I'm Renee, and my love for gaming and reading has been around for as long as i can remember. Since the Atari, Then the NES, then a slow, happy slide through every console and PC generation since - these days I'm just as likely to be knee-deep in a 300-hour RPG on PC as I am curled up with a controller on the couch. 

Gaming isn't a phase to grow out of, and reading has always run right alongside it. Different kind of world-building, same appetite for disappearing into something for six hours and resurfacing slightly feral.

I'm Australian, based out of Bankstown, in my early thirties, and gaming and reading make up a massive part of who I am.

Blades & Bookmarks comes from that, straight from the heart, not from a market gap spotted on a spreadsheet.

Most nights it comes down to the same fight: reread my favourite book for the fifth time, or finally make a dent in the TBR pile that's turned into its own ecosystem.

Or on the other side of the couch, a controller that's rarely put down, or touch my PC that's been running idle since lunchtime.

Between it all, there is always a stack of books on one side of my desk and a stack of controllers (or a keyboard covered in crumbs) on the other side, and never anything in the gift aisle that understood either side of that without being embarrassing about it. 

Cartoon hearts, "gamer girlfriend" mugs, boyfriend jokes in Comic Sans. None of it fit someone who takes both things seriously.

So I made what I wanted to find. Blades & Bookmarks is for the person still loading in and the person deciding what to read next, sometimes both at once. This isn't just a brand, it's a passion I get to build in the open.