Guest Post Saturday: Shipping FanFi, Or, Why I Love Both

Welcome to a special Saturday guest post by the wonderful Margaret Stohl, one of the co-authors of the Beautiful Creatures series and the author of the upcoming Icons, a book that I think most readers of the League will adore. So, without further ado, here's Margie!

Shipping FanFi: Or, Why I Love Both

by Margaret Stohl

Some of our Beautiful Creatures readers were surprised to hear that my first solo series was going to be a Sci Fi near future romance. People understand things like Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books or Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, but from the co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novels (written with my partner in crime, Kami Garcia) an adrenaline-pumping pulse-pounding alien-landing city-destroying sci-fi love story was just – well, strange.

This is the part where I come out of the closet as a huge nerd. Melissa de la Cruz calls us the Geek Girls, and it’s actually true. My two favorite childhood books were The Dark Is Rising, a fantasy series by my most beloved Susan Cooper, and A Wrinkle in Time series, by my other most beloved, Madeline L’Engle.

When one of my very first videogame jobs in my sixteen-year videogame design/writing career gave me the opportunity to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, I was hooked.  I went on to discover Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land, along with one of my all-time favorites, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) and Dan Simmons (The Hyperion books, with a Catholic Space Army) and my personal god of the insane, Philip K. Dick. Sadly, my super crazy soulmate. I’ve read The Martian Time Slip more times than any other book, and that’s probably not a good thing. Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey books (2061 and 3001) have to be read all the way through. His Rendezvous with Rama books shouldn’t be missed. And ICONS itself was born after a giant re-read of his seminal (for me) Childhood’s End.

I love inventive universes, and I love to invent universes. I will always and forever love Hans Solo and the 10^thDoctor equally. As a die-hard #SuperWhoLock, I adore Supernatural’s Sam and Dean Winchester brothers, but I also worship Firefly’s Mal and BSG’s Starbuck (never Apollo.) I am a genre girl, and I have more than one genre.

I hope you do to, and I hope you’ll give ICONS a chance.

XO Margie

Links

Twitter: @mstohl 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheIconsSeries

Tumblr: http://theiconsseries.com/