On Grounding Reality in Fantasy, Kailin Gow – Author Guest Post

In my newest book series, The Wordwick Games, with Rise of the Fire Tamer Book 1 just released, five teens are challenged in a game so real, they  don’t know whether to believe it’s real or it isn’t.

Part of this illusion is the establishing of a world so familiar yet so fantastic to us that there is already a sense of reality in this world. As Gem, Sparks, Rio, Jack, and Kat step into the mysterious castle for the first time, they see a castle steep in history.  So much has happened in this medieval castle.   In The Wordwick Games, Anachronia is the world the five teen gamers enter, thinking it is the 10^th level of a virtual game they are playing.  To enter this world, they must first begin at Word Castle, a medieval castle I based on Warwick Castle in England.  I’ve visited Warwick Castle a number of times and it has always had an impact on me.  The castle, the land, the peacocks, and yes, even the ghosts (it’s said to be haunted).  Finally, I had to make it a character in a book, and it became a major character in The Wordwick Games Series.

The medieval qualities of Anachronia and our familiarity of this time period through fairy tales and folk tales which brings us knights, ladies, dragons, ogres, trolls, and wizards set the reality of this fantasy adventure novel.  Having five teens that walk and talk like real teenagers also provides the realism of this novel.   They are familiar faces and people who we know in school or in our daily lives so we are transported with them into this amazing adventure.

Do you know of any books which feature a building or a place so important to the plot, it becomes a main character in the book?  If so, which books and what is the name of the building or setting?

After winning a contest for a popular game called Wordwick Games, five teens – Gemma, Sparks, Rio, Kat, and Jack, are invited to stay at Wordwick Games inventor Henry Word’s mysterious castle and play the newest level of Workwick Games. Little do they know, the castle is the doorway to a wondrous world call Anachronia where words can be used as weapons, power, and commodity.

There is unrest in Anachronia, and if the five teens can follow the rules of Wordwick Games and prove to be the best player, one of them will be crowned Ruler of Anachronia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Kailin Gow is the multi-published author of The Shy Girls Social Club Handbook for Dealing with Bullies and Other Meanies and 30 more books for teens and young adults, including The Gifted Girls Series which have been recommended by the Parents Teachers Association, PBS Kids, Homeschooling organizations, and Best Teens Books lists. Her fiction titles for older young adults and adults are: Diary of a Discount Donna (A Fashion Fables Novel), and the newly released The Phantom Diaries and Rise of the Fire Tamer (Wordwick Games Book 1). She holds a Masters Degree Communications Management from USC, and Bachelors Degrees in Drama and Social Ecology from UC Irvine. She is a mother, a mentor for young women, and the founder of the social group for girls age 13 to 19 called Shy Girls Social Club at shygirlssocialclub.com.

Read one of her latest interviews here.