🎧🎙 30 Minutes in Heaven With: Author Thea Guanzon, On Writing Star Wars Fanfiction to Hitting the New York Times Best Seller's List

Happy Friday!

Welcome to the second episode of 30 Minutes in Heaven, a Transcendent newsletter podcast, which if you’re unfamiliar, is where I interview and chat with cool writers about their creative work and the latest hot topics in pop culture and the book and media industries for 30 blissful minutes in audio format.

This week’s interview is with debut novelist Thea Guanzon

Thea Guanzon

, who wrote the bestselling novel The Hurricane Wars. I first heard of Guanzon back in 2017 when I was deep in the online Star Wars fandom, specifically, in the Rey and Kylo pairing community otherwise known as Reylo. Guanzon was less a ship captain and more a cargo manufacturer, producing the goods in the form of fanfiction about the two characters and indulging in the fandom’s requests for escapist, more explicitly romantic versions of the pairing. From there, she amassed a social media following and became known for her writing and constant dialogue with the fandom. Several years later, she has now become the captain of her own ship in the form of her debut novel, The Hurricane Wars.

Published last month by Harper Voyager, The Hurricane Wars is the first in a planned trilogy about two powerful royals entangled on opposite ends of a war in a Southeast Asian-inspired fantasy world ruled by elemental magic. Talasyn, an orphan who is one of the last remaining Lightweavers, beings who can wield light magic, enters into a reluctant political marriage of convenience with Prince Alaric, the leader of the Night Empire, to keep the peace between the nations. From there, the two characters embark on a slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance for the ages. Upon debut, the book became an instant New York Times, USA Today, Indie List, and Sunday Times bestseller.

I was thrilled to chat with Guanzon right before she embarked on her first book tour in the United Kingdom for the Asian American media outlet Joysauce. In this interview, we talked about her history as a fanfiction writer, landing a major book deal with a traditional U.S. publisher, and her personal recipe for crafting a good, juicy enemies-to-lovers romantic fantasy story.

You can read the edited interview on Joysauce. On the same note, if you’re interested in the expanded version of our conversation where we bring up the supportive Filipino community, whether Guanzon thinks Kylo Ren will come back, her favorite edition of her book, and other fun questions that didn’t make the cut in the Joysauce article, you can listen to the interview here via my newsletter Transcendent by playing it directly in your email inbox, on the Substack website or app, or via podcast platforms like Spotify Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, etc.

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