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Ana Huang on Twisted Games
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
Writing blind, before anyone was watchingBefore Twisted Love went viral on BookTok and turned her into one of the genre’s most-watched names, she was writing entirely for herself, with no audience expectations to navigate and no fan theories already circulating about where the story would go.
No, not really. It was kind of wild. I kind of just wrote off the things that I wanted to see as a reader. I was fortunate enough that when it launched I had a lot of people in the Bookstagram and BookTok community who were kind enough to share and promote it.
That freedom did not last. By the time she was deep in the Twisted Games manuscript, she was also holding down a corporate communications job and watching the pressure of a suddenly large audience gather around a book she hadn’t finished yet. The moment she describes below became the reason she names Twisted Games, not Twisted Love, as the book she’s most proud of.
I am the proudest of being able to finish Twisted Game, which is the second book in my Twisted series. It came right after Twisted Love took off. It was the first time I had to feel that pressure of outside voices. It was also the first time in my career I had to stay away from reading my reviews. I was paralyzed with this creative anxiety for weeks on end, and I still had a day job at the time. There was a point where I wasn’t sure if I would finish it.
She finished it. That fact is the premise of everything that followed in her career.
How she wrote it
Cutting the feed, keeping the draftFan enthusiasm for Twisted Games was already building in public while she was still writing it, and readers were posting theories about where the story would go. She describes the specific way that noise started to cost her.
When people comment that they’re so excited, they hope it’s as good as the last one, I know they mean well, but sometimes they do get in my head. What if they don’t like it as much as the previous book? Or readers will come up with fan theories, and I’m like, that doesn’t actually happen in the book. Will they be disappointed if my book doesn’t turn out to be this thing they’ve already deemed it to be? Sometimes, I have to take a break from social media.
Cutting off that outside noise was not just a one-time fix during the Twisted Games draft. It became a permanent structural change to how she works, and she is candid about what it cost her in pace.
When I’m writing, I can’t look at the comments because I think it will obstruct that creativity. I think that’s a reason that I write a bit slower now, because I don’t have the same amount of freedom that I had when I was an indie author that no one had heard of.
On the sentence-level craft of the book, she is equally specific. The intimate scenes that drive so much of Twisted Games’ reputation are not written in sequence with the rest of the manuscript.
When it comes time if I’m writing a book and I hit a sex scene, I put a placeholder, and I come back and I fill it in. I just have to be in a little bit of a different headspace to write them. If I’m not feeling it and I just need a little inspiration, I will read erotica just to get into that mindset.
Beyond individual scenes, travel functions in Twisted Games as a deliberate structural device. Rhys and Bridget’s relationship shifts during a trip to Eldorra, and Huang has laid out the theory behind why she places turning points off the home turf of her characters in every book she writes.
Travel is an important part of my books. All my couples have a destination that’s special to them, and their trips usually mark some sort of turning point in their relationship. When we step out of our routines and comfort zones, we’re more likely to open up. I’ve shared things with friendly strangers that I met while traveling that I’ve never shared with friends or family back home. There’s something about new environments that broadens our minds and makes us more vulnerable, and it is that vulnerability, that sense of bonding that comes from sharing a unique experience, that brings my couples closer despite their previous resistance.
beccavry.wordpress.com, “Ana Huang Interview - becca vry - WordPress.com”The personal thread
The one hero she’d actually dateHuang began reading romance at twelve, and she has written morally complex heroes across the Twisted series, men whose behavior in fiction she would not tolerate in a real relationship. Rhys Larson, Twisted Games’ stoic, lethal bodyguard hero, is the exception she makes.
If I had to date someone in real life, probably a Rhys Larson type from Twisted Games. In fiction, I love the morally grey characters, but I think in real life, murder is not gonna go that well.
The distinction she draws between her fiction heroes and the men she would actually want matters because it maps onto a rule she applies to all of them without exception, Rhys included. Whatever darkness a character carries, one line does not move.
What they have in common is that they always treat love interests with respect. They will never cheat on them, and even if they make stupid mistakes, they will always regret it and try to become a better person.
What she wants us to sit with
The fantasy, and why it’s allowedRhys Larson is a bodyguard who anticipates every threat before Princess Bridget has to think about it. When Huang was asked why readers respond so strongly to that archetype, her answer went straight to the exhaustion of contemporary life rather than to anything specific about romance conventions.
It’s the fantasy of having someone just take care of all these things so you don’t have to think about it. In real life, we are overwhelmed by all of the decisions we have to make, and it can be exhausting. In real life, we’d still want that agency and independence, but I think in fantasy it’s okay to let go a little bit and say, ‘Here’s this person who will take care of all these things for me, and all I have to do is sit back and enjoy it.’
That case for fantasy extends to the genre as a whole. Speaking at Spotify’s Spicy Audiobooks launch, she addressed what she thinks romance novels are actually doing for readers during periods of uncertainty.
There is a comfort in reading a genre where, no matter what happens, how messy or how hard things get, there is always a happily ever after. I think that it’s just really comforting and kind of a solace amidst all of the craziness.
The Twisted series is built around a single close-knit group of women, each book following one member of that circle. The structure is not incidental. She has named the logic behind it, and it applies to Twisted Games’ Bridget as much as to any other character in the series.
I love the found family trope in fiction and usually write stories that feature close friend groups, especially those with strong, supportive female friendships. There’s also the broader message that people who are meant to find each other will find each other, and that every decision we make—even if we don’t know it at the time—brings us closer to where we’re meant to be.
For a book about a princess constrained by duty and a bodyguard constrained by the rules of his job, that philosophy gives the love story something to stand on: every barrier that keeps Rhys and Bridget apart is also, in Huang’s telling, a step toward the ending they were always moving toward.