Come for the Sex, Leave with a New Perspective: Writing Latin-American Love Stories

The Bothered Blog by Angelina M. Lopez and Allison Whaley

March 2026

Angelina M. Lopez writes what she calls ferocious love stories—emotionally rich, deeply sexy novels that center love, legacy, culture, and identity. Her acclaimed books, including After Hours on Milagro Street, have been recognized by major publications and landed on multiple year-end “Best Of” lists. She’s also the author of the haunting and sensual short story The Haunting of Room 501, now featured on Bothered Stories.

This interview is adapted from a conversation between Angelina and our CEO, Allison Whaley, as part of our podcast series, Bothered Stories: Smut Talks (available on Apple and Spotify).

Why Romance Is Subversive

Allison: Romance is often dismissed as escapist fluff. From a craft perspective, how does the structure of romance actually create space for meaningful themes?

Angelina: The turning point for me was understanding why romance is dismissed. It’s predominantly created by and for women. And women’s work is routinely undervalued.

Look at how much unpaid labor women do in the home—creating holidays, organizing gatherings, building joy for their families. It’s essential, but it’s demeaned because it’s associated with women.

Once I understood that, I stopped internalizing the idea that romance was less serious. I became more aggressive in defending it.

Love stories power some of the most resonant art in history—Shakespeare, opera, painting. Romance novels are the only art form where you get to sit in that love story for 350 pages and are guaranteed a happy ending. That’s the contract: happily ever after or happily for now.

That’s the only rule.

Inside that framework, you can talk about injustice, being seen, power, culture—anything. It’s incredibly permissive. And because it’s entertainment, because it’s pleasurable, it’s also subversive. Readers absorb ideas while they’re having a good time.

And if someone dies at the end, that’s not a romance. Yet those tragic stories are often labeled the “great love stories.” Romance insists on joy. That insistence is radical.

Ferocious Love Stories

Allison: You describe your work as “ferocious love stories.” That word—ferocious—really stands out to me. Why that word?

Angelina: Happily ever afters matter to me. Hope and joy matter to me. We have a right to pleasure in art.

And I’m also angry. I’m super angry.

That anger shows up in my storytelling. My heroines—often Latinas—are angry. They’re ambitious. They’re not always likable. I’ve embraced that. In romance, there’s often an expectation that the heroine softens, bends to the hero’s will. I don’t do that. If she changes, it’s because she chooses to.

I write unlikable heroines. I believe in joy. And I’m angry about the injustices facing people who look like me—whose last names are Lopez.

“Ferocious” captures that duality. These stories are visceral. Sink-your-teeth-into them—sexually, sensually, emotionally. Readers say they like how I describe food or parties in my books. They’re lush.

But underneath that is what I call “angry joy.” That’s where I’m writing from right now.

Pleasure as Fuel

Allison: I sometimes wrestle with this tension—launching Bothered Stories and encouraging people to read smut while the world feels on fire. How do pleasure and resistance coexist?

Angelina: They’re not separate. We’ve been taught they’re separate—that pleasure and politics are divided, that fighting and resting are different responsibilities.

I don’t believe that.

You need pleasure. You need joy. You need safety. That’s how you refuel to keep fighting. Something like Bothered Stories provides that fuel. It gives people a space—even if that space is daring or risky—to experience desire and aliveness.

Pleasure and joy for the resistance. That’s not separate from the work. It sustains the work. That should be your bumper sticker.

The Importance of Latin American Stories

Allison: Your books—and your story for Bothered Stories, The Haunting of Room 501—center Latin American characters, often across generations. Why is that important for you personally? And why does it matter culturally right now?

Angelina: When I first started writing romance, I was going to use a pen name. The first character I wrote was a white woman. I didn’t even think about it.

I was born in Southeast Kansas in the ’70s. I’m third-generation Mexican-American. In our small town, my family’s difference felt almost glorious—tamales at Easter, piñatas at birthdays. I didn’t understand how unique it was to be a large brown family in rural Kansas.

I also didn’t know our history. My family didn’t talk about the racism they endured—segregated schools, being punished for speaking Spanish, not being allowed in certain spaces. I didn’t learn about that until just a few years ago, when I started asking questions.

The first emotion after a racist event is shame. Even if it’s not your fault. That shame silences people. My grandparents and my father worked so hard that I grew up without that level of pain. When it became my turn, and I had a publishing contract, I realized: why wouldn’t I write these stories?

Latin-American people weren’t represented—not on the page and not as authors.

Then, as I was publishing, political rhetoric began othering Latinos again. In 2025, we were watching brown people being erased from historical archives and websites. Mentions of minorities removed. Erased again.

If I have a platform, I have to tell these stories—especially the ones I didn’t know.

The most subversive thing I can do is write passionate, sexy, escapist stories with happy endings that humanize us. In my book After Hours on Milagro Street, there's a great sex scene in the first chapter. My hope is that someone who may not vote in a way that benefits me, comes for the sex, but then reads the story. And then without it being a history book or a thesis, they change their point of view about latin-american people.

It’s easy to victimize people when you dehumanize them. Pleasure can humanize. Fiction can build empathy. That’s my hope.

Short Stories vs. Novels

Allison: You’ve recently published an anthology of short stories, Give It to Me: Sexy Tales About Women Getting the Good Loving They Deserve. Not all novelists enjoy writing short fiction—but you clearly do. What draws you to it?

Angelina: Time is finite. I can only write so many novels—but I have a billion ideas. Short stories let me experiment.

In my anthology, there’s a story called The Phone Call that’s almost entirely dialogue. It’s an old-fashioned phone call. The challenge was: can I tell a complete beginning–middle–end story that’s still sexy using dialogue alone?

Short fiction lets me try things I might never sustain for 100,000 words. I can write paranormal. I can jump into speculative elements. I can experiment structurally.

In a romance novel, you build toward the crescendo moment. In a short story, you start at the crescendo. You begin at impact. That’s a really fun place to live.

The word limit forces craft. Every word has to matter. That discipline sharpens everything.

Honestly, short stories are a break for me. They’re joyful, craft-focused and playful. 

On Writing Sex That’s Good

Allison: You’ve taught workshops on writing emotionally resonant sex scenes. What’s your core advice?

Angelina: First, any shame you feel about writing sex is the patriarchy. It’s not truth. It’s cultural conditioning. You have to actively put that aside.

Second—and this is crucial—sex scenes are plot points.

If you can remove a sex scene and nothing changes in the story, it doesn’t belong there. A sex scene must change something: how the characters see each other, how they see themselves, what happens next.

It’s not about mechanics. I often read scenes that feel like Barbie dolls moving around. It doesn’t matter what body part goes where if there’s no emotional connection.

And that means drafts. You cannot get a sex scene right on the first try because you don’t fully know your characters yet. As you revise, as you understand who they are, their emotional connection deepens—and that reshapes how they connect sexually.

People often ask, “How do you make it hot?” I don’t think about body positioning. I think about what one character says or does that unlocks the other emotionally. That’s where heat lives.

Sex is about character.

Always.