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, 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.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter Transcendent and share my podcast feature 30 Minutes in Heaven with your friends! I’d greatly appreciate it! <3

Follow me on Instagram at @teresatran._ or X/Twitter at @teresatran__.

Welcome to my new podcast series called 30 Minutes in Heaven, 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. The idea of 30 minutes in heaven is a riff on the overall concept of my newsletter, which is transcendence. You know when you’re talking to someone who you admire and respect and the conversation is really good and you feel your brain kind of changing and sparking just taking in all the info and you leave the conversation a little bit different than before you started? Almost like you’ve transcended into a new plane of existence? Well, this podcast series will probably not give you that. But it’ll give you something tangential to it! I’ll try my very best to make it so! As close to 30 Minutes in Heaven as you and I’ll ever get, exclusively via my newsletter Transcendent :).

First up, I’m proud to interview debut novelist Jade Song. We chatted back in April 2023 and I’m so thrilled I can finally share our conversation.

"Forget what you know about mermaids," starts Chinese-American writer Jade Song's debut novel, Chlorine. A cross between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, the book follows Ren Yu, a competitive high school swimmer, who pushes her body to the limits every day in pursuit of an athletic scholarship. The book addresses puberty, adolescent sexuality, and Chinese immigrant mother-daughter relationships. As the story progresses, the mermaid fairytales from Ren’s childhood begin to intertwine with her present and the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur.

The book was published on March 28th, 2023 to rave reviews from Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and Buzzfeed News (rip). It truly is one of the best books of 2023. Jade also created a super cool Instagram moodboard account for their book that captures the book's aesthetic, which is if Wong Kar Wai meets The Little Mermaid but is queer and Chinese. You should totally check it out, wherever books are sold! Read more about the book's IG account in this Dirt article. In this interview, Jade and I talk about their debut novel, their history as a competitive swimmer, their thoughts on “the career writer” and their love for the K-pop group BTS.

You can listen to the interview by playing it directly in your email inbox, on the Substack website or app, or via podcast platforms like Spotify Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, etc.

You can also read the transcription of the interview by subscribing to my newsletter Transcendent at www.teresatran.co.

Follow me on Instagram at @teresatran._