SINGAPORE – When Thea Guanzon, 34, began writing fan fiction in high school, she never imagined it would lead to a three-book deal for The Hurricane Wars (2023) with Harper Voyager.

“It was just a hobby for me, that’s all I thought it could ever be. Fan fiction was my creative outlet for several years. I went from fandom to fandom and it never really stopped. Even when I was working, I would write fan fiction during my lunch breaks,” she tells The Straits Times over coffee at Toastbox in News Centre.

Fan fiction is written by fans of characters and works from literature and popular culture. These amateur writings are not authorised and usually published informally on online platforms.

Guanzon wrote fan fiction and short stories inspired by everything from the Harry Potter series and Netflix hit The 100 (2014 to 2020), to the animation series Avatar: The Last Airbender and even Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Miserables. Her short stories posted on blogging site Tumblr earned her a dedicated following.

She says: “My most recent fandom and probably the most enduring one where I made the most friends and wrote the most fan fiction for is Star Wars (1977 to present).

“I’ve always been a Star Wars fan, but I never really sought the online fandom aspect of it until I watched The Force Awakens (2015), and then a week later, I was posting my first fan fiction.”

The longer fan fictions she wrote were published pseudonymously on popular fan fiction site Archive Of Our Own (AO3).

The bubbly author says with a laugh: “You will never know my pseudonym, I am taking that to the grave.”

Born in Manila and raised in the Philippines, she graduated from Miriam College with a degree in international studies. Coming from a family of doctors, she made the difficult decision to switch out of molecular biology and biotechnology.

On track to become a foreign service officer, Guanzon’s career path was redirected during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She says: “I guess I got a bit of a following online because of my fan fiction, and during the pandemic, someone in the publishing industry reached out to me and asked if I had ever thought about writing an original novel.

“Because it was lockdown then, I said, ‘Okay, there might not be any better time than now to give this a shot’, and that’s how it all started. I drafted The Hurricane Wars during the pandemic and haven’t looked back since.”

The title existed long before the story, stemming from a night of drinking with her university friends.

Guanzon says: “One time, my friend was really drunk and slurring her words, and I was also really drunk and couldn’t hear her properly. She started singing a song by Citizen Cope and there’s a line that goes, ‘I will carry you through the hurricane waters’ and I heard it as ‘I will carry you through the hurricane wars’. That really stuck with me and I guess it was always waiting in the back of my mind all these years for me to use it.”

The Hurricane Wars follows Talasyn, an orphan hiding the light magic that flows through her veins, and Prince Alaric, the warrior who witnesses Talasyn using the same magic that killed his grandfather and began The Hurricane Wars. When a greater threat looms over their land, the two strike an uneasy alliance to fight back.

The book is being marketed as romantasy – a subgenre of fantasy that has a strong romantic plot line. What sets the story apart is how Guanzon drew inspiration from her Filipino culture and heritage.

Set in a South-east Asian-inspired world with characters of South-east Asian descent, names and attire, The Hurricane Wars has gained attention as the first Filipino fantasy series from a major mainstream publishing house.

“What has stood out for me are the responses from readers who are happy to see themselves represented. A lot of South-east Asian readers, and Filipino readers in particular, who are in the diaspora, have been messaging me, telling me that reading my book has made them miss home or that they recognised a certain cultural reference,” she says earnestly.

She has also been struck by how the book has resonated with second-generation migrants.

“When the Filipino-American and Filipino-European community started telling me how the book has made them feel seen – some even apologised for not being able to speak Tagalog any more – it opened my eyes to how important representation is in all genres, and it’s something I will advocate for moving forward.”

Inevitably, there has also been criticism from readers who want more, or less, Filipino culture in the book.

“Someone might say it’s not as Filipino as it could be, while another person says he can’t pronounce a single name in the book and wishes I had chosen words for English speakers. You can’t please everyone, so you just have to write the story that you want,” she says.

“When I started, I wasn’t sure that people would be into it because the lead characters are South-east Asian and so is the world. But I really appreciate everyone who has read and loved the book.”