Magic - The Word Guardians

March 15, 2025March 15, 2025

Book 4, The Lost Beginnings, is now available on Amazon

I’m excited to share that book 4, The Word Guardians and the Lost Beginnings is now available on Amazon.

It’s been a work in progress for the past year and I’m really happy with the result.

It’s another multi-layered story, set in the familiar (if you’ve read the other books in the series) setting of the magical realms.

Yas and Sam feature in this book, along with some other memorable characters from previous books. There are some new faces too.

I’d like to thank my wife, Angela, for helping me through the editing stages and Larch Gallagher for the wonderful cover design and cover revisions for the other books in the series.

A different take

I wanted the story to be a slightly different take on magic and realms. Whereas previous books have seen the characters move between a number of realms, book 4 is a tale of just two realms, the outer world (set in Vancouver, Canada) and an inner realm, ostensibly also the same city.

The inner realm is hidden though, the doorways are locked and only accessible to a few. There are reports of missing people in the outer world, and flashing lights that resemble portals. Yas and Sam become interested and do some investigation of their own.

If you could conjure anything you wanted, would you be happy?

Yas and Sam find a realm in which magic is an everyday commodity. You would think that in place where anyone can conjure anything they desire, life would be rosy. Yet, most don’t and everyone seems miserable. People seem trapped, having forgotten how they came to be there. Something or someone is at play behind the scenes.

New characters and relationships

This all sets the scene for new characters, a man that Yas and Sam find in the outer world who knows about the realm, the boy he’s kidnapping, a police officer, and more. In order to escape back to the outer world, Yas and Sam have to help the police officer discover her lost beginnings, uncover the identity of the mysterious Controller and foil whatever plot he or she has in mind.

Where to buy book 4

Book 4 is available to buy on Amazon using either of the buttons below. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Book 4, Lost Beginnings, on Amazon

The Word Guardians series on Amazon

March 3, 2025March 3, 2025

Delving deeper into the magic of the Word Guardians

The magic of the Word Guardians is word based and doesn’t need wands or specific incantations to wield. It made sense to be that way because, just as readers create worlds in their mind’s eye, the magic is imagination forming reality.

In worlds powered by magical ink, words are wielded as magic and the created objects have strands of the words visibly embedded.

But that’s not all the magic…

Delving deeper into the magic of the Word Guardians, all the stories have multiple layers. There’s additional storylines that play out which portray the development of the characters and their relationships and this is also key. I feel it is important to portray people who are believable and different.

For Yas, there’s her story of discovery of the realms, magic and the Word Guardians in The Battle for the Peacekeepers and that then leads onto questioning who is an ally and who is not. There’s the Controllers, (bad guys who my wife claims are misunderstood) who readers want to understand their motivations. Then in the mix also is the mysterious Penn whose motivations seem to be obvious initially but then leave the reader questioning (you’ll have to read through into The Shadow Readers to answer these).

Stronger together

I particularly enjoyed writing characters that seem to blend well together, like Raelinn and Wheeler. Both are struggling in life from previous circumstances but find that they can help each other to be stronger together.

The upcoming Book 4, The Lost Beginnings, is another example of how multiple story layers come together. I’ll leave this as a teaser for now, you’ll have to wait and see how this plays out for the lead characters there, Mira and Sunyal.

What is the magic of the Word Guardians for you?

Part of the joy for me in reading is finding those parts of characters that I relate to (or feel abhorred by) in some way. It’s a window of discovery into yourself and something that I find also helps me become invested in learning how the story ends for that person. So, I’d like to ask you ‘where’s the magic for you?’ Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and check out the series on Amazon using the link below.

The Word Guardians book series

February 2, 2025February 3, 2025

Excerpt from Book 1: When Yas discovers magic

This week I’d like to share an excerpt from the first book, The Battle for the Peacekeepers, when Yas discovers magic.

As you’ll see, she literally falls through a portal and it’s a key discovery point for Yas. She starts to realise that not everything in the world as is normal and mundane as she thought…

Excerpt: When Yas discovers magic is real

Yas remembered the book McVale (her employer) had mentioned, the gift from her grandpa. She wanted to have a look and now was the perfect opportunity.

She walked to the back of the shop and grabbed the kick-step. She moved it and nonchalantly stepped up on top of it. As she did so, she felt something brush past her leg, like a draft of air, yet more substantial. It startled her and made her step one foot back down.

There was no bell tinkle, so she knew it wasn’t the front door. She looked around her. There on the floor near her foot was a yellow leaf, about three inches long. It looked too large to have been tracked in on the bottom of someone’s shoe, yet too far from the door to have been blown in. No matter, she figured. It wasn’t important. She’d put it away in a moment.

She took a step back up and reached for the top shelf. Immediately, her head felt a little light and she could have sworn she heard someone call out “Psst.” She stopped still, reaching out to the shelves to steady herself.

“Hello?” she called nervously, looking left and right around her. Had someone sneaked in without her being aware?

She strained her ears to hear. Nothing. Only the electric buzzing of the lights overhead. Odd, but not overly suspicious, she returned her mind and eyes to the task. She reached up, to grab the book. Her hand on the shelf should have given her more stability, but it started to vibrate under her touch. The original sense of movement also returned, this time for longer. She glanced down. Her light headedness made the floor seem much further away.

The shelves too started to move, and her hold was more akin to a sponge than a solid piece of wood. The intensity increased, vibrating, much like a truck passing outside, except deeper and stronger. The bookshelves started to wobble in front of her eyes, and she swayed backwards and forwards in response. Yas moved her right hand to gain a solid grasp of the book, but in doing so, her left hand was absorbed inwards to the shelf. It pulled her forwards and off balance. She cried out in alarm, and then stopped and tried to regain her composure. Perhaps this was another mild earthquake she figured, but the sponge like shelves indicated that this was something more. She wasn’t sure whether to try and step down or stay put.

The vibration increased in intensity. Now a deep roar, it was accompanied by more movement of the shelves. In her head, the sound was like a swarm of angry bees, but deeper, and which vibrated through every fibre of her being. A headache appeared behind her eyes, with flashing lights. It was the type she remembered from her younger years. That worried her. She wasn’t sure if what she was seeing around her was the result of distorted vision or really there. The bookshelves now also seemed to be swaying back and forth. They were fluid, instead of fixed, the shapes changing. The books were sliding backwards and forwards and taking on this sponge like fluidity, also. She felt nauseous and was going to hurl at any moment.

She made a move to step down. As she did so, there was a new sound, like a ‘whoomph’, and the air changed around her. Whether related to the migraine she thought was arriving she did not know, but ultimately, the floor was not where her foot expected it to be. That coupled with her left hand not finding the solid purchase she was looking for, she lost her balance. The top half of her body wanted to fall further forwards, so she leaned backwards to counteract that, hoping to find the floor. The floor wasn’t anywhere close, so she started to fall backwards, flailing with her hands for some other grip. She shrieked out in alarm, both bracing herself for a hard landing while also looking around herself in desperation for something to grab onto. She had a split-second image of herself landing heavily on one foot and then limping around the shop the rest of the day. To her surprise, there was no such landing.

Instead, where there should have been a dark blue carpet with small orange diamond motif pattern, she seemed to fall much further. Into what, she did not know. The world around her turned darker and the air smelled different, an outside smell. She heard and felt herself smashing through leaves and slender branches, until two limbs caught and held her, firm but not rough. The limbs creaked and cracked as she was lowered gently to touch the mossy ground below. Then they let go slowly. She realised that her fall had ended, and she was laying on her back, on damp, cold grass.

What happens after Yas discovers magic?

Hopefully, I’ve whetted your appetite and you want to read more. To see how the story continues, please check out the link below to view and buy book 1 (The Battle for the Peacekeepers) on Amazon.

The Word Guardians book series

January 1, 2025January 2, 2025

How do the Word Guardians determine the truth?

Determining the truth of a situation (and what to take on trust) is a reoccurring theme in the Word Guardians series. In What are the Worlds of the Word Guardians I mentioned that the Word Guardians employ something akin to Star Trek’s Prime directive to determine how to act without influencing readers’ thoughts.

I thought I’d delve into this a little more in this week’s post.

What is truth?

Truth is a very interesting word, it turns out. According to the Mirriam Webster dictionary definition, it relates to determining the facts of a situation, what’s real. But if we think about our own lives, it’s hard to figure this out.

How do we determine the truth of a situation?

We see reports in the news, accusations from someone and then opposing stories that come out over time, courtroom coverage and more. And as bystanders, we know we’re hearing differing viewpoints but what is the objective truth here? We can only typically understand this from the bigger picture, other viewpoints and understanding something about the behavioural patterns of the persons involved. Often, we can’t see this because we’re basing what we believe on what we’ve been told or what’s been reported. We trust that those parties are acting ethically, morally and fairly in how they deliver the news. But how can we verify that too?

Why is the truth important to Word Guardians?

In the Word Guardians books, the Controllers manipulate imaginations. They sow ideas and use those who have been disadvantaged in some way. They’ll pose as someone they are not in order to gain trust and ultimately ask something in return. They’ll encourage others to action by constantly pulling at a wound of disillusionment, inciting them to action. The Word Guardians have to second guess, strive for the bigger picture and rely on their own instincts to figure out what action to take. Yas in particular is good at this (but even she can be fooled).

So… how do Word Guardians determine the truth?

The stories are in magical fantasy worlds (realms), but it’s not so different to what we experience in life. Like the Word Guardians, we should question where information has come from, why it’s been presented a particular way and who it might benefit or impact. It can be overwhelming, but we shouldn’t always just take things on trust.

This answers how the Word Guardians determine the truth but, when taking any action, how do they know that they’re not just being controlling, or manipulating, just like Controllers? Well, you’ll just have to read the Word Guardians series to find out. 🙂

The Word Guardians book series

December 16, 2024January 1, 2025

What are the Worlds of the Word Guardians?

Where the worlds came from

Where I started from with the Worlds of the Word Guardians was thinking about what I saw in my mind’s eye when I read. I picture the scenes and the story plays out as if I’m watching my own personal movie. It made me wonder… what if these places were real? How could you visit them? and the worlds (or realms) of the Word Guardians were born.

In the Word Guardians series the realms are absolutely real. Think of them as magical other worlds, accessible through doorways. Readers co-create these other worlds as they imagine the scenes and the result is stages on which different storylines play out.

How the worlds of the Word Guardians are created

With readers unwittingly creating and shaping these realms, I realised that visitors could essentially gain access to readers’ imagination and if they so desired, they could influence them, for good or bad. The antagonists, the Controllers, were born and in turn this defined the protagonists’ goals, the Word Guardians. I feel that this is very relevant to today where there are so many influences for what we think and do and we’re not fully aware of all of these biases.

So, what actually powers the realms, I hear you cry. Imagination yes, but it has to take form and become physical. In the first book, The Battle for the Peacekeepers, I describe this as Yas discovers a realm for the first time. Imagination fuels ‘magical ink’ and that creates physical structures, actors, landscapes and more. A storyline plays out and then the magical ink is fueled by the imagination of another reader, and the scene recycles to play out another storyline.

Why the realms are important in the book series

Visitors to realms can wield and interact with this magical ink, influencing and changing the scene and the storylines playing out around them (and I’ll touch on why magic is always word based in a later blog). This then has consequences as I mentioned above and is something that is played out in the series. The Word Guardians effectively need to employ something akin to Star Trek’s Prime Directive (Trekkies will know what I mean by this) to protect the freedom of the imagination of readers, and it becomes clear (as in Star Trek) that the best action to take isn’t always cut and dry.

So, that’s a summary (and introduction to potential readers of the series) of what the Worlds of the Word Guardians are, why I decided to write them this way and how it created the main dynamic between protagonists and the Controllers. To learn more about the book series, please click the button below.

The Word Guardians book series