BBAW Guest: Ana and Thea of The Book Smugglers

(We are celebrating different niches in book blogging this week through guest posts by bloggers and authors....please enjoy Ana and Thea from The Book Smugglers talk about how they merged their intersets. (don't you love the name of their blog?)

Ana and Thea are two very different people. They live on opposite sides of the world, with Ana in Cambridge and Thea in Los Angeles. They have different tastes when it comes to books and movies, as Ana prefers Romances and Fantasy and Thea enjoys SF and bad horror films. But, despite their differences, the one thing they share is a passion for reading, and the never ending quest to find the next Great Book. Together, they form The Book Smugglers!

Thea: Ready to form Voltron! Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected. Infra-cells up; mega-thrusters are go!

Ana: Let's go, Voltron Force!





Also, they are both incredible dorks.

Ana: We started blogging a few months ago (January 2008) when we found out that we were both obsessive book smugglers – getting books delivered to our offices and then smuggling them home little by little hoping that our significant others would not notice – “What? This old thing? It’s been here for ages”. Our aim as bloggers was to have a place were to talk about our passion: books. Ever since then, Thea, who is the Fantasy/ Sci-fi reader has been trying to make me read more of the genre and I have been trying to get her to read more romance.

Thea: When Ana approached me with the idea to start a blog together, I was ecstatic. What better outlet for two obsessive compulsive readers?! My love affair with books began when I was a young girl who could not get enough Nancy Drew, and gradually made the full circuit at my school libraries. From Nancy, Bess and George I moved on to Stephen King, discovered the Fighting Fantasy books, and then made my way to Terry Pratchett and J.R.R. Tolkien. The love affair has never ended, and today I find myself constantly trying new genres and formats, from Science Fiction to Urban Fantasy to comics. And, more often than not, these books all blend and borrow from other genres--Urban Fantasy taking from both the SF realm and inter-splicing Romance elements; Graphic Novels drawn from mythology and pop culture alike; and so on.

Ana: I have always liked Fantasy books – The Lord of The Rings and His Dark Materials Trilogies are two of my favorite series of all time. A good fantasy novel for me is one that mixes good writing with creativity – to be able to expand one’s view of the world into other worlds and other races and cultures that exist only in the writer’s mind. It was only recently that I started reading romance and I have learnt that as a genre, it is so much more than the clinch covers and the silly titles. I have learnt that it’s possible to have a good romantic story, with the obligatory Happily Ever After without ever sacrificing plot or good writing. And I was absolutely ecstatic when I discovered that there are good, no, EXCELLENT Romance novels out there with strong Fantasy elements and vice-versa. A perfect example of this combination is the Tairen Soul series. it has a world building that is reminiscent of Lord of The Rings and with a fantastic romance plotline at the centre of it all.

Thea: The Tairen Soul series is more romantically inclined than most traditional fantasy, but is still very strong on its world building and lore. C.L. Wilson does an admirable job at what we Smugglers love best—blending two genres and ending up with a damn good story.

Stop by our blog and leave a comment anytime between now and this Friday for a chance to win one of five copies of C.L. Wilson's latest Romantic Fantasy novel, King of Sword and Sky, book 3 of the Tairen Soul series (out September 30th)!

AND because it’s time for crazy celebrations and as a homage to the BBAW, Stop by between Thursday and Saturday to win one of ten packages with BOTH The Lost Duke of Wyndham and Mr Cavendish, I Presume (also out on Sep. 30th) by Julia Quinn, one of Ana’s favourite Romance writers.