Sara Raasch Conjures Magic, Mischief, and Queer Romance
The bestselling fantasy author discusses queer romance, rival wizards, and her upcoming novel The Fake Divination Offense.
“With every book I start, I always try to have an internal dialogue with myself about why I’m writing this, why this story, why these characters, why everything,” says Sara Raasch. “I always want to make sure I’m coming at it from a place of genuineness, that it’s something that I want to do, and that I’m not forced into it or following trends.”
For the 36-year-old New York Times bestselling author, the narrative path often leads to magic. “I always come back to magic because I love that sense of escapism, that sense that there’s something else magical about the world — something that makes it fantastical, this element of fantasy and joy.”
Raasch began her career in 2014 with a series of young adult novels known for their elaborate world-building, including Snow Like Ashes (2014), Ice Like Fire (2015), and These Divided Shores (2019). In 2024, she made the leap to adult novels, often with a fantasy bend and always with a queer romance hook.
“The bulk of my early career was spent in high fantasy, and the focus of those books was always world-building,” says Raasch. “That’s what people expect when you read a high fantasy book. In romances, the main thing people expect is the characters. You don’t even care what the world is. You’re there for the romance between these two characters, and romance only really hits if the characters are strong.”
Raasch currently has two adult romance series. Her “Royals and Romance” books include The Nightmare Before Kissmas (2024) and Go Luck Yourself (2025), while the “Magic & Romance” books include The Entanglement of Rival Wizards (2025) and the forthcoming The Fake Divination Offense (2026), which will be released by Bramble in May. (To read an exclusive preview of the first chapter in the magazine, click here.)
Raasch finds the romance genre appealing. “I just want to write something fun, light, and joyful,” she says. Her books reflect that. The Entanglement of Rival Wizards, for example, is a brisk, bright page-turner about two twentysomething wizards — bitter enemies — living in Philadelphia. Circumstances force them into a far closer relationship than either could have expected.
The bisexual author has so far written only books featuring gay romances. She notes that “there are fairly explicit sex scenes” in her books and says she has grown accustomed to writing scenes depicting encounters between two men.
“It’s challenging from a logistics standpoint, because it took me a while to figure out, ‘Okay, what is going on?'” she says of her initial foray into romance writing. “But it was more challenging to go from writing teen high fantasy where the [romantic scenes] faded to black — there was never a question in teen books that you ever do anything past a certain point.” She welcomed the freedom in adult romances to go beyond the fade-out.
“I feel like with each consecutive book I’ve gotten a little more comfortable exploring how to incorporate sex scenes into the story and the characters,” she says. “But I do try to approach every sex scene from the standpoint of: Why is this particular sex scene I’m showing on the page important to these characters in this relationship, in this moment in the book? Not that there’s anything wrong with gratuitous sex scenes, but in my books, I want them to feel purposeful. I’m very Virgo, very Type A controlling, so I need every scene in the book to do something.”
Raasch is at work on a new book that includes “sapphic sex,” and there’s a noticeable glint in her eye when she mentions it. “Obviously, I have more experience in that area,” she laughs.
Writing from a queer perspective is important to Raasch, especially during an era of backlash from an administration that would prefer to see LGBTQ novels removed from bookshelves.
“I want these books to be a breath that people can take in the midst of all this other crap, because we get hammered with it constantly,” she says. “We don’t even have to seek it out anymore — it just finds us. Because I think, especially in moments like this, it’s easy to forget that it’s possible to have queer joy, to just be happy and exist and not have these elements of ourselves be challenged and threatened all the time. We can just have silly little romances and silly little fun. It can just be good to have that reminder. I want these books to be something that people can use to help bolster themselves against everything else that is happening.”
Raasch, one of the featured guest authors at this weekend’s Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., appreciates the human connection such gatherings afford.
“It reminds me that there are people out in the world,” she says. “It’s not just my computer and my little office. I get to see readers, engage with them, and hear how my books have impacted them — what worked and what maybe didn’t. It’s just nice to get out and touch grass, I guess is the saying, to be reacquainted with actual human people. Interactions like that are invaluable.”
The Entanglement of Rival Wizards is available now at Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Indigo.ca, and Amazon. The Fake Divination Offense will be released on May 19 and is available for pre-order. Visit sararaaschbooks.com.
Awesome Con runs through March 15 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Single-day and three-day badges are available, with prices ranging from $74.20 to $137.80. Visit awesome-con.com/badges.
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