Tom Hiddleston is the reason I wrote my book (by Lissa Layland)
Posted on 11 November 2026
Is there anything better than staying up past your bedtime to finish a book? Or binge watch a television series that’s so good you’re not tempted to double-screen even once?
Only one thing: Staying up past your bedtime to finish a book and then realising there are people online who love that book just as much as you do.
Like so many genre authors, many of my formative cultural experiences were shaped during the glorious age of fanfiction dot net. Fandom added layers of appreciation to the books and television shows that dominated my education in storytelling. From writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction, to posting unhinged theories about Pretty Little Liars on tumblr – and SuperWhoLock sandwiched in between – every story that meant something to me was enjoyed through the inherently metatextual lens of fandom.
Even today, whenever I get hooked on something new, I want to jump into the joy of seeing what’s happening in the fan spaces. So when Disney+’s Loki premiered in 2021 – the Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off television show, centred on the mercurial villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in his role as the God of Mischief – I went online. First stop, Reddit for the fan theories. Second stop, AO3 for the fanfiction.
Scrolling through reimaginings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I wondered, “Why hasn’t anyone written a fanfic with a love triangle between Loki and Thor?” That thought was quickly followed by, “Why hasn’t anyone written a book about a love triangle between Loki and Thor?” And then: “Oh. I need to write this book immediately.”
That’s how my debut contemporary romantasy THUNDERSTRUCK came to be. The novel follows Thea, an exchange student who arrives in Norway and finds herself in a love triangle with an intense activist and an aloof environmental law professor – who turn out to be the Norse gods Thor and Loki.
My appreciation for Norse mythology didn’t just spring from comic books. As a nerdy nine-year-old, my favourite lunchtime activity was writing and performing “theatre productions” that were essentially pantheon fanfiction, for my endlessly patient classmates. And like any self-respecting Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan (see above), I had a wiccan phase, where instead of calling upon the nature gods in spells, I was mostly borrowing books from the library and reading about ancient pantheons from around the globe.
I knew when writing my “Loki and Thor love triangle” that I wanted to mash up representations of the characters in both Norse myth and acknowledge their Marvel movie counterparts. I was keen to capture the multiple layers of characterisation in the melting pot of popular culture.
But every interpretation needs a new focus, and in my book that’s a renewed focus on environmentalism. I’ve both worked and volunteered in the climate justice space for many years, including working communications campaigns for legal complaints brought before the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The stories we tell about the land we live on are important to me.
Myths, legends, folklore, taboos and traditions have always explained phenomena in the natural world. But it’s my personal belief that we need new mythologies, new stories, that make the scale of the challenge we encounter in the climate crisis both personal and understandable. We need these new stories to encode standards about how humans should behave in the natural world.
So how did I approach writing this mash-up of the ancient (mythology), the unserious (fanfiction) and the deeply serious (climate change)? I decided to have fun with it and lean into tonal dissonance. In THUNDERSTRUCK I’ve gone “full raised-on-fanfiction” and included all of my favourite romance tropes. I’ve gone “full nerd” with world-building, thinking deeply about how different pantheons of gods co-exist and why they’ve disappeared from the mortal realm. And I’ve gone “full activist” and explicitly talked about the why and how of taking climate action.
And if anyone finds a way to get this ancient-unserious-serious mythology-infused romantasy into the hands of Tom Hiddleston? Thank you.
What early readers are saying
★★★★★ "Wow! This book was so unexpected but in the best of ways. The premise was wholly unique and the writing was excellent." ★★★★★ "Wow!! This was completely unexpected… I pray there's a sequel because I know I'm going to eat it up!" ★★★★★ "WOW! I'm so glad this was recommended to me. This is such a switch from normal romantasy… I feel so invested in this story!"
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Guest post by the author of THUNDERSTRUCK, Lissa Layland
