all said about just wanting more diverse representation. The world is full of a multitude of identities and experiences, but for centuries in Western literature only the heteronormative identities got amplified. We need to bring reality back into fiction and the reality is that the heteronormative experience is just one small part of humanity. I’d also just love to see more allos affirming and respecting their ace/aro partners, especially in mainstream media.
AdriAnne: Echoing what others have said, as well! Even within myself I’ve experienced being ace differently. I’ve run the gamut from sex-repulsed as a teen to sex-neutral and sex-positive as an adult, after learning much more about myself and what I find appealing. (I’m one of those aces with a sexual partner.) My gender-feels can also impact how I see sex–and yes, so can trauma, which I’ve experienced as a child and as an adult. So I too would love to see all the ace intersections because no one iteration is “correct” or any one “wrong.” While I’ve written the more common ace/aro combination, I wrote Beyond the Black Door for my teen self when I was sex-repulsed and yet romantic, and have also written a nonbinary, poly, and ace character in In the Ravenous Dark. I would love to see more alloromantic and/or sex-neurtral and sex-positive aces out there, as well as how asexuality intersects with everything from gender to race to trauma to kink to neurodivergent identities and to all other forms of queerness.
Rosiee: Yes to all of that! Here’s to more varied ace experiences in literature going forward–and what about the books that do exist right now? What is a recent read, an upcoming book, or even an old favorite with asexual representation that you wish more people knew about?
RoAnna: An old fave (and auto-rec) is the Mangoverse series by Shira Glassman (starting with The Second Mango) – Rivka is a hetero-romantic demisexual and super-hot masked swordswoman, who gets to protect adorable princesses and also her bf is a dragon (and also super hot in human form). Is the book-crush coming through? Because wow. <3 Also may I say Tarnished Are the Stars? 😀 Because I just… really love Nathaniel still! On the more steamy/erotica side, I will still always rec Nine of Swords, Reversed and Eight Kinky Nights by my dear, always-beloved Corey (as Xan West), for many reasons but primarily their just mindblowingly-inclusive/positive/warm rep for kinky aces, as well as Jewish trans, disabled, fat, queer, so many kinds of people, they’re all welcome here. And an upcoming release that I’m a bit obsessed with is The Story of the Hundred Promises by Neil Cochrane. Lush, wonderful fantasy with so much a-spec, trans, and polyam rep, so much!
Naseem: RoAnna, you keep mentioning books that grow my TBR, and I already have so many books on that pile, so… thanks I think?? At least Tarnished Are The Stars has been on my shelf for a while, since I always try to buy my friends’ books. I want to again point to the books I mentioned above, We Were Restless Things and the Skybound saga, and also The Circus Infinite by Khan Wong, whose main character is a queer ace.
AdriAnne: I will always shout about the aforementioned Every Heart a Doorway and Tarnished are the Stars <3 but a recent read I really loved was What We Devour by Linsey Miller for the ace protag and the deliciously dark relationship therein.
Carly: Seconding what everyone has said about Tarnished Are The Stars. Get it if you want great YA, steampunk style SFF and awesome on-the-page ace discussion. Another favorite which I feel like not enough people know about is The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter by KJ Charles which is just the sweetest, most-endearing and delightful ace romance between trans music hall singer and a man who’s a fence for notorious criminals. They’re both ace and absolutely adorable to each other. It’s probably my favorite ace romance of all time.
Finn: Doing this roundtable has made me really want to reread Quicksilver and see if it holds up after all these years, because it’s ages since I read it, and it’s not a very well-known one. (It’s a sequel – book one is called Ultraviolet – but I actually read it first, and that was mostly fine.) Unfortunately, my copy is at my parents’ house, and I am not, so I can only rec this with the caveat of me not having read it since about 2013 and I take no responsibility for anything I might have forgotten about it that would make me hesitate if I remembered it. I love VE Schwab’s Vicious and Vengeful, which have ace-spec characters, but I would say those are probably not under the radar these days, since V’s work has taken off so much. I’m super behind on recent releases generally, so I’m excited to add lots more books to my TBR after this!
Rosiee: Aww thanks for the shoutouts, everyone! Now it’s your turn–you’re all amazing authors writing important stories. Tell us one or two things about one of your books that makes your ace heart happy! Plug your work
Carly: If you’ve ever wanted to escape to the mountains with your two best friends and a bunch of adorable animals, The Reckless Kind is the book for you.
AdriAnne: Since Kamai in Beyond the Black Door is my only ace MC thus far, I’ll plug that book even though it’s the oldest! It’s a dark fantasy with a darkly romantic relationship at the center. Kamai is a soulwalker, someone who can explore other people’s souls, and while doing so she discovers a deadly force trying to break into her world–a someone she might be more fascinated with than horrified, and she has to decide where her heart lies. My other books only have ace side characters, but I adore them: Japha in In The Ravenous Dark is nonbinary (they/them), ace, and also poly; and Claudia in my forthcoming Court of the Undying Seasons is aro/ace (and a vampire).
RoAnna: Oh boy, self-promo, everyone’s favorite! (/Big Sarcasm) I’m still trying to get better at this – and it’s important, because I DO have a really cool thing coming up! Chameleon Moon was my first published book, and it features Regan, a very soft and anxious dragon boy (but always green and scaly, not shapeshifting), who has to navigate a dystopian, permanently-burning city full of super-people (all very queer/disabled/polyam), and also his own traumatized brain. In the process he figures out that he’s asexual (and PTSD, and definitely ND too, but I wasn’t consciously writing that yet), and finds healing and strength through found family/queer community – it’s a weird book, but still very important to me, and probably my best-known.
And, FURTHER SELF PLUG – it’ll soon be an audiobook! (With the best narrator ever, Kyle Rocco East, though I’m definitely biased lol). I’m running a Kickstarter that features not only the audiobook, but special edition hardcovers, exclusive art/merch, actual original songs, and So Much More! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roannasylver/chameleon-moon-the-audiobook I’m ridiculously excited about this, and hope it sounds cool to y’all too! THANK YOU so much again!
Finn:The Butterfly Assassin is always a weird one to plug for queer rep of any kind, because it’s… it’s subtle. Isabel spends most of the book trying very hard not to die, she has got trauma coming out of her ears, and she is absolutely not in a position to be analysing her own sexuality, which means there’s not a lot of on-page discussion of it. Instead, the book’s ace/aro heart comes from the fact that I had dozens of opportunities for the plot to develop in romantic/sexual directions, and decided not to take them, instead foregrounding the various kinds of platonic relationships that Isabel forms. Thus, it is the All Murder, No Sex assassin book that teen me wanted. In the sequel, which comes out in the UK next May, Isabel’s in a much more stable position and she’s safe enough to start exploring her sense of self a bit more. She also finally has people her own age around her, and the result is that we get to see a lot more on-page queerness, which I’m really excited about.
Naseem:The Bruising of Qilwa has been out for about a month (it’s available in World English territories), and the audiobook comes out November 8! The world is queernormative (which also means transnormative), and I’ve got a list of both content notes and rep notes on my website, but the main character is explicitly aroace and nonbinary trans. While it’s a standalone, I’m writing more in this world (the novel I mentioned above is set 40 years after the events of Qilwa), so more to come! Any love for my little book, whether you can afford to pick it up or get it from your local library, is much appreciated!!
***
Carly Heath (she/they) earned her BA from San Francisco State University and her MFA from Chapman University. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Carly teaches design, art, theater, and writing for various colleges and universities. Her debut, The Reckless Kind (Soho Teen) is winner of the 2021-2022 Whippoorwhill Award and has garnered enthusiastic reviews (including a starred review from BCCB) for its nuanced depiction of queer and disabled identities.
Naseem Jamnia is a Persian-Chicagoan, former scientist, and the author of The Bruising of Qilwa (Tachyon Publications). Their work has appeared in The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Rumpus, and other venues, and they’ve received fellowships from Bitch Media, Lambda Literary, and Otherwise. Named the inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellow, Naseem lives in Reno, NV, with their husband, dog, and two cats. Find out more at www.naseemjamnia.com or @jamsternazzy on social media.
Finn Longman is a queer disabled writer and medievalist, originally from London. With a degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and an MA in Early and Medieval Irish, they spend most of their time having extremely niche opinions on the internet. They write YA and Adult novels, and have a particular interest in genre-bending fiction that explores identity and tests moral boundaries.
A.M. Strickland was a bibliophile who wanted to be an author before she knew what either of those words meant. She shares a home base in Alaska with her spouse, her pugs, and her piles and piles of books. She loves traveling, dancing, tattoos, and writing about monstrous teens. Her books include Beyond the Black Door, In the Ravenous Dark and Court of the Undying Seasons. She uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
RoAnna Sylver is the author of the Chameleon Moon and Stake Sauce series, as well as interactive fiction like Dawnfall and The Great Batsby – and passionate about stories that give hope, healing and even fun for LGBQTIA+, disabled and other marginalized people, and thinks we need a lot more. RoAnna is a member of the SFWA as well as a founding member of Kraken Collective Books, and highly recommends you check them out.
Rosiee Thor began their career as a storyteller by demanding to tell their mother bedtime stories instead of the other way around. They spent their childhood reading by flashlight in the closet until they came out as queer. They live in Oregon with a dog, two cats, and an abundance of plants. They are the author of Young Adult novels Tarnished Are The Stars and Fire Becomes Her and the picture book The Meaning of Pride.
Today on the site, we’re revealing the cover for the second book in the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming series, namely The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming, Book Two: Practice by Sienna Tristen, which releases on October 22nd from the Shale Project! The book features an asexual genderqueer narrator, a queerplatonic partnership, and diverse case, and you can get more info on the first book here. Now read on to see where the story continues!
“All good theory stands up to the test of practice.”
Freshly risen from the underworld of his insecurities, Ronoah Genoveffa Elizzi-denna Pilanovani is halfway through his journey to the fabled Pilgrim State. But the world this side of the Iphigene Sea is not an easy one: violence and subterfuge litter the way forward, and something meaner stalks the edges of Ronoah’s certainty, something that threatens to turn the very reason for his pilgrimage to dust.
To survive, he will have to be clever and kind in equal measure. To ask for help from the acrobats and queens-to-be and foreigners’ gods that cross his path. To confront that beguiling, bewildering companion he travels with, the one whose secrets are so vast and unforgivable. He will have to draw on every story he knows in order to make it to the Pilgrim State with his soft heart intact—and then make it home again.
Mythic and multilayered, the final installment of the Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming duology is a love letter to losing and regaining faith in the world and the way you move through it.
And there’s the gorgeous cover, designed and illustrated by Haley Rose!
Sienna Tristen is an author, poet, and literary organizer living in Treaty 3 territory who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. The first installment of their award-winning fantasy duology The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming came out from indie arts collective The Shale Project in 2018; you can find their poetry in Augur Magazine and Plenitude, and their chapbook hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart is forthcoming from Frog Hollow Press. When the sun is up, they work with The Word On The Street Toronto to showcase the coolest Canadian & Indigenous literature.
We’re switching things up this year from Asexual Awareness Week to International Asexuality Day, because why not and also because who wants to wait a whole year to get a great list of ace books?? That said, a bunch of books from the last list are newly available or will be soon, so make sure you take a look there too! (Books from 2022 have been reposted here.)
The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist.
Then the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day…they don’t show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There’s a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they’re stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all.
As supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place.
All Harper McKinley wants is for her dad’s presidential campaign to not interfere with her senior marching band season.
But Harper’s world gets upended when the drumline’s punk-rock section leader, Margot Blanchard, tries to reject her one day after practice. Someone pretending to be Harper on Tinder catfished Margot for a month and now she’s determined to get to know the real Harper.
But the real Harper has a homophobic mother who’s the dean and a father who is running for president on the Republican ticket. With the election at stake, neither of them are happy about Harper’s new friendship with out-and-proud Margot.
As the election draws closer, Harper is forced to figure out if she even likes girls, if she might be asexual, and if it’s worth coming out at all.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job, and when the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him or face vivisection.
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.
Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he’s met the love of his life—and no, it’s not Joy—she’s heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?
Sixteen-year-old Arden Grey is struggling. Her mother has left their family, her father and her younger brother won’t talk about it, and a classmate, Tanner, keeps harassing her about her sexuality—which isn’t even public. (She knows she likes girls romantically, but she thinks she might be asexual.) At least she’s got her love of film photography and her best and only friend, Jamie, to help her cope. Then Jamie, who is trans, starts dating Caroline, and suddenly he isn’t so reliable. Arden’s insecurity about their friendship grows. She starts to wonder if she’s jealous or if Jamie’s relationship with Caroline is somehow unhealthy—and it makes her reconsider how much of her relationship with her absent mom wasn’t okay, too.
Dear (never-been-quite-over-you) Crush,
It’s been a few years since we were together,
but I can’t stop thinking about the time we almost…
Wren Roland has never been kissed, but he wants that movie-perfect ending more than anything. Feeling nostalgic on the eve of his birthday, he sends emails to all the boys he (ahem) loved before he came out. Morning brings the inevitable Oh God What Did I Do?, but he brushes that panic aside. Why stress about it? None of his could-have-beens are actually going to read the emails, much less respond. Right?
Enter Derick Haverford, Wren’s #1 pre-coming-out-crush and his drive-in theater’s new social media intern. Everyone claims he’s coasting on cinematic good looks and his father’s connections, but Wren has always known there’s much more to Derick than meets the eye. Too bad he doesn’t feel the same way about the infamous almost-kiss that once rocked Wren’s world.
Whatever. Wren’s no longer a closeted teenager; he can survive this. But as their hazy summer becomes consumed with a special project that may just save the struggling drive-in for good, Wren and Derick are drawn ever-closer…and maybe, finally, Wren’s dream of a perfect-kiss-before-the-credits is within reach.
Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer. She’ll be working in her family’s ice cream shack with her newly ex-boyfriend—whose kisses never made her feel desire, only discomfort—and her former best friend, King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago without a word.
But when she gets a letter from her biological father—a man she hoped would stay behind bars for the rest of his life—Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him, no matter how much he insists.
While King’s friendship makes Lou feel safer and warmer than she would have thought possible, when her family’s business comes under threat, she soon realizes that she can’t ignore her father forever.
I Want to Be a Wall by Honami Shirono (May 10, 2022)
Yuriko, an asexual woman, agrees to take a husband to satisfy her parents-which is how she finds herself tying the knot with Gakurouta, a gay man in love with his childhood friend with his own family circumstances. And so begins the tale of their marriage of convenience.
Yasmín Treviño didn’t have much of a freshman year thanks to Hurricane Humphrey, but she’s ready to take sophomore year by storm. That means mastering the marching side of marching band—fast!—so she can outshine her BFF Sofia as top of the flute section, earn first chair, and impress both her future college admission boards and her comfortably unattainable drum major crush Gilberto Reyes.
But Yasmín steps off on the wrong foot when she reports an anonymous gossip Instagram account harassing new band members and accidentally gets the entire low brass section suspended from extracurriculars. With no low brass section, the band is doomed, so Yasmín decides to take things into her own hands, learn to play the tuba, and lead a gaggle of rowdy freshman boys who are just as green to marching and playing as she is. She’ll happily wrestle an ancient school tuba if it means fixing the mess she might have caused.
But when the secret gossip Instagram escalates their campaign of harassment and Yasmín’s friendship with Sofia deteriorates, things at school might be too hard to bear. Luckily, the support of Yasmín’s new section—especially introverted section leader Bloom, a sweet ace and aro-spectrum boy—might just turn things around.
Firuz-e Jafari is one of the fortunate ones who have emigrated to the Democratic Free State of Qilwa. Firuz has escaped the slaughter of other traditional Sassanid blood-magic practitioners. They have a good job at a free healing clinic in Qilwa; a kindly new employer, Kofi; and a gifted new student, Afsoneh, a troubled orphan refugee.
But Firuz and Kofi have discovered a terrible new disease which leaves mysterious bruises on its victims. The illness is spreading quickly through Qilwa, and there are dangerous accusations of ineptly-performed blood magic.
In order to survive, Firuz must break a deadly cycle of prejudice while finding a fresh start for their both their blood and found family.
Evelyn strives for excellence. Allie couldn’t care less. Together,
these polar opposites must work together if they have any hope
of saving their school’s robotics program.
Eighth-graders Evelyn and Allie are in trouble. Evelyn’s constant
need for perfection has blown some fuses among her robotics
teammates, and she’s worried nobody’s taking the upcoming
competition seriously. Allie is new to school, and she’s had a history
of short-circuiting on teachers and other kids.
So when Allie is assigned to the robotics team as a last resort, all
Evelyn can see is just another wrench in the works! But as Allie
confronts a past stricken with grief and learns to open up, the gears
click into place as she discovers that Evelyn’s teammates have a lot
to offer—if only Evelyn allowed them to participate in a role that plays to their strengths.
Can Evelyn learn to let go and listen to what Allie has to say? Or will
their spot in the competition go up in smoke along with their school’s robotics program and Allie’s only chance at redemption?
Six of Crows goes to Las Vegas in debut author Amanda DeWitt’s suspenseful casino heist, starring an entire crew of asexual teens.
Some people join chess club, some people play football. Jack Shannon runs a secret blackjack ring in his private school’s basement. What else is the son of a Las Vegas casino mogul supposed to do?
Everything starts falling apart when Jack’s mom is arrested for their family’s ties to organized crime. His sister Beth thinks this is the Shannon family’s chance to finally go straight, but Jack knows that something’s not right. His mom was sold out, and he knows by who. Peter Carlevaro: rival casino owner and jilted lover. Gross.
Jack hatches a plan to find out what Carlevaro’s holding over his mom’s head, but he can’t do it alone. He recruits his closest friends—the asexual support group he met through fandom forums. Now all he has to do is infiltrate a high-stakes gambling club and dodge dark family secrets, while hopelessly navigating what it means to be in love while asexual. Easy, right?
Funeral Girl by Emma K. Ohland (September 6, 2022)
(Georgia is aroace.)
Sixteen-year-old Georgia Richter feels conflicted about the funeral home her parents run―especially because she has the ability to summon ghosts.
With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, she can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear, to a fate that remains mysterious to Georgia. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives.
Then her classmate Milo’s body arrives at Richter―and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing Georgia to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.
Eight years ago, everything changed for Devlin: Her country was attacked. Her father was killed. And her mother became the Royal Spymistress, retreating into her position away from everyone… even her daughter.
Joining the spy ranks herself, Dev sees her mother only when receiving assignments. She wants more, but she understands the peril their country, Aris, is in. The malevolent magic force of The Mists is swallowing Aris’s edges, their country is vulnerable to another attack from their wealthier neighbor, and the magic casters who protect them from both are burning out.
Dev has known strength and survival her whole life, but with a dangerous new assignment of infiltrating the royal court of their neighbor country Cerena to steal the magic they need, she learns that not all that glitters is weak. And not all stories are true.
Today on the site I’m thrilled to reveal the cover of an extremely exciting upcoming YA: the ace heist debut Aces Wild: A Heist by Amanda DeWitt, coming September 6th from Peachtree Teen! Here’s the story:
Six of Crows goes to Las Vegas in debut author Amanda DeWitt’s suspenseful casino heist, starring an entire crew of asexual teens.
Some people join chess club, some people play football. Jack Shannon runs a secret blackjack ring in his private school’s basement. What else is the son of a Las Vegas casino mogul supposed to do?
Everything starts falling apart when Jack’s mom is arrested for their family’s ties to organized crime. His sister Beth thinks this is the Shannon family’s chance to finally go straight, but Jack knows that something’s not right. His mom was sold out, and he knows by who. Peter Carlevaro: rival casino owner and jilted lover. Gross.
Jack hatches a plan to find out what Carlevaro’s holding over his mom’s head, but he can’t do it alone. He recruits his closest friends—the asexual support group he met through fandom forums. Now all he has to do is infiltrate a high-stakes gambling club and dodge dark family secrets, while hopelessly navigating what it means to be in love while asexual. Easy, right?
And here’s the wildly eye-catching cover, designed by Adela Pons with art by Víctor Bregante!
“Aces Wild isn’t a book I ever expected to write, and I never would have guessed that it would be my debut! When I first started putting the words on the page, I was intimidated by writing a contemporary story—how do you make real life exciting?! I wanted to write asexual characters, but I didn’t want to write a story about asexuality, and I wasn’t sure if that was allowed. As the pieces of the story came together, I realized how important they were to me, and how important I hoped they could be for readers someday. I would write a story about comedy and larger-than-life adventure and asexuality too, but not as something that the characters struggled with or came to understand, but as something that had brought them together.
I’ll always love this story because it’s fun and as flashy as its beautiful cover (look at that neon!), but also because it’s something I wrote during a very difficult time in my life, and so much of the love and understanding that kept me going then is held in its pages. Deep at its heart, Aces Wild is about understanding yourself in the face of loss and change, and the different types of love that help us along the way, if we allow ourselves to ask for it. It’s also about silly jokes and internet friends and blackjack too, so you could say that it has range. It means so much to me to have it out into the world, I hope readers enjoy it as much as I do!”
***
Amanda DeWitt is an author and librarian, ensuring that she spends as much time around books as possible. She also enjoys Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragon-ing, and even more writing, just not whatever it is she really should be writing. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a Masters in Information and Library Science. She lives in Clearwater, Florida with her dogs, cats, and assortment of chickens. Aces Wild: A Heist is her debut novel.
![Scoreless Game (On the Board Book 2) by [Anna Zabo, L.A. Witt]](https://i0.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41UDi-Oe9iL.jpg?resize=161%2C262&ssl=1)
![Tell Me How It Ends (Chaos in the Cards Book 1) by [Quinton Li]](https://i0.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/519EEniC1fL.jpg?resize=194%2C299&ssl=1)
![Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by [Sherronda J. Brown, Hess Love]](https://i0.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41det4Mzy9L.jpg?resize=196%2C302&ssl=1)
