When we read a book, our minds create a world from the words on the page. We picture the characters, the places they visit and the events that unfold. But we also make assumptions about what belongs in that world. When something doesn’t fit, perhaps our minds quietly dismiss it.
McVale’s observation is part of the magic of The Word Guardians, but it also makes me wonder about our own lives. Does this happen outside the pages of a book?
Seeing isn’t always noticing
We go through life making assumptions about the world around us. We recognise familiar places, form impressions of people and develop ideas about how things work.
These expectations help us make sense of the world. But they can also influence what we notice.
We might overlook something that contradicts what we believe. We might interpret someone’s actions according to the opinion we’ve already formed of them. Or we might dismiss an unfamiliar possibility simply because it doesn’t fit our assumptions.
Sometimes, we’re so busy looking for what we expect to find that we miss what’s there. Ever searched a drawer or cupboard for something and then found that what you were looking for was right in front of you?
Of course, not every unfamiliar possibility has a hidden meaning, and not every unusual experience points to something extraordinary. But there’s a difference between questioning an experience and dismissing it without a second thought.
What if seeing something and being prepared to notice it are two different things?
What might we be missing?
How often do we overlook something because it doesn’t fit the story we’ve told ourselves?
How many possibilities do we dismiss because they seem unlikely, unfamiliar or simply outside what we believe to be possible?
Perhaps the things we don’t see aren’t necessarily hidden from us. Perhaps, sometimes, we’re just not expecting them.
I’m not suggesting we should believe everything we see or accept every unexplained experience as something extraordinary. But I do wonder whether being a little more curious, and a little less certain, might help us notice things we would otherwise miss.
And so I’d like to leave you with a question.
What are some things we see but don’t see?
Have you ever experienced a moment when something suddenly became obvious, and you wondered how you’d overlooked it for so long? Or have you ever encountered something you couldn’t quite explain, only to dismiss it because it didn’t fit what you thought was possible?
Perhaps the most interesting question isn’t simply what we can see.
It’s what we might notice if we were prepared to look differently.
And what did you spot in the image above that didn’t quite fit?
The Word Guardians and The Battle for the Peacekeepers is available on Amazon in eBook and paperback formats. It’s the first of five novels in The Word Guardians series, fantasy adventures in which stories become living magical worlds, and battles are fought within them over the power of imagination, freedom and choice.
Have you ever felt drawn to a place you’ve never visited? A country you’ve always wanted to see? A particular period of history, or a city and streets that hold an inexplicable attraction for you? You might spend hours reading about its past, looking at photographs or imagining what it would be like to walk through its streets.
But why that place? What makes that special to us?
In What makes a place special to us, I explored how our memories and imagination can transform a physical location into something deeply personal. In this article I’d like to consider what happens when we’ve never actually been to the place in question.
What makes a place a place in our mind
Our minds gather fragments of places we have encountered through stories, photographs or history, and we begin to build something of our own. We imagine the streets, the buildings, the people who lived there and the lives they might have led. Gradually, the place becomes familiar.
We might feel a sense of attachment to somewhere we’ve only ever experienced through our imagination. I find this particularly fascinating when thinking about historical places.
Take Victorian London, for example. A realm explored in The Word Guardians and the Battle for the Peacekeepers. We can read about its streets, its buildings and the people who inhabited them. We can picture the gas lamps, the crowded thoroughfares and the lives unfolding behind closed doors. We can never experience that London exactly as it was, but our imagination can bring it to life.
Perhaps our fascination is simply the pleasure of imagining another time and place. Or maybe we discover something that resonates with us personally.
What places represent for us
Why might someone be captivated by Ancient Alexandria when other historical cities hold little interest for them? Why might one person feel an extraordinary connection to a particular landscape, while another sees nothing especially remarkable about it?
We might feel a sense of longing for somewhere we’ve never seen. We might find ourselves returning to the same photographs, reading the same historical accounts or dreaming about visiting a place for years, without ever quite understanding why it matters so much to us.
Is it simply curiosity? Or could our attraction be connected to something more personal, something about who we are, what we value or what we feel is missing from our lives?
After all, sometimes we are drawn to places because of what they represent rather than what they are.
A distant coastline might represent freedom. An old city might evoke a longing for a different way of life. A quiet village might represent the sense of belonging we wish we had.
The place becomes a vessel for something within us. And perhaps that is enough to make it special.
A feeling of déjà vu
But what about those moments when a place seems familiar for no obvious reason?
Maybe you’ve looked at a photograph of an unfamiliar street and felt that you’ve seen it before. Or perhaps you’ve arrived somewhere for the first time and experienced a sense of déjà vu.
Perhaps it’s simply the way our minds work. Perhaps it’s the power of imagination, or the unexpected connections our memories can make. But the familiarity could hint at something we cannot remember on a conscious level.
Could some places belong to another life?
What if some of the places we feel drawn to relate to places we have been in another life?
The idea of reincarnation suggests that life might not be limited to a single existence. If that were so, could anything from a previous life could remain with us in some way. Maybe this isn’t a clear memory, but could be a feeling, a fascination or an inexplicable connection.
There is no reliable way to conclude from such experiences alone that we have lived before. A fascination with a historical place isn’t proof of a past life, and feelings of familiarity can have many explanations. But the possibility raises an interesting question and it’s something I explore in The Word Guardians and the Lost Beginnings.
Wrapping up
A place can be more than its physical surroundings. It can hold stories, evoke emotions and mean something different to every person who encounters it. And I believe that this is true for places that we’ve never visited, too.
In The Word Guardians, the magical realms are created by readers in their mind’s eye. They’ve never necessarily visited these places, but they become special through the stories they read.
For the characters of The Word Guardians stories, they visit the places created by the collective imaginations of readers and find special experiences of their own. For Sam, the country mansion realm evokes happy family memories. For Yas, Victorian London piques her interest in history and culture for the period. And while trapped in the Otherworld and made to forget who she was, Mira discovers her past, her Lost Beginnings.
Both readers and the characters find a special relationship with places, as I believe we do too. So, read The Word Guardians and the Battle for the Peacekeepers and experience the realms of the Word Guardians. See what you create in your mind’s eye and how the places the characters visit are special to you.
What if you discovered that your entire existence was simply a supporting role in someone else’s story? What if you were tired of standing in the background while someone else became the hero? And what if you had the power to change it?
The Otherworld is built from ancient stories. Its kingdoms, characters and legends have existed for generations, each story becoming part of the fabric of this realm.
But what happens when one character decides that the story he has been given isn’t enough?
The forgotten knight
At the beginning of the story, we meet a knight who is tired of being a minor figure in someone else’s tale. He’s been used and discarded, but he has never been the hero.
So, when a mysterious Grey Witch offers him a bargain, he sees an opportunity. Help her find her missing sisters, and in return she will help him claim a story of his own.
At first, it sounds like an irresistible offer. After all, don’t we all want to have absolute control over our own story?
But there is a difference between changing your future and rewriting the stories that have already been written. The knight begins stealing stories. And the consequences are far greater than he realised.
When stories become reality
As the knight reshapes ancient legends so that he becomes the hero, and king, the world around him changes. Histories are rewritten. And beneath these stolen stories lie something even more dangerous: ancient archetypes with the power to affect reality itself.
This is one of the things I particularly enjoy about the Otherworld. It allows me to explore an idea that has always fascinated me: Where does a story end and reality begin?
We often think of stories as something we create. We write them down, tell them around a campfire, read them in books and pass them from one generation to another. But stories also shape us.
The heroes we admire. The villains we fear. The journeys we recognise. The idea of the quest, the sacrifice, the betrayal, the lost kingdom or the unlikely hero.
These patterns have been appearing in stories for thousands of years. They have a power of their own.
Who gets to be the hero?
There is another question behind the knight’s desire to rewrite his story. What makes someone a hero?
Is it the role they are given? The way history remembers them? The number of battles they win? Or is being a hero something that comes from the choices we make?
The knight believes that if he can change the story, he can change who he is. But stories have consequences for everyone involved in them.
And when you change one part of a story, you may discover that you have changed everything else as well.
This puts Yas and Sam, along with the enigmatic Penn, in a difficult position. They aren’t simply trying to stop someone from stealing stories. They are trying to understand what is happening to an entire realm as its stories, and history, are rewritten.
And Penn has a particularly important connection to the knight. One that reaches deeper than anyone else realises.
The danger of becoming the author
There is something strangely tempting about the knight’s ambition. Who hasn’t imagined changing something about their own story?
Perhaps we would rewrite a mistake. Take a different path. Give ourselves a different ending. Make ourselves the hero instead of the person standing at the edge of someone else’s adventure.
But perhaps our stories aren’t meant to be controlled completely. Perhaps the unexpected parts, the mistakes, the detours, the people we meet along the way, are what make them ours.
The knight discovers that becoming the author of your own story can be very different from simply living it.
Because once you start rewriting the world to fit the story you want, what happens to everyone else? And what happens when the story starts rewriting you?
A new journey into the Otherworld
The Word Guardians and the Story Thief takes Yas and Sam back into the Otherworld, where ancient stories are not just remembered. They are alive and evolving.
It’s a story about identity, ambition, imagination and the power that stories can have over the worlds we create.
But most of all, it’s about the danger of believing that we can have complete control over a story simply by determination.
It seems like a simple question. A place has a location, a history, a setting. We can find it on a map, take photographs of it, describe it to someone who has never been there. But what makes it special to us? Perhaps it isn’t really about the place, but the idea of it in our minds?
Think about somewhere that means something to you. Perhaps the house where you grew up, or a beach you visited as a child. It could be a school, a park, a town or a particular room where something important happened.
When you think about it, you probably don’t picture just the physical location. Sure, you remember what it looked like, what happened, the sounds, the smells and the feelings. But maybe it was more about what you experienced while you were there? Who were you?
The physical place likely still exists, but the place in your memory is something much more than walls, streets or landscape. So, I’d like to suggest that it’s our interpretation of a place that makes it special to us. And this can lean on several pieces.
A place is more than its history
History can give a place a layer of meaning, and something special for us.
We can visit somewhere we’ve never been before and become fascinated by what happened hundreds of years ago. We might walk through an old building and wonder about the people who once lived within its walls. We might stand in a street and imagine the lives that unfolded there.
The London of today is obviously a real place. You may well have visited it and have your own memories of it. But when we think about Victorian London, we aren’t simply thinking about streets and buildings. We construct another London in our minds, related to what we remember of the present.
We imagine the people who walked those streets, the sounds and smells, the clothing, the conversations and the lives being lived behind closed doors.
History gives us fragments and our imagination fills in the rest. And this is the beauty of the realms in The Word Guardians. The realms are what we see in our mind’s eye as we read and a place that existed long before we were born becomes vividly real. And more than that, in The Word Guardians series, those that have the ability can visit it.
In our imagination, we can walk its streets. We can picture its buildings and imagine a marketplace and people around us. We can almost hear the conversations. We’re there, in our minds and a place we have never seen can feel surprisingly real.
And perhaps this is where the boundary between place and imagination becomes interesting. If a place can exist physically, historically and imaginatively, which one is real to us?
You could argue that all three are. But again, I’d like to suggest that a place becomes truly special to us only when we bring something of ourselves to it.
The places we call home
Home isn’t necessarily the biggest house, the most beautiful landscape or even the place where we have spent the most time. Home is a feeling.
In The Word Guardians, Sam experiences this in The Country Mansion. There is something about the place that gives him a feeling of home. It’s about time shared with his family, and especially his Mom, who sadly is no longer around.
For Sam, The Country Mansion is a place where she still lives on. He has a belonging. He felt safe, comfortable, connected. Or to put it into one word. It felt like ‘home’.
What exactly are we recognising when somewhere feels like home?
Are we recognising the physical place? A memory of that place? Or something about ourselves? And is what we remember what actually happened?
What do we actually remember?
Memory is often described as something that happened in the past and that we retain in our minds. But our memories aren’t photographs, and they can change over time.
They are influenced by emotion, imagination and everything that has happened to us since.
The same place can mean something completely different to us at different stages of our lives. A childhood home might once have seemed ordinary. Years later, we might remember it with affection, sadness or longing.
The physical house hasn’t changed in our memory but our relationship with the place has. That’s what we carry with us. That’s what makes a place special.
The places we carry
This is one of the things I find fascinating about the idea of magical realms. A realm might appear to be a physical place, but our experience of it is inevitably personal.
We bring our memories into it, our expectations, fears, imagination and our understanding of the world as we know it.
Two people could potentially stand in exactly the same place and experience something completely different. They each have a feeling that it is ‘theirs’.
What makes a place ‘ours’?
A place becomes ours though the memories we attach to it, the experiences we have there, the people we share it with and the stories we tell about it.
And if all these things transform a physical location into something deeply personal, then perhaps there are places we carry with us without even realising it. There may be places that are special to us that we have only encountered in our imagination.
This is where the boundaries between memory and imagination begin to become rather more interesting, and it’s something I’ll talk about next time.
In the meantime, to learn more about the extraordinary power of memory and imagination in the Word Guardians series, and how it creates magical realms in which a secret war is being fought, start reading Book 1 – The Battle for the Peacekeepers, today.
Have you ever met someone for the first time and felt you already knew them? Not knew of them. Actually knew them.
Perhaps it was their voice, their manner, or simply a feeling you couldn’t explain. A strange familiarity that seemed to exist before the meeting itself.
We usually find an explanation. Coincidence. Chemistry. Déjà vu. Our minds looking for patterns.
But what if, just for a moment, we considered another possibility.
The idea of reincarnation raises a fascinating question. If we have lived previous lives, perhaps we don’t necessarily remember them consciously. Maybe something survives without becoming a memory in the conventional sense. A feeling, a connection, a recognition.
And perhaps the strangest experience of all would be to meet someone from that life again.
Knowing someone you don’t know
Imagine discovering that the person sitting opposite you was once someone you loved deeply.
They don’t remember. You barely know each other. Yet somewhere inside you is the knowledge that you have shared a life before.
How would you behave?
Would you expect the old relationship to somehow continue? Would you trust the connection? Or would you recognise that although their soul, or whatever part of us survives, may be familiar, this is still a different life, and they are still a different person?
They meet in this life as strangers, but Sunyal seems to know that their story began much earlier.
Mira experiences glimpses of that past, but initially she questions them. Are these memories genuinely hers? Are they fragments of another life? Or is Sunyal somehow putting the thoughts into her mind?
And that question matters.
Because if we cannot trust our own memories, how can we know what is real?
What if forgetting is part of the design?
In The Lost Beginnings, forgetting isn’t simply a natural consequence of being reborn.
Some characters have no access to their past because their memories are being controlled by the power behind the Otherworld.
That introduces a darker philosophical possibility.
What if forgetting is not an accident?
What if knowing where we came from gives us knowledge that someone doesn’t want us to have?
Memory shapes identity. It tells us who we are, where we belong and what has happened to us. Take away the past, and you can profoundly change how someone understands the present.
Perhaps, then, controlling memory is another form of controlling choice.
And that brings the story back to one of the central ideas of the Word Guardians series: freedom.
If someone else decides what you are allowed to remember, can your choices truly be your own?
Ultimately, we don’t have to know
I don’t know whether reincarnation is real. Perhaps it is, perhaps not.
Perhaps those strange moments of recognition are simply the mysteries of the human mind. Or, they could be something else.
Maybe we don’t carry complete memories from one life to another. Maybe we carry impressions, something buried deeper than conscious thought.
And perhaps every now and then, something triggers that buried knowledge. A face, a place, a voice or a person.
For Mira, discovering her history with Sunyal doesn’t make their relationship easier. As you’ll discover in The Lost Beginnings, it makes it more complicated.
Because knowing you have loved someone before doesn’t tell you how to love them now. You still have to meet them again and learn who they have become. You still have to choose.
And perhaps that is the most important thought of all.
Even if we have lived before, this life is still ours to decide
Maybe the past can explain the connection. Maybe it can reveal where the story began. But it cannot determine where the story goes next.
One of the unexpected highlights of The Shadow Readers was watching two very different characters being forced to work together. Penn, the enigmatic figure who always seems to know more than he lets on, and Sam, Yas’s fiercely loyal friend, spend much of the novel exchanging sarcastic remarks while somehow becoming an effective team.
I recently had the chance to have coffee with them and find out what they really think of each other. As it turns out, getting a straight answer from either of them is about as difficult as you’d expect…
Interviewer: Book 3, The Shadow Readers, is the first time readers really get to see the two of you working together. Given that neither of you would have chosen the other as a partner, what was your first impression of each other—and has it changed?
Sam looked at Penn.
“You go first, Dragon,” he teased.
Penn tilted his head in his trademark way before turning to me.
“I’ve worked with a number of the characters in the Word Guardians and sometimes wonder if I know what they’re really thinking. I do with Sam. He’s right there, with a quip, whether it’s helpful or not.”
Sam looked from Penn to me.
“A quip?” he asked.
“You don’t know what that is?” Penn replied. “Do you?”
“I’m ignoring that,” Sam said indignantly, looking away. “I know what that is. And I’ll say this about Penn. I feel in The Shadow Readers that I got to see a different side of him. Even more so in the upcoming The Story Thief. He’s really all about hon…”
Penn cut him off immediately. “I think you’ve answered the question. Let’s not give anything away.”
Interviewer: Readers have spent two books trying to work out whether Penn is a hero, a villain, or something in between. What’s the biggest misconception people have about the other one?
“You go first,” suggested Penn.
“Can I?” Sam asked. “I mean, I don’t want to give away anything.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stop you if you do.”
Taking the playful dig in his stride, Sam turned back to me.
“I’m not sure about misconception, but I think everyone sees something different in Penn, and I think it’s intentional.”
Penn sat listening intently, one leg crossed over the other, thumb and finger resting thoughtfully on his chin.
“Go on,” he urged.
“I’m okay to say then, am I?” Sam asked with a grin.
“Oh, I’m curious to hear.”
“Well, he’s in disguise. You never really know who the real Penn is. He’s a businessman, a villain, he helps when it suits his agenda, and that’s really how we started to get to know each other better in The Shadow Readers.”
Penn nodded.
“Let’s just say I was shooting for misunderstood.”
“Quite,” Sam echoed, borrowing one of Penn’s favourite expressions.
Penn smiled before answering.
“I think the thing that’s most misunderstood by adversaries of Sam is that he’s the son of a policeman. That he lives his life literally and to the letter of the law. That’s not true for the Sam I know. He’s much deeper than his face suggests.”
“Wow,” Sam shot back playfully.
Interviewer: The two of you somehow manage to argue, joke and solve impossible problems at the same time. If you were dropped into a crisis with no plan whatsoever, which one of you would actually get you out of it, and which one would claim all the credit afterward?
“Hmm…” said Sam, looking across at Penn. “I think I know what you’ll say.”
Penn answered first.
“I have to give Sam some credit. I can’t be the one to come up with all the ideas.”
“All the ideas?” Sam laughed. “I’m the one who changes the plan when things don’t work out.”
“But they generally do,” Penn replied. “Remember the flying car?”
“The one that dove off a cliff and then crashed into a castle?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Well… that wasn’t my original idea, no. But it was ‘falling, with style.'”
“Falling with…” Sam scoffed.
After a moment, he added, “I think I’m the one who thinks about the problems just when they’re about to happen.”
“Yes,” Penn nodded. “So we have more time to react.”
Then, surprisingly, he added,
“But I’ll give you credit. You saved us inThe Story Thief when we were climbing the castle walls.”
Sam looked back at me. “So, it’s teamwork then.”
“Sure, let’s call it that,” Penn agreed, only slightly reluctantly.
Interviewer: You’ve both spent time in worlds created by readers’ imaginations. What’s one place you’d happily visit again… and one you hope never to see again?
“I think Sam knows the place I like to visit,” Penn began.
Sam smiled.
“Misty lake, always at dusk?”
“Quite,” Penn agreed, smiling. “But don’t tell anyone. I’d like to remain misunderstood.”
“I think I do understand, though,” Sam replied.
Penn’s eyebrow rose in warning.
“I won’t say anything,” Sam added quickly. “I like the Penn I know. I know where he’s at. Understood by a few, misunderstood by many.”
Penn nodded.
“Let’s just say he’s complicated.”
“Okay then,” Sam laughed. “Is that your middle name?”
“Quite.”
Penn gestured towards me.
“You need to answer the question.”
“Oh, right.”
Sam thought for a moment.
“Any realm where I’m with Yas. And ideally one where we’re not in some type of danger. I love the Country Mansion Realm because I have memories of being there with my family.”
Penn nodded appreciatively.
“The moor. The sounds and the mist.”
“What is it with you and mist?” Sam asked.
“Mystery,” Penn replied, waving his hands theatrically.
“Anyway,” Sam continued, “I also like the Forest Realm that Yas first discovered in the Battle for the Peacekeepers.It’s a safe place and I can create new memories there with Yas.”
“Young love,” Penn teased.
“What about you, though? I’ve never asked that, actually,” Sam replied. “You must have had someone special?”
“Another story, for another time.” Penn cut off, gesturing to me for the next question.
Interviewer: Last question. Describe each other in just three words. No backhanded compliments.
“I remember this from last time,” Sam said. “And I like that it’s about each other here.”
He looked thoughtfully at Penn.
“Hmm… I’ll say mystery… layers… and hon…”
“There you go again,” Penn interrupted. “Where’d you get the layers from, anyway? I’m not an onion!”
“The mist you like so much,” Sam shot back.
“Hmm,” Penn acknowledged with a smile. “The thing you need to realise about mist is that it doesn’t hide the truth, it forces you to go closer to find it.”
“Deep,” replied Sam. “Layered.”
Penn paused, smiling. “Okay, my turn. For Sam I’d say… loyalty… commitment… and hon…”
“No,” Sam interrupted, laughing. “Let’s not give anything away now, shall we?”
Penn smiled.
“Joking aside, Sam was the logical choice for me to work with in The Shadow Readers, but how it turned out… I couldn’t have made a better one.”
“You feeling alright, Dragon?” Sam teased. “You only compliment when you’re ill.”
“I’m layered,” Penn replied, smiling.
“In mist,” Sam added, laughing. “Not an onion!”
“Quite,” Penn finished, punching Sam playfully on the arm as he looked back towards me.
There may be no pair in the Word Guardians series more unlikely than Penn and Sam. One hides behind mystery, the other wears his heart on his sleeve. One always seems to have a plan, while the other is usually the first to notice when that plan is going spectacularly wrong.
Yet somewhere between the sarcasm, the banter and the impossible adventures, they’ve become one of the series’ most enjoyable partnerships. If this interview proves anything, it’s that while readers may still be trying to work Penn out, one person already has a pretty good idea who he really is.
Sam just isn’t allowed to say it… yet.
To enjoy Sam and Penn’s camaraderie and how it develops, start with Book 1 today.
Interviewer:The Word Guardians is a compelling title. What first sparked the idea for the series, and was there a particular moment or experience that made you think, This is the story I need to write?
Author: The power of words fuels the magic in The Word Guardians, and that was intentional from the very beginning. It came from an idea I had about what each of us sees in our mind’s eye as we read. I wondered: What if those images were actual worlds that could be visited? I’ve always loved the idea of magical portals and being able to escape into fantasy worlds, so those two ideas came together in the first book, The Battle for the Peacekeepers, and the series went on from there.
What do you hope readers will take away from the series
Interviewer:The Word Guardians celebrates imagination and storytelling, but every fantasy series also carries deeper themes. Beyond the adventure and magic, what do you hope readers, especially younger ones, take away from the books after they’ve turned the final page?
Author: More than anything, I hope readers connect with the characters. I feel I’ve created characters who are relatable, mysterious and fun, and I’ve really enjoyed writing the exchanges between them as they face different challenges. If readers finish the books feeling they’ve travelled alongside those characters, then I’ve achieved what I set out to do.
The magic of the Word Guardians
Interviewer: The magic in The Word Guardians is rooted in language and imagination rather than traditional spells and wands. How did you go about building that magic system?
Author: For me, the magic had to come purely from the words, that was really the only law. The idea that words are written as ink in books made me think, What if the words could actually flow, creating and destroying the worlds around them? That became the foundation of everything. From there, the real questions emerged: who can influence those words, how they do it, and are they using that power for good or for something much darker.
Author experience and interests
Interviewer: Every author pours something of themselves into their stories. Looking back at The Word Guardians, what parts of the series reflect your own experiences, interests or beliefs?
Author: Subconsciously, there’s a part of me in each of the main characters, I think. Parts that I hope others see, and parts that I don’t always show. I think every author writes from their experience of the world, especially when they’re in that creative flow state.
Writing The Word Guardians has also changed how I think about storytelling. At first, writing was all about creative freedom. Then it became about the interplay between the characters. Now I find myself focusing much more on the structure and flow of the story. As writers gain experience, I think our attention naturally shifts from one aspect of the craft to another, and that can change not only from book to book, but even within the same novel.
Beginning the Word Guardians journey
Interviewer: Finally, if someone has never picked up The Word Guardians, what would you say to persuade them to begin the journey? And for readers who are already fans, what do you hope they’ll discover as the series continues?
Author: One line I often use is: “Yas thought of books as an escape, but not magical places where everything can go wrong.” I think it captures the heart of the series. It suggests that you can literally escape into the worlds you imagine, while promising plenty of magic and mystery.
I love weaving twists, slow reveals and clues throughout the story, keeping readers guessing as they uncover the truth alongside the characters. Above all, I hope readers become invested in those characters, eager to discover what happens to them next as the adventure unfolds.
The Word Guardians book series is available on Amazon in paperback and kindle editions. Use the link below and start reading The Battle for the Peacekeepers today.
Growing up, Yas knew there were gaps in her family’s story. Questions about her grandfather were always met with silence, quick changes of subject, or vague answers that never quite explained anything. Her parents weren’t trying to be cruel. In fact, they believed they were protecting her.
The Secret war
They knew what her grandfather had been involved in. They knew about the dangers, the conflicts, and the secret war that existed beyond the ordinary world. Most importantly, they knew that once someone became aware of that hidden reality, there was no going back.
So, they stayed silent.
The problem with secrets
Secrets rarely stay hidden. They tend to grow larger in the spaces where answers should be.
For Yas, that silence was difficult to cope with. On the one hand, books were her solace, a place where she could escape when unanswered questions became too much. She knew how the real world worked around her, but she didn’t understand why her parents wouldn’t talk about her grandfather? What had happened to him? What had he done that was so bad?
Then comes the person she trusts.
The trusted mentor
Every young person needs mentors, people who encourage curiosity, learning, and growth. But what happens when a mentor unknowingly opens a door and the tantalizing possibility of answers about her grandfather.
Or perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing?
Through her mentor and the discovery of hidden magic, Yas begins to realize that words are far more powerful than she ever imagined. Books become more than collections of stories. They become magical realms, alongside her own, with doorways between them.
Suddenly, the questions she’s been carrying her entire life start to gain answers. But every answer creates a new problem.
Trust, the inherited burden
Who can Yas trust? This is the burden of the secret war that she’s inherited.
Her parents clearly knew something, but they refused to explain it. Her mentor encourages her exploration, but for what purpose?
There’re others too that she meets along the way. They each have their own history, motivations and secrets. There’s her best friend Sam, who tells her about the existence of magical worlds before she’s ready to believe him. There’s Janine Vickers who is angry at Yas when she and Sam disobey her instructions. And there’s the mysterious Penn, who comes from old money and secrets.
And the one common thread is that when everyone claims to be protecting you, how do you know who is actually telling the truth?
This is one of the central themes explored throughout Yas’s journey. Trust is rarely simple. Sometimes the people who love us hide things because they’re afraid. Sometimes mentors make mistakes. Sometimes curiosity leads us exactly where we’re meant to go, and sometimes it leads us straight into the danger that others were trying to protect us from.
Yet despite the uncertainty, Yas keeps moving forward because some questions refuse to stay buried.
Answering the questions determines who we are
The desire to understand who we are, where we come from, and why our lives have unfolded the way they have is incredibly powerful. For Yas, that drive becomes impossible to ignore. The mystery surrounding her grandfather, the strange pull of magical books, and the growing realization that a hidden war is being fought in the realms all combine into a journey she never expected to take.
And once she takes that first step, everything changes.
If you enjoy stories filled with magical worlds, hidden histories, dangerous secrets, questions of trust, and young heroes discovering their place in a much larger conflict, then Yas’s adventure is waiting for you.
Ever had that feeling in life when a book feels real? Not just entertaining. Not simply words on a page. Real. Magic.
A story can stay with us long after we close the cover. Characters can feel like friends. Entire worlds can become places we remember as vividly as somewhere we’ve visited. Sometimes a single sentence can change the way we think forever.
In the Word Guardians series, books are far more than stories. They are gateways connected to realms born from imagination itself. Every reader who dreams, imagines, fears, or hopes while reading leaves something behind, energy that helps shape these hidden worlds.
The Magic Hidden Inside Books
Most people never realise those realms exist. Yas certainly didn’t.
To her, books were comfort, when real life became difficult to understand. Books were an escape. Adventure. She loved the quiet safety of stories and the feeling of disappearing into another world for a while. Working in a bookshop deepened that connection and reaffirmed what she thought was real. Surrounded by shelves and stories every day, she thought she understood what books were meant to be.
But she had no idea that magic was woven into every page.
Her best friend Sam kept trying to tell her. He believed there were worlds hidden beyond stories, places where imagination became reality and where certain readers could cross between them. To Yas, Sam’s beliefs sounded impossible. But Sam knew the truth because his father vanished while visiting a realm.
Then, direct experience of the magic hidden inside books changed her thinking forever. She believed, and curiosity soon entangled Yas in something far more dangerous.
The war in the realms
Book 1 sees Yas start to uncover the secrets hidden around her family, her grandfather’s disappearance, and the strange truths concealed by her parents. She begins to realise that stories hold genuine power. The realms are real. Magic exists. And there are people willing to wage war to control it.
The realms are where the conflict between the Word Guardians and the Controllers begins.
The Word Guardians believe imagination should remain free. They protect the realms and the readers connected to them, guarding the fragile balance between worlds. To them, stories represent possibility, creativity, and freedom of thought.
The Controllers see things differently.
They understand that stories influence people. They shape beliefs, emotions, fears, and dreams. If imagination can create worlds, then controlling imagination means controlling reality itself. The Controllers want to manipulate the realms and use their influence over readers in the real world for their own purposes.
Stories have always carried a kind of magic. They allow us to see through someone else’s eyes. They transport us beyond ordinary life. They inspire courage, curiosity, empathy, and wonder. Entire generations have been shaped by the stories they grew up with.
In The Word Guardians series, that idea becomes literal. The realms exist because readers believe in stories deeply enough to give them life.
But the stories also explore an important question. What happens when someone tries to control imagination itself?
In book 1, as Yas and Sam uncover the hidden war between the Guardians and the Controllers, they are forced to decide what stories truly mean, who they can trust and how they can protect the imagination of readers. Because some magic doesn’t come from spells, sometimes it begins with turning a page.
So, buy book 1 now, using the link below (to take you to amazon), and start your journey into the magic of the Word Guardians.
Book 4 The Lost Beginnings, features the Otherworld, a realm in which everyone can use magic, and there’s even a law enforcement officer to police unsafe and dangerous usage. Having re-read some of it recently, it got me thinking… if magic was real, what would I conjure? And what would it say about me?
The possibilities are endless. Or are they?
Asking others, there were varying responses. Having infinite pizza might solve the question of what to have for dinner for a while, and a teleportation device sure would cut that daily commute and give back some time. Most people initially start big, a large house and being able to have as much money as they needed. But then, money ultimately buys freedom and time, so why not go straight to that instead?
Now, let’s add a restriction to how much magic you can use. In Book 4, the use of too much magic causes the realm to become unstable and liquefy. It reverses what we see in Book 1 when Yas visits Victorian London and sees how magic can create the realm. So, think again about your choices. What can you achieve without constantly having to conjure? How much magic might be too much?
Whatever your response, it prompts some deeper questions. Why did you choose what you did and what might you really be seeking?
What are you really searching for?
Are you looking for more time, to be able to think without feeling under pressure, and to be able to get more done in the day. Maybe you want time for you, when all the responsibilities of the day are taken care of?
Perhaps you’re seeking clarity, looking to understand people and the world around you without having to second guess. What did that person really mean? What really matters in this situation and what choice can I make that I won’t be replaying in my mind later?
Or maybe you’d decide to conjure something that benefits others? Heal disease, solve hunger, help the climate?
Digging deeper into why you’d conjure what you decide takes us to the last and perhaps most uncomfortable question in this thought experiment, what does that say about you?
Choices speak words
Sure, in the moment you can choose to conjure anything convenient. But remember, if there’s a limit to how much magic you can conjure, you must be careful with your wishes. Do you still want to make it immediate and convenient, or should it be more meaningful for you?
To be meaningful though, you need to think about what that means to you. Do you want something grander for yourself, nobler for others or subtler for quality of life for you and your loved ones?
Whatever you choose, it paints a picture of you. And that picture may or may not be in line with the picture you feel like you’d like to portray about yourself. Ultimately the ability to conjure anything gives us a freedom. And with that freedom, how do we choose to use it?
What do the Word Guardians conjure?
The same dilemmas play out for Yas, Sam and their friends in the realms. Sure, they have battles and need to conjure weapons and shields in the moment for self-defence, but they still must think about those deeper questions. Do they seek defence or retaliation? Do they seek to win at all costs or use force only to regain balance? Ultimately, their ‘why’ is to protect the imagination of readers, and the magic that they cast is in service of this.
To learn more about the magic of the Word Guardians, and their enemies, The Controllers, read the book series. See also what resonates (or doesn’t) for you in how you’d like to react to the challenges that the Word Guardians face.
Click the button below to view and buy the books in your usual Amazon store (available in paperback and kindle editions).
