Welcome to Story Deep Dive!

In this episode, Rachel and Dana unpack the characters of Twisted Love by Ana Huang, looking at how dark romance uses trauma, chemistry, and emotional extremes to build unforgettable protagonists.

Whether you’re a romance writer, storyteller, or craft-obsessed reader, you’ll gain insights on pairing polarizing leads, weaving internal wounds into the love story, and using “dark” elements without losing emotional credibility.

You can also watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube!

Estimate Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome Back & Life Updates from Danja Tales

Rachel opens the show, re-introduces the podcast, and sets up today’s focus on Twisted Love’s characters. She prompts Dana for a life update, and Dana shares how attending the Quilt Festival became a much-needed creative reset and why tactile, non-writing hobbies are essential to keeping her writing brain healthy.

03:30 – Retreat Season, Book Club & Business Reflection

Dana talks about wrapping the final Danja Tales book club pick for 2025 and her desire to step outside straight contemporary romance for their next selection. She previews the upcoming three-day virtual retreat, explaining how it blends teaching, deep reflection, detailed workbooks, and year-end planning so authors can transition into the new year with clarity and momentum.

11:00 – Twitch, Horror Holidays & Story in Video Games

Rachel gives her monthly Twitch update, sharing how she pivoted into “Horror Holidays” after missing Halloween horror season. She talks about playing Still Wakes the Deep, her fear of underwater settings, and why horror games—though awful to play—are incredibly fun to experience with a live community. They both reflect on how story, character, and tension show up in games just as much as in books.

18:45 – Fear Responses, Swears, and Why This Still Matters to Story

Dana and Rachel joke about their wildly different fear responses: Rachel swears like a sailor when scared, while Dana’s instinct is to fight. Beneath the laughter, they circle back to how all these mediums—movies, games, horror—are powered by story, character growth, and emotional arcs that writers can study and translate onto the page.

22:15 – Twisted Love in a Nutshell

Dana delivers a focused story summary: Twisted Love is a steamy, dark-leaning contemporary romance about Ava Chen, a sunshine heroine with buried trauma, and Alex Volkov, her brother’s best friend and obsessive, damaged protector. What begins as reluctant guardianship turns into an intense, forbidden love that forces both to confront old wounds, guilt, desire, and the armor they’ve built around their hearts.

24:20 – High-Level Character Takeaways: Polarizing but Compelling

They introduce their main character lens: these are not perfect, “safe” characters—they’re polarizing, flawed, and often difficult, which is part of their appeal. Dana frames Alex as a “damaged protector” and Ava as “sunshine with scars”, emphasizing how their shared trauma but opposite coping styles fuel both the romance and the conflict. Their chemistry becomes a form of conflict in motion, especially with the brother’s-best-friend setup tightening external stakes.

34:40 – Trauma Pairing, Invisible Tethers & Universal Fantasy in Dark Romance

Rachel digs into how Huang develops Ava and Alex by putting them in the same problem space—trauma—but on opposite ends:

Ava forgets; Alex remembers everything.

Ava chooses light; Alex chooses revenge.

They talk about universal fantasies in dark romance (like “touch her and die,” “he falls first and harder,” “he’d burn the world down for her”) and how those fantasies tap into cultural hunger for justice and protection in an unsafe world. Dana explains that crafting a pairing like this is like assembling a puzzle: you need sharp contrast and invisible tethers that make the relationship feel both impossible and inevitable.

47:30 – Dual Protagonists, Dual Payoffs & Why Love Is a Catalyst (Not a Cure)

Dana emphasizes that romance is a dual protagonist genre—both leads must have real arcs, healing, and payoffs. They explore how:

Ava learns to truly protect her peace and agency.

Alex learns to feel and dismantle the walls around his wound.

Rachel connects this to story structure: the relationship shows them what’s possible, then forces them to confront the internal wounds that block that possibility. They stress that love is not the solution to the problem—it’s the catalyst that drives the transformation required for a true HEA.

58:00 – False Highs, Dark Moments & Going There with Your Characters

They discuss how the book uses a false high—a stretch where everything seems blissful—before ripping the rug out. This makes the dark moment sharper and more emotionally resonant, because the groundwork has been carefully laid. Dana issues a challenge to writers who struggle to hurt their characters: identify what your character is most afraid of and make them face exactly that. For writers who “go dark just to go dark,” she cautions that the emotional groundwork must still be there or the drama won’t land.

1:10:10 – Act Four Choices & A Hint of Telling vs. Showing

Dana notes that some of the fourth-act resolution leans more on summary/telling than fully dramatized scenes, likely due to time and pacing considerations. She points out that it still works because the earlier acts did so much heavy lifting with character groundwork and emotional investment—but flags this as something she’d unpack more from an editorial lens.

1:17:40 – Wrap-Up, Read-the-Book Reminder & Call to Action

They close by encouraging listeners to read Twisted Love if they haven’t yet, especially if they want a hands-on example of dark-leaning contemporary romance with strong emotional stakes. Then they invite listeners to like, subscribe, leave reviews, and share questions or book recs ahead of next week’s episode.

About the Book Selection

He has a heart of ice...but for her, he’d burn the world.

Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can’t escape.

Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.

But when he’s forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he starts to feel something in his chest:

A crack.

A melt.

A fire that could end his world as he knew it.

***

Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can’t remember.

But despite her broken past, she’s never stopped seeing the beauty in the world…including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn’t want.

Her brother’s best friend.

Her neighbor.

Her savior and her downfall.

Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen—but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both…and everything they hold dear.

Where to Find the Book

Twisted Love by Ana Huang is available in several formats. It’s also widely available in libraries and online retailers. Details on her website.

Next Episode:

In the next episode, Rachel and Dana return with their Editor’s Takes on Twisted Love. They’ll dig into structural choices, Act Four execution, where the book leans into “telling” over “showing,” and what writers should emulate, interrogate, or avoid when building their own dark-leaning contemporary romances. Be sure to tune in!

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