'The Striker' author Ana Huang says it's frustrating that 'women-focused' sex scenes are characterized as 'smut'

Ana Huang is one of the most popular authors on TikTok, known for her steamy Twisted and Kings of Sin novels. Now, she’s back with a new series that’s already heating up the internet.

Forbes reported in July that the 33-year-old romance writer sold more than 1.4 million copies of her books in 2024 alone — and that’s long before the Oct. 22 release of her 13th book, The Striker, which is already a bestseller. The 592-page novel tells the story of a talented soccer player who falls for his rival’s sister, a former prima ballerina.

Huang spoke to Yahoo Entertainment about her latest project, her journey from self-published to superstar writer and BookTok’s constant discourse about sex scenes in romance novels.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you decide what The Striker was going to be about and who it was going to follow?

Ana Huang: This is the first book in the Gods of the Game series and Asher, who is the male main character here, actually showed up as a side character in some of my previous books. I thought there was so much to explore with this famous Premier League footballer, in terms of what his career and personal life would be like. He seemed so interesting to me because he’s so flirty on the surface but there’s so much depth beyond that. The challenge, to me, was who I was going to pair with him. I had to work more on fleshing out Scarlett [Asher’s love interest] than I did with Asher because I had two years to spend with him. I decided I needed someone who understood the pressures of his career.

It seems like you think a lot about how your characters would make a good match. How do you keep things feeling realistic?

Huang: I have to figure out, OK, what’s their emotional wound? What is their personal journey throughout this book? What’s keeping them from being open to love at the beginning of the story? Only certain plots make sense for certain types of characters, and when I look at them together, I think, how do these two people make each other better? How do they help each other overcome their wounds and what do they actually like about the other person? I think that is what makes a romance more realistic — when you’re reading a book and it makes you believe that they’re able to overcome obstacles even after the book ends and after they live happily ever after.

You talk about your characters as if when the book ends, they’re still hanging out. How do you see them?

Huang: They’re definitely hanging out in their background. They’re living their life. You will usually see previous couples pop up in the future. [My books are] interconnected standalones, so you can read each book completely on its own without losing any context. When I enter [these books] it’s kind of like entering a family. It’s like every book is a different house, and you go in for a party, and you sometimes see neighbors come in. Every book has a main couple, but all the other couples are still living their lives — going on vacation, getting married and having children. Their story doesn’t end just because the book ends.

Your own story is incredible — you wrote a whole lot at the start of the pandemic, self-published it and broke out on TikTok. That’s so many people’s dream. But what happened before that? How did you learn how to write and decide that’s what you really wanted to do?

Huang: I started writing all the way back when I was like 5. My mom [asked me to] write her a short story every day. She didn’t tell me it was to improve my English. She was very conscious of nurturing that hobby of mine and would take me to the library every weekend. I grew up a reader, but I didn’t have formal [writing education] beyond English classes in school. It was my creative outlet through middle and high school, and I never shared what I wrote with anyone during those years, and looking back I’m glad I didn’t because it’s not great. When I got older and started burning out a bit at my day job, I knew I enjoyed writing as a hobby but never thought I’d make it into a career until the pandemic came along. It was the tipping point for me rediscovering my love for writing, which I had lost a bit after college when life got so busy.

I think so many people, especially on BookTok, are inspired by that. But if I mention BookTok, I have to ask about how there’s so often discourse about how smut is the only thing people are reading. When that topic comes up, how do you react?

Huang: It seems like that type of conversation cycles back. It’s been the same discourse for the past four years. It’s interesting to me because I feel like people have this very knee-jerk reaction to sex, especially when it’s women-focused. In my books, there are spicy scenes, but if you actually tallied up the percentage of spicy scenes, it’s like less than 20% of them. It’s not all sex and I don’t write erotica — there’s nothing wrong with erotica, either, that’s just its own genre — but it’s funny to me when people read spicy scenes and think, “This is all smut.” Well, no! What do you think happens in the other 350 pages, you know? Just because a book has sex does not mean there’s no personal or character development and no plot. It’s a little frustrating to me that the minute people hit a spicy scene, it’s like all of those other scenes don’t exist anymore. Sex exists in other genres, but people don’t call that smut. There are so many spicy scenes in Game of Thrones, but no one ever calls that “just smut.”

Do you have any favorite tropes or relationship dynamics that you love writing about?

Huang: I love a good enemies-to-lovers arc. I love grumpy-sunshine and I love a good grovel. If fictional men suffer a little, great. There are also a lot of smaller scenes that I really love writing. I don’t even realize I’m consciously doing it, but I feel like there’s a similar scene in all my books with a big dance or gala or club.

What advice do you have for people who also love writing but aren’t sure where to start?

Huang: Just start! I know it sounds easier than it is, because there’s so much that goes through our minds when we are trying to write a story for the first time, but the most inspiring writers are also heavy readers. When you read all these books you love and are inspired by, there can be a bit of pressure to see these completed books and think, my first draft has to live up to those other books I’ve read. You can’t compare your first draft to someone else’s finished product. Once you release that mental block, it becomes a lot easier to sit down and think, “OK, I’m just writing this for myself.” I think we all learn how to grow as we continue writing. And the magic, I think, is also in the editing. You can’t edit a blank page, so just get the story out and everything can be fixed in later stages.

I know there’s already a second book in the series on the horizon. Can you give us any information about that?

Huang: It’s called The Defender, and when people read The Striker and see that title, they’ll know who it’s about. I can’t get into many spoilers, but it will also have a bit of a forbidden romance aspect to it because the heroine is the coach’s daughter.