Writing Asexual Main Characters In Lesbian Romance

Today Sheena is joined by authors Jae and Jax Meyer to talk about writing books about asexual main characters.

Listen to this episode here

In this episode:

• Why write unexpected representation in lesfic at all?
• Why use asexual characters as a romantic lead?
• Writing a romance without the sexual tension.
• Why it took Jae 5 years before she wrote an ace lead.
• Reader feedback from asexual folks.
• Reader feedback from allosexual folks.
• The ace spectrum and the difference between asexuals, demisexuals and aromantic.

Transcript for Today’s Show

Please note this transcript has not been edited and is automatically generated meaning certain words will be incorrect.

hi I’m Sheena and you’re listening to the right stuff today I’m joined by the fabulous duo of authors who are talking about a sexual main characters JAE thank you for joining me today hi Jax Meyer Jax thank you for joining me today thank you okay cool so you guys have both written books with asexual main characters and we were sort of chatting about it and we decided it was important to talk about this as a phenomenon within the list fixed circles and so that’s what we’re doing today let’s start off with why you guys decided you needed to writes about asexual characters I’ll let you go first because she did it first okay well basically I knew for a lot of years that I wanted to write about an asexual character because in my circle of friends I have a very diverse group of friends and one of them a close friend is asexual and another one is daily sexual and they never find books that represent them or reflect their their lived experiences and I found that so unfair and they grew up thinking they are broke and there’s something wrong with them and when I first started doing research for perfect written there was literally that I could find no especially no romance between two women with an asexual character out there now there are a few but it’s so not a lot and I personally think representation is very important and so I said our two to give them a book that that reflects their lives I think that’s super important especially since we live in what I have heard of recruiters a hyper sexualized world everything is about sex so when you’re NF sexual you just kind of take it for granted but I’m imagining that as an asexual person it’s very off-putting for you Jax let’s talk about you for a second yeah so I this so this was my third book that I’ve tackled and it I didn’t originally set out to write a book with an asexual character specifically I wrote a bit about a demisexual character and we can get by Matt in a sec just so I don’t lose my train I thought so I just had the idea in general of a setting and I’m like what would be interesting it would be throwing together a very a low sexual character which is a weird way to say she uses sex to cope and so sex is her go-to she lives she’s just very sexually focused but she’s not an intimacy focused person which is the exact opposite of what most asexual people are looking for they want intimacy and that doesn’t necessarily come in the form of sex though it it can depending on their situation and their partnership scenario and for myself I’ve used writing as a way to explore parts of my own personality and educate people about underrepresented groups so with my first two books that meant an autistic main character which I am I’m not a main character but I’m autistic and then with this book I I go with the label demisexual even though I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s a hundred percent accurate but being autistic I find categories that are not clearly delineated very difficult so I go with this is the closest label I can find it for now and part of the reason I am exploring it is because of perfect rhythm because even though I’d vaguely heard of it I’ve been married for 20 years and it’s very hard to determine if you are ever sexually attracted to other people or not because I’m not looking the only way I can kind of narrow it down at this point is to say I know that I don’t look at a random person and I don’t find myself sexually attracted to them I could be visually attracted aesthetically attracted and go they look good and I like looking at them but any thought of any physical interact is immediately bizarre to me and if you’re in a relationship that might be the only way to determine air fret at least on the asexual spectrum so for me writing rising from ash was an exercise in educating myself beyond my own experience which is incredibly important when writing a book and also finding ways to explain it and to describe it and to describe the experience of being an asexual person in a relationship and trying to find that balance between your own intimacy needs and your partner’s intimacy needs because my wife is also a very a low sexual person I loosely based the characters on some of our interactions because I’ve run into so many people that are in relationships with people on the asexual spectrum whether they know it or not and I think that’s the bigger issue in the lesbian and probably the queer community in general is a lot of us are in relationships that are mixed sexualities as far as a versus a low and have no clue and don’t know what to do with it and hopefully between our both of our books they’ll have found some ways to recognize it and and realize the reality of asexuality instead of the myths let’s take like three steps back alright so for listeners who don’t know what asexual means let’s go over that and let’s go over what demisexual means in relation to that and what ello sexual means in relation to that so I’m gonna let you guys explain it because I am NOT a fabulous author like the birth of youth so for me where I try to separate it out is any attraction side asexual just means I’m not gonna look at a person that I don’t know and then I’m not very close to and say oh I want to have sex with them my understanding is hello people feel this and in in varying degrees but for an a low sexual they’re not isn’t necessarily this requirement to have any connection with them at all one-night stands happen all the time in the books we read and in reality and people make different choices but they can at least they’ll look at a person and say ooh I would like to have sex with them potentially in the book I make the joke of so if Gillian Anderson walked into the room wearing just a bathrobe what would you do and for an a load that could be a total fantasy and for an ace they’re just like this is a little weird can we have a conversation and it’s it’s just our brains are very different and they’re wired differently for me I think maybe part of it is linked with the autism and then there are other autistic people who are very are totally alle sexual and so it’s it this is where I say the lines are very blurry and very difficult sometimes demisexuals are people that they don’t feel a sexual attraction to someone unless there’s a connection and for some that could take months or years to develop for others it could happen potentially over really intense night but there has to be that connection and I think the demisexual label and that part of the spectrum is where a lot of people fit without realizing it even my best friend does that explained it to her she’s like that sounds like me I’m like well maybe you’re Demi like it’s okay if you don’t know or don’t care right it’s but it’s the labels allow us to create expectations and without language to create that expectation you end up with a lot of confusing situations allo is pretty much the default in our culture ello is the default in our books and so if that isn’t your default as a person it gets very confusing and you do end up with that feeling of maybe there’s something wrong with me or maybe I’m broken it’s especially confusing if you’re also trying to figure out your sexuality with regards to what a genders you’re attracted to so if you I mean a lot of lesbians maybe they figure out they’re lesbians because they try being intimate with men and it didn’t work well what if you’re asexual and you’re try to be intimate with anyone and it doesn’t work then you have to start separating out these forms of Attraction and who you actually want to spend time with and who do you want to spend your life with so a sexuality is a spectrum is separating out all of the things that we lump together in the a low sexual world sexual attraction a aesthetic attraction romantic attraction and that starts to break my own brain so I understand on other people struggle with where’s were these lines what do they mean and I think it’s also important to remember that it’s not about being celibate and not having sex and waiting to have sex like a narrow sexual people what you know like a lot of other sexual people wouldn’t be interested in one I it stands eater but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain level of sexual attraction but they decide not to act on it but that’s very different from a person who is asexual and there’s not that pull isn’t there so there’s nothing to to resist you know so I think that’s the important distinction between not just not acting on it and there is nothing to act on because it’s just not there okay so now here’s the thing about lace fact a lot of readers of lace wig feel like sex is a prominent part of the story because I don’t know yay lesbians I can never quite get an exact answer on why it’s so important but a lot of women won’t read lace reckon s there’s a graphic on page 16 but that becomes problematic when you’re dealing with asexual characters right yes and no I mean sometimes it depends on the character that’s the thing there is no asexual person you know like one asexual person it’s it’s a whole spectrum of experiences and some asexual people they have sex they enjoy sex just for different reasons and in different wastes and maybe an L sexual person but so just because it’s a book about an asexual character doesn’t necessary there won’t be sex and there won’t be satisfying sex it just might be in a different way than readers expected and even I mean that’s not to say I think we need to maybe move away from thinking that sexy is what makes a relationship verb or what makes it good and satisfying like checks already said like we need to not lump together all the things that are aligned for some people because they might not be aligned for others and that that means that sexual attraction can be going in the same direction as romantic attraction and sensual attraction all the other attractions but doesn’t necessarily need to and it can still be a very satisfying relationship or very satisfying romance novel even without sex or without the kind of sex that we usually find in in lesbian fiction or in wlw fiction and I think sometimes we lean on sexual tension in creating a story rather than the other aspects of a relationship right sexual tension is relatively easy to work on and to write and people like it but at the same time like the deeper parts are what I’m looking for and there are a lot of asexual people that we read less Vic we are perfectly fine with the sexy it’s for me I find it interesting that it actually helps with my libido which I wish I’d discovered earlier honestly because it would have helped my relationship earlier however it is what it is so there are a lot of ways to play with it and until you kind of maybe take away that as your fallback to build a relationship in a story you don’t actually even know what the options are so for me it was interesting to write a story that was focused on not just them coming together as friends and building that side of their relation ship and building that trust but also finding the ways to meet their own physical needs because I don’t think it’s fair and I don’t have a better word than fair so if anyone just cringed at the word fair I’m sorry it’s not meant to be like that but I don’t think it’s fair that any one person in a relationship should give up their needs entirely to the other person and that was what I focused on in rising from Ashe and within my own personal relationship is how do I meet my partner’s needs and honor my own needs as well if it’s a day when I personally don’t have any desire for an orgasm its detrimental to not say something because it makes my wife feel awful it makes it feel like there’s something wrong with her and I didn’t have language for this for the majority of our relationship and now I do granted now our relationship is very different because she has some major chronic illnesses and so it shifted it and it’s worked out very well for me to be more asexual because I don’t feel neglected and she doesn’t feel this pressure to do things that she physically can’t a lot of the times and the only way to kind of get into that side of a relationship is if you decouple intimacy and sex if you feel if you feel they’re intricately connected then how do you adapt one life it changes around you and as we age that changes a lot I mean I’m 40 so I haven’t hit menopause yet my wife is para menopause and she’s three years younger than me because of her health issues so and as we get older all of this changes our almost like celibacy creation was literally creating our daughter so all of us in different parts of our relationship find that we have to manage a difference in whether it’s just sex drive and libido or situational or maybe it’s a long-distance relationship and that’s where I feel the asexual community is incredibly helpful in expanding the options within a relationship yeah also talking about other aspects of relationships where there might be different needs and negotiating that so that each partner feels like they are seen and their needs aren’t ignored and finding compromises that work for both partners so here’s an interesting point that you’re making here a new book perfect rhythm right I read it as like it was it was the sort of negotiation that they had to they had to find a space where there was some level of sex but you know the to make both partners happy right but then in its own right just seemed really complicated and do you find that that’s put people off that sort of need to get really because I hear in and it’s not just about the asexual thing it’s about anything we with is like negotiations in six BDSM anything that isn’t sort of straight up okay and it’s gotta be together and then did you find any kickback to that yeah I think that and it’s sometimes a little bit to think that romance novels to you know it all happens spontaneously without a lot of communication does not talk about sexual history about sexual needs about safe sex nothing like that it’s just everything works and it’s beautiful the first time and it’s the best sex ever and that’s not always realistic and while of course in most of my books because I do write romance novels the sex is good I also have scenes like for example it’s just physical one character has MS and she falls asleep in the middle of sex you know because it’s just what happens sometimes and for me it was important that too show that this couple in particular they have to talk about it they cannot just make assumptions and jump each other and expect it to be good they have to talk about what each of one once and what they are willing to do a lot willing to do and I think that’s part of what every reader can take from perfect rhythm I think it could enrich everyone sex life – not just expect it to be magically good – first time around and every time after but – to work on it you know there’s no like magic first time and first kiss thank you for being an awesome listen and supporting salt the channel that brings you all the podcasts you want to hear thank you for being an awesome listen and supporting tilt the channel that brings you all the podcasts you want to hear okay so let’s ask why you would want to have unexpected representation if there is some level of kickback and and kind of like resistance to anything that isn’t the norm for me it really was seeing so many people around me struggling with their relationship they love their wife or their partner whoever but it’s stressful on both sides when you when you don’t match on the the ace alo spectrum and sometimes it really can help to read an aspect of your relationship in a book and go oh they did that well maybe I should try this and maybe a lot of people aren’t cognitively thinking about it the way I do and that’s okay but I feel like for me personally it’s a lot easier to get ideas from fiction than nonfiction I could actually see it all play out and it’s just for me and it means a lot more so that’s one of the reasons also because now there are a few more books with ace characters and I’ve read a lot of them now because they’re not many and it doesn’t take long to read them but what I struggled with is I liked reading them but the ones that handled sex on the page that you can actually see how they worked it out were few and far between and that’s what I think most people need is to know what to do with that it’s what I need at least when I’m reading so seeing a couple work out their needs and also you know Express things like I wish I could give you what you wanted and I’m I’m gonna have a sequel that’s with the actual characters Phoenix and ash and they’re gonna have to really work it out in the real world yet because they’re in an idyllic setting right now and when they go back and the stresses of the world hit well what happens when you’re when one character uses sexist stress relief and the other character definitely does not there’s a reason why it’s not gonna start being written for a while cuz I’m still working that out for myself as far as what to write without pissing people off too much because some of this stuff is pretty gritty and kind of hard to work through but if we don’t tackle it in a safe fictional setting how do we tackle it in the real world so for me that’s that’s pretty big and I’m one of those people that loves the mind-reading magic aspect of fiction I struggle to express my needs as a person even after having written multiple characters who are able to do it it’s really difficult for me and I think there’s a lot of readers who find it very difficult so they love being able to read where people just magically know what the other person wants and whether it’s in sex or just in general they click so well that they just know and wow that would be amazing now granted I do have that in a lot of situations with my wife but there’s still a lot of times where that’s not the real world and so being able to see different options and examples helps significantly for me as a person so assembly you one of the first in the sector to actually really write an asexual romantic character did you get flat from the asexual community because you aren’t asexual I mean mostly I’ve had really good reactions I just counted I got one email this morning from an asexual reader and I saved them all I’ve saved all of my feedback emails I mean it’s I’m at 34 emails from asexual readers who read perfect rhythm and I had a discovered that they are actually on the asexual spectrum themselves or they already knew and wanted to thank me for finally someone wrote a book that they can identify with so mostly it’s been really wonderful feedback also I had at least three or four people come up at various conferences and book fairs and thanked me for writing it either because they are asexual or because their partner is I’ve had one or two reactions from asexual people who felt that Leo the Ella sexual character and my book is actually a phobic because she has this moment when she is thinking about can I really do this can I be in a relationship with an asexual person it’s more about an asexual person in this tiny bolita that she wanted to escape from but I think from the point of view from someone who is an Ella sexual person with sexual needs and sexual attraction I think it would be pretty unrealistic not to even have a moment of wow how am I gonna do this is this gonna be different it is going to be difficult do I want to do this I don’t consider it as phobic and neither did my ACE beta readers I don’t know if you had a lot of really tasteful big experiences in your life you might see it differently you know people come to books with their own life experiences and if you’ve been hurt in that way in previous relationships and you have been rejected by people because you’re asexual I understand why that hits them the wrong way hundred percent I actually really liked that moment in the book because I think when you’re dealing with a very big life-changing thing anything like I know that when I was first kind of dating my wife and I say dating in inverted commas because neither of us actually realized we were dating one another anyway during that process I sort of looked at it and I was like can I do this can i really come out and actually come out as a lesbian do I wanted do I even want to go there and it wasn’t them I’m you’re homophobic or anything it’s just it’s such a life-changing space but you have to at least you know ask yourself it so from that perspective it was realistic yeah and also you have to consider what her life was like she was a pop star everything in her life was hyper sexualized it was all about her looks how how she looked how she acted how she attracted people and I mean partly that’s what makes him work really well because she for her Hollies asexuality is actually a positive thing because for the first time she’s appreciated for things other than her looks in her sex appeal so it’s not that that she did she thought it’s something negative but also I found it positive that immediately she she didn’t think that Holly would have to be the one to compromise and to give her what she needs she was thinking about she needs to give Holly what Holly needs which is no sex what she assumed it would be no sex so I think that’s for me something positive and not something to criticize her for that she had this moment of wondering how is this gonna influence my life and my relationship and I just have to say there is just the quintessential lace fake thing for me it’s so beautiful that in women loving women relationships it will be this what what do I need to do to make the other person happy how can the other person make me happy and I just that is this think you’re so wonderful anyway okay Jax I have a kind of a reverse question for you so you are on the ACE spectrum and how are other sexual is feeling about reading your romances are they going well you actually quantitate s what’s going on there I don’t think anyone really knew for the first two books and definitely no one complained I write sex very much from the philosophy of what does it add to the story I write reasonably graphic sex because that’s what I read and I’m still kind of finding my own feet like what is my not even comfort level just what’s my writing style gonna be as far as sex scenes because I don’t have a comfort level if I’m especially if I’m reading or listening alone obviously I think everyone’s comfort level changes if they’re listening with someone but for me it doesn’t bother me in the least I just find that the the type of sex scenes that work best for me are the ones where they’re really getting into the characters and getting into their feelings and moving the story forward not just sex for the sake of sex at that point I end up usually giggling or laughing because it’s just like did you need to write that yeah whatever it’s fine like you just kind of go past it and I think a lot of aces readers do that and even a lot of alo readers do that for a lot they want the story to move forward through the sex scene they don’t want gratuitous sex after a while it just gets to be what’s the point the I mean I had a low and a Spada readers on different parts of the spectrum and I mean the response has been very enthusiastic on both sides and that I really appreciate because I wasn’t worried about the elbows I made sure that each physically intimate scene kind of would work for both or did my best to it was a little tricky to write that and I did have actually I sent out reader copies to probably I mean well over a dozen people that volunteered who identify as ace in some way I didn’t tell them there is sex in the book I got different types feedback some loved it some specifically mentioned that as as an ace reader they found the sex scenes were good I had one person say that they have an asexual book club and that they told them that there was sex in it and a bunch said they wouldn’t even read it so sometimes that stuff’s a little frustrating to have it judged purely off of that without knowing what is how it’s being written right and what’s going into it but at the same time we all come in with our expectations and what we like so a book is never gonna be right for every single reader and that’s okay so my little artist heart gets a little sad at that but it’s fine like I would rather them not read something they don’t want to read but right now I mean across the board response has been very well received and I feel like there’s probably more pushback from the alo community because they don’t know what to expect and they don’t they don’t know if they can relate and they they don’t know if they want to read a book even though I say there’s sex in it they still don’t know what that’s gonna look like and what that’s gonna be like and it’s fascinating because there are a lot of writers that write fade to black in minimal sex and I probably have more sex in this book then some other books do and but no one questions it they just assume it and then they find they love the story anyway so they don’t care that there wasn’t sex in it so it’s it’s interesting this is a beautiful segue into exactly why I asked you guys these questions I did a brief Twitter I mean I took a Facebook discussion in the Lisbon review chats group where I asked the question why don’t you buy books with main six characters who are asexual and the the two predominant outcomes were apart from the people that do and love it and what it is that a they don’t actually understand what they’re gonna be reading and be they if they are on the ACE spectrum they are want to make sure that who isn’t writing the book represents them fairly and I think so so why people are not buying a books right now is writing them is because there’s there’s not a lot of understanding about it and I think that’s the only issue really right yeah so within this is a chicken and egg scenario right you’ve gotta write the books in order to get the meters but you’re not gonna sell those books because the meat is a little trick yeah it’s part of why I waited so long I knew for five years I mean part of it was I really wanted to make sure I understand the spectrum of what asexuality can be and the other part is I wanted to make sure I have a big enough name that people are gonna read the book anyway even if they might have their doubts about will I be able to relate to an asexual character they will buy it because they trust me at this point of my career and will buy the book I think you managed to do exactly that you cracked open the sector and then as a result people like Jax can come along and say okay well I can write asexual character because it’s not completely unknown mm-hmm I just did a survey or I when I created my Facebook group I asked questions to screen people a little and one of them is what is your favorite J Nobel and I just counted and I realized actually perfect rhythm is my second most popular book and that’s pretty amazing that and the majority of my readers are not asexual so they could relate to the characters and they lost the book it’s more that the people who would need to read the book to realize they can relate to characters were not ello sexual they they’re still of you who might shy away from it which is okay I mean there are people who but it’s a little mind-boggling you know there are people who read novels about shapeshifters and they don’t question whether they might be able to relate or not but they they doubt that maybe they might not be able to relate to an asexual person which is a little astonishing absolutely let’s talk about positive feedback and like what is the thing that you’ve written about in terms of asexuality that has made your heart the happiest in terms of like response some readers for me I think it’s it differs based off of whether they’re a low or a so from the aloes I love when they can see kind of what I was getting at which is intimacy and sex are not intertwined and they can be but they it’s not the only way and so to see that the romance is still there the draw between the characters is still there it’s just the reason for the draw might be a little different based off the characters and their sexuality and then on the a side I love it when they say I could see myself and that they could enjoy it and basically just it’s one more in a short stack of books that they could point to and save at least part of me is represented on these pages it it’s it’s really not much different than any other book you know but knowing that I didn’t completely screw up the representation you know so far the only real negative comment I had and it was it was constructive criticism was that I didn’t address the a romanticism side and even through our discussion we haven’t addressed that asexual gets a lot more attention than a romantic and I genuinely can’t even begin to figure out what to do with a romance novel with an aromantic character and yet I’m I’m trying to work it out in the back of my head for one of the spin-off characters I don’t know how yet how to do it okay so if we’re listeners it’s just split off what is what’s the difference between what is an aromantic person versus an asexual person i’m handing that off to Jay I actually do have a Hollies best friend in in perfect rhythm is a romantic it’s it’s basically there’s not just a spectrum of being either asexual and the entire spectrum to go sexual with Crais sexual and demisexual somewhere in the middle there’s also a spectrum are you romantic not in the sense of cattle my dinners and so on but in your who are you attracted to romantically or are you not attracted to any person male/female non-binary trans whatever at all so that’s the spectrum too you can be demiromantic you can be romantic you can be a romantic and fall anywhere on that spectrum and that doesn’t mean that these people don’t feel other types of attractions or don’t want close bonds to people but they don’t feel a romantic attraction same as asexual people don’t feel an a sexual attraction okay I know it’s because I’m so confused now okay wait wait I’m googling this well and I have a friend that I met on Twitter I don’t even know how we met anymore accidentally I guess she lives in Malaysia and since they don’t have an Amazon like ebook store there I sent her a copies copies of my books and we’ve just been chatting and for her she gets confused by the labels too but she very much is an asexual aromantic type person she doesn’t have any need to spend her life with a person dogs yes but not a person and people make her feel very kind of claustrophobic and tied down she loves her friends but she’s just doesn’t feel that need to partner up and do that I could understand that aspect where I struggle as work gets in a more of the gray area of that be careful not to confuse two different things a friend of mine is asexual aromantic and she lives in a partnership not a romantic partnership because she’s a romantic not a sexual partnership because she’s asexual it’s a quid lutonic relationship just as Mac and sho have in my book and they’re supporting characters so I didn’t spend that much I’m on it but they live to get our dish here finances they have a house together they have a dog together there’s a higher level of commitment and anyone else just assumes yeah of course they are a couple of mini romantic couple but they are not because it might look like it from the outside but the feelings are different they are not romantic in nature so on a very sort of practical level would they sleep in two separate bedrooms they have separate bedrooms but there are three of the 20 couples who come who might kiss not in a sexual way but more like maybe to greet each other it varies from person to person just as a whole spectrum and it boggles most people are like what I don’t understand this this is even harder to grasp for most people than their a sexualities spectrum because they just see like look at the term just friends you know like that that’s already implies that okay this is not that the quality isn’t as good as a romantic relationship and they’re in our thinking it’s like we are so binary you know like male-female romantic platonic and there’s nothing big in between and as psychologists I think pretty much anything and everything is a spectrum romantic feelings are spectrums you and romantic attraction and sexual attraction and I think it’s good that more books are starting to explore those aspects so people can realize how diverse it is and then it’s okay if you don’t follow the traditional path absolutely okay jack touched on on the fact that we learn a lot of us learn through fiction ideas so because of that there’s even more onus on you guys to do the research to make sure that the characters are all represented because you are the forerunners in the mystic community in terms of putting the rip-off Deena is anything else you guys want to add to this like what if what are we missing well earlier I wrote down also part of what’s changing in less fake and this is a challenge that I think has been made by quite a few people I think terror stands out with it that and in the me to era and stuff is adding consent and I think when you’re writing an asexual character you have an perfect opportunity to show consent in a way that’s not awkward or uncomfortable but a necessary part part of navigating the relationship and so it’s there gonna be some readers that balk at it they probably balk at it in their real life and are thinking I don’t even know where to begin with consent and what that looks like and what that should be but hopefully both as more and more writers write consent into their kind of traditional romances and then as you read more like asexual characters seeing how consent is handled and just checking in I’m not a person that reads a lot of BDSM at all but that’s also one of the benefits I feel of the BDSM community and reading BDSM is that sense has to be there and if it isn’t that’s a pretty iffy situation and could get dangerous very quickly so I think that’s where the fiction can inform us and give us tools especially as an autistic person I need to see examples in order to know where to go with things so seeing all of these different examples really opens things up and I think it gives people a new freedom and a new way to approach their relationships whether they’ve been married forever or they’re just meeting someone new we can we can all learn and make our relationships better because of it for sure Jay are you gonna write another asexual character I might have been I have so many ideas and so do time to write them all I’ve actually been asked by some people to write about the relationship that we were just talking about Mac and Giada the Romantic era but as Czech said it’s a she’s a romantic and I think some people misunderstand what that means she’s not gonna fall in love and love not in that kind of romantic love I’ve had one radio for perfect rhythm to that said like net was the only review that bothered me someone said she was a little disappointed that Holly didn’t overcome it in the end and being asexual is not something to overcome just like being a lesbian or being bisexual or any other sexual orientation isn’t something to overcome and it said a little that after reading the entire book or hopefully the entire book they were still the reader who didn’t grasp that it’s a sexual orientation and it’s just as Willet as any other sexual orientation but I hope that as there are more and more book with more diverse characters who are anywhere on the spectrum that that it will normalize it and it people will continue to grasp what it is because there are a few books that handle it that way word is there’s one less in Romans where the main character one of them is asexual and after having sex with her or a main character she is suddenly magically cured and that’s so damaging it’s very problematic and so I hope as there are more and more diverse books published and even straight romance readers are more open to reading diverse books that yeah they will all be more open to recognizing diversity and living diversity and as Jack said trying to learn from it and see how can be handled things like consent in our lives and in our own books and I think that’s for people who maybe want to consider adding more diverse characters to remember that like you need to talk to a lot of different people in that representation not just one because writing own voices I’m still just one person and with one take on things but that can really screw me up if that’s the only person that I’m talking to as myself if you’re if you want to you know dive into the asexual world you need to do a lot of research even when you’re in it and so never forget that having a better understanding of the whole spectrum allows you to handle it better and so having one reviewer point out that yeah ash is still Demi at the end of the book and she’s Demi at the beginning this isn’t a coming out story for her it’s just the first time she’s able to fully advocate for herself within a relationship and that’s really rather important all right where can people find you online if they want to connect with you guys Jayla started you my website where you can also find all my social media che – fiction calm okay and Jax I’m most active actually on Twitter where my tag is butch Jax and has been a tag for like 25 30 years I am on Facebook a lot as well and I don’t even know my website name off the top of my head because I haven’t bought a unique user name but I do link to it in the back of all my books and but it’s easiest to find me as book butch Jack’s on Twitter I’ll add links in the show notes for anybody who’s interested all right thanks guys thank you thanks this has been the right stuff I’m Sheena you can find more information on the lesbian talk show calm or find links to our guests in the show notes if you enjoy what we do consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash the lesbian talk show