Being mindful, why readers are unaware of visitors to realms

Another week, and another piece of self-reflection, this time to ask you how mindful are you and what do you really see when you look around you. 

I want to do this by sharing an excerpt from A visit to Victorian London which touches on why readers can’t see visitors to a realm. They typically ignore things that are unexpected.

Read on below…

McVale’s explanation of readers to Yas

McVale continued, switching topics again. “The human mind has a great ability to ignore things that don’t make sense. On some level readers do see everything, but they are expecting to see a particular story play out in their mind’s eye, and so they ignore anything else that doesn’t fit.” 

Yas heard children’s laughter somewhere above her and looked up, straining her eyes against the fog. She glimpsed children flying, holding hands, before they disappeared over a rooftop. 

 “We each imagine things slightly differently,” explained McVale. “To a reader, the realm offers Victorian London. Different stories, different paintings of scenes can be played out here, without a reader of one book consciously aware of what another is reading or seeing in their mind’s eye.” 

“Like theatre stages?” asked Yas, remembering something her grandpa had said to her a long time ago. “So, the realms are a collection of stages on which different stories can be played out by readers?” 

A quick reminder of ‘readers’

In the Word Guardians series, remember that readers unintentionally collaborate. What they each see in their mind’s eye powers the magical ink that creates and reshape the realms. 

As Yas realises above, the realms form theatre stages that play out a story in the mind’s eye of the readers, and they typically only see what fits with that storyline. It enables visitors to the realms, such as Yas and McVale in the excerpt, to move around undetected. They might be spotted, but because the reader is not expecting to see them, they are filtered out of the experience. 

What do you see when reading?

When you’re reading, what do you see in your mind’s eye? You probably see the storyline playing out, a scene and characters moving to match the description and action on the page. But do you ever notice anything you’re not expecting? I don’t know that I do, but it’s interesting to think about when you’re next sitting with a novel. 

What about in life?

In life too, we tend to look around us and see what we expect. We move through life with a particular set of goals and tasks to perform and only see what’s relevant to those and the settings that we travel through. If we’re driving, we notice other road users, pedestrians, road signs etc but whose to say what else might be there that we don’t notice? 

Mindfulness

Ultimately, I’m touching on mindfulness. I’m talking about how much we are fully present. We typically see what we expect to see given what we’re thinking about and imagining. But how much more is there, and how does that change our experience of life? 

I’m likely not doing enough justice to mindfulness by what I say here and it’s a worthwhile topic to dig into further. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about how The Word Guardians, buy Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers. It’s available in both paperback and kindle editions. 

Enjoy reflecting. 

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Excerpt from book 1 – Escape from Alexandria

I thought for this week blog I would share an excerpt from my first book The Battle for the Peacekeepers, Escape from Alexandria.

It’s just a small taster to whet your appetite.

Feel free to check out the other excerpts on this site too: When Yas discovers magic and A visit to Victorian London.

Escape from Ancient Alexandria

There was a ‘whoomph’ ahead of them and the doorway appeared. The creatures behind them had also spotted it.

“Sam,” urged Yas, looking behind her and seeing the creatures approaching. She threw another word ball, but this time the creatures just continued towards them, unimpeded.

Sam grabbed Yas and pulled her through the doorway just behind him. He made it through and landed on the carpet in the library but was jerked and pulled backwards. She stopped in mid-air, half in and half out of the portal. She screamed. One of the creatures had grabbed the back of her jacket in its mouth. The other, was trying to get its serpent head through the portal.

“Sam!” Yas screamed. She could see him moving about and trying to brace himself against the edges of the doorway, but her view kept switching between the two worlds.

“I’ve got you,” he shouted back. He grabbed her tightly, kicking the serpent head with one of his feet while pulling Yas as hard as he could. “Hold on!”

Yas kicked behind her, while also reaching her other hand for a better hold on Sam. She was able to push herself up on the sphinx’s head, and in return it lessened its grip. She felt the jacket rip.

“You little. . .!” she shouted angrily behind her, kicking furiously. She heard the creature whimper and then roar. Not wanting to see what it might do next; she looked forwards into the library.

“Sam!” she shouted again in alarm.

Sam continued to kick the other creature, while also defending them both against paw grabs from the first. It was tight for space, but he was able to pull Yas forwards a little at a time. If anything, her kicking against the creatures gave her the better leverage.

Suddenly, surprising them both, an arm appeared behind Sam. The creatures were pushed back sharply out of the doorway and Yas was pulled through. She fell onto the floor while Sam rolled to the side and stood up to see who had helped.

“Close the book!” said Janine Vickers sternly. She stood still, holding her hand out, palm up, uttering words that sounded foreign.

What happens next?

What a roller coaster of a ride! Well, you’ll have to buy the book to find out who Janine Vickers is and why she helped them escape.  Do Sam and Yas leap from the frying pan into the fire? Or not? Buy Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers on Amazon and find out.

Psst… it’s available in both paperback and kindle editions.

Ciao for now!

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Trying to put together your puzzle of life?

Do you ever have questions in your life that you just can’t seem to answer?

You’re desperately looking for a solution and everything you try leaves you feeling as though there’s still missing pieces in your puzzle of life?

You’re not alone. That was Yas, in Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers.

Yas’s puzzle of life

At the start of Book 1, Yas’s grandfather and adopted brother have been missing for two years and nobody seems to be looking for them. Worse, her parents won’t talk to her about it. She finds this frustrating and weird, but she figures you just get on with life. You graduate from school, go to college, get a job and live a life.

In Book 3 The Shadow Readers, we also learn that her father is dissatisfied with his work, and she thinks this is the way it’s supposed to be. What she’s learned is that life is not for living your dreams and that along the way, bad things can happen to anyone. She’s quite skeptical of life’s opportunities as a result and not surprisingly critical of her best friend‘s ideas about magical realms.

Yas also feels she’s being pulled by something, and she can’t figure out what. Deep down she knows there’s more, but her conditioning won’t let her see it. She’s curious about life, preferring to spend an afternoon in her passion of reading novels and learning about history from books.

They say opportunities arrive for those that attract them

Deep down, the opportunities that Yas attracts are focussed to the pieces of her life puzzle that she can’t yet put together. She works at a bookstore which gives her the opportunity to indulge in her passion. If asked she would probably tell you that she’d rather read history by those who have written it and put it up for review by the masses, than listen to schoolyard gossip and people’s opinions. Ultimately though, there’s more to her interests in stories.

Her best friend Sam is also not ‘popular’ at school, and is a bit weird, but that’s okay. He likes talking about magical realms and how his dad is lost in one. She wonders why she attracts the ‘odd’ ones. Then she literally falls into a realm, and it feels as though her life puzzle has exploded and sent all the pieces up into the air.

Direct experience is irrefutable

If you’ve ever experienced something deeply touching or moving, the paranormal maybe, you know that once you’ve experienced it there’s no going back. Your viewpoint on whatever it is has shifted forever and your puzzle of life now incorporates that.

This is what happens to Yas once she’s met the Great Oak and Red in the Forest Realm. After some convincing that it’s real, her puzzle of life shifts. She eventually realises that her grandfather and brother went missing because of a war between the Word Guardians and Controllers. Her parents refused to talk about it because they wanted to protect her. But only by seeing that picture could she fit all the pieces of her life’s puzzle together.

Listening to the deeper knowing’s

Finally, Yas could recognise the deeper feelings that she’d had all along as ‘knowing’s’. And she could see that her puzzle of life had shifted. Instead of getting on with life, now, for her and Sam, it was about finding a job that honoured your dreams, embracing stories and standing up for the freedom of readers’ imaginations. And more opportunities were about to come their way (see Book 3 The Shadow Readers) that would enable this.

So, if you have questions you can’t answer, try to honour those deeper feelings and ‘knowing’s’. Find time to embrace your passions, even if a small amount here and there in your week. And if you want to learn more how life unfolds for Yas and Sam, read the books in the series. Buy Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers using the link below.

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Why can some characters wield magic in the outer world?

Is it a plot hole, if some characters can wield magic in the outer world?

Readers of the series might be wondering why some characters can wield magic in the outer world. After all, if magic is fueled by the imaginations of readers, then how is this possible? So, is this a plot hole in the Word Guardians series?

Who can wield word magic in the outer word?

In Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers, Janine Vickers first demonstrates the ability when she saves Yas and Sam from mythological lions with human heads attacking them in Ancient Alexandria. She’s able to tidy up the magic that’s dropped onto the library floor and push it back into the book that the words came from. There are other examples too, but for those of you who have not read all the books yet (please do 😊), I don’t want to spoil the fun. It will be worth your time!

How can word magic be wielded in the outer world?

The next question I hear you asking is how can magic be wielded in the outer world? Well, we know that when we read, we imagine the scene happening in our mind’s eye. And as I’ve written about in The Worlds of the Word Guardians, the imagination powers the magical ink that enables the creation of the realm, in which the reader then views the story playing out in their mind’s eye. But the magic doesn’t just stop there.

We know when we tell other people about a good book we’re reading, we see that book play out in our mind’s eye again. So, in the same way, the Word Guardians characters can ‘pull’ on the same magic in the outer world. It takes much more focus and effort, but for those practiced in wielding word magic in the realms, it’s possible and boy do they do it well.

So, is it a plot hole, or a twist then?

Well, yes, you got me, it’s not a plot hole. It was an intentional twist that I wanted to include because it’s unexpected. Magic should stay where it’s created right? In a realm. But is the magic there to be drawn on by the reader’s imagination or does the reader’s imagination create the magic? Ultimately, it’s both.

To see what I mean, you’re just going to have to read the books in the series. Buy Book 1 The Battle for the Peacekeepers using the link below and start watching for the characters that can wield word magic in the outer world. It might surprise you who can and who can’t. Happy reading!

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Imagining a better way to travel, a magical portal

I had the opportunity to travel recently, part business and part visiting family. It was lovely to visit but I have a love, hate relationship with travel. It takes so much effort. Busy airports, being sat in an airplane for hours with many people around you, long travel days, the list goes on. So, I find myself wondering, is there a better way to travel?

Could it be as easy as stepping through a portal?

In the Word Guardians series, our adventurers can enter different realms simply by walking through a doorway. Could we?

Yeah, you have to have a strong magical ability and a key to the doorway (as detailed in Who can visit the realms of the Word Guardians), but in The Battle for the Peacekeepers, Yas and Sam manage to do just that. They visit Victorian London and ancient Alexandria, and more.

Just imagine the possibilities of simply stepping through a doorway to your destination. You get to skip airport crowds, the waiting, delays and the effort. If all this was possible, where would you choose to go? 

The journey is the destination

That old adage of ‘the journey is the destination’ came to me while I was thinking about my answer to ‘where I would go?’. While stepping through to a destination sounds exciting, what you visit and do while there is equally important.  

If we just visited a beach, looked out at the sea and then return to our own world, it’s pleasant, but have we really experienced the place? If instead we spend time there, the place starts to become a part of our story, and our experience is richer as a result. 

What I’m trying to say is that why you choose to visit somewhere, what the intended story of your visit is and what your experience becomes, is important.  

We see this in the Word Guardians realms also. Each realm is formed by readers in the outer world unconsciously collaborating. Their imagination powers magical ink which builds worlds, creates actors and enables stories to play out. When Yas and Sam visit realms, they interact with these worlds and change the storylines. If it fits with what a reader in the outer world might expect to see, then it becomes part of the story.

So, what’s a better way to travel?

I started out in this blog by thinking about how we could avoid the inconvenient parts of modern-day long-distance travel. And I stand by that. Travel takes effort and its toll on us.  

If we had the ability to step through a doorway to a destination, that would be amazing, but I don’t believe it’s the complete answer. I think that by being more intentional about the stories we’d like to have when we visit somewhere, that’s an important part of it too. Whether planned or not, that forms a story that we’re part of forever.

Both Yas and Sam, typically have a purpose in mind when visiting a realm but then the story often unfolds in unexpected ways. How they take opportunities and adapt to the changing stories, that’s their story and one that I feel privileged to have been able to imagine and write. To learn more, please buy book one using the link below. 

I’d love to hear about your thoughts on travel too. Feel free to send a comment below or by using the contact form. And to journey with Yas and Sam through the realms, read The Battle for the Peacekeepers, available at the link below.

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Who can visit the realms of the Word Guardians series?

In my last blog, An excerpt from book 1 A Visit to Victorian London, Yas and her mentor McVale travelled to a realm that portrayed storylines and scenes from a period of history featured in many fictional books. You’ll have the read the book to see who opens the portal to the realm and how they did it, but I wanted to answer a question I’ve been asked a few times – can anyone travel to a realm?

Here’s my answer…

Through the tales of the Word Guardians series, there are three things that people must have to open doorways (or portals) into realms. First, they have to believe, second, they must have some magical ability and lastly, they need to have a key.

Belief is important

A visitor to a realm must believe that it’s possible. Think Alice in Wonderland and doing six impossible things before breakfast.

We see this in Book 1, The Battle for the Peacekeepers. Yas can’t open a portal to a realm until the idea is seeded in her mind. She’s closed minded and dismissive of the idea because of her upbringing and what she’s learnt in the world around her – ultimately her conditioning. Gradually though through her friendship with Sam, she becomes a little more open-minded, starts questioning things around her and that helps her discover a doorway to a realm.

Magical ability is a must have

The second part of visiting a realm is having the ability to open the magical doorway into a realm. What we learn from the books is that the magical ability can either be innate or learned. Ultimately, like anything, if it’s not practiced then it becomes harder to do. Again, we see this in, Excerpt from Book 1 When Yas discovers magic, Yas has an innate ability and with curiosity, a doorway opens for her.

Finally, a key is important

In Book 1, The Battle for the Peacekeepers, the keys are the individual dice pendants of Yas and Sam’s necklaces. Like runes, individual faces of the die open specific locks, hidden in books. To find a doorway relevant to a specific realm they must solve clues and find the book and page for the doorway to open. In later books of the series there are some variations but always along the same theme.

All together, visitors to the realms are like a secret club

You can think of visitors to realms being a secret club. First, these people have to be readers, because otherwise they can’t relate to what they see in their mind’s eye when they read. Books are key because without them readers wouldn’t be able to co-create realms, and finally the visitor has to possess magic and believe.

Want to learn more?

To learn more, please visit the link below to buy book 1 and start reading the series.

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Excerpt from Book 1: A visit to Victorian London

In previous blogs (What are the worlds of the Word Guardians and Excerpt from book 1: When Yas discovers magic), I’ve talked about the magic and how readers in the outer world create the realms in their mind’s eye. In today’s blog I’d like to share an excerpt from book 1 that puts all of this together. It’s the first time that Yas visits Victorian London with her mentor, Ms. McVale, and learns about the workings of the realms.

A visit to Victorian London

They moved from the corner of the building and along the street opposite to the Park. Yas was amazed by what she saw.

“So, this is a realm?” she asked. “Very much so,” replied McVale. “And one I have visited with your grandfather. Yes, its all coming back to me.”

“Mornin,” called a man who was walking quickly towards them. He tipped his hat.

“Good morning,” replied McVale, giving the man a smile. Yas nodded nervously also in acknowledgement, then turned and looked at him once he had passed.

“So, they’re real and they can see us then?”

“Yes,” replied McVale. “Most are actors, playing out a storyline in response to the intentions of readers.”

“Intentions?” enquired Yas.

“Absolutely,” continued McVale. “Intentions are the images and actions we imagine in our mind’s eye as we read. The actors are created or are coerced into performing whatever it is that we, the readers, imagine for them. The same is true in dreams in some respect, although there is a lesser connection.”

Three storey buildings lined the side of the street they were walking along. The park and the exhibition building on the other side disappeared away into the mist more as they headed north. A wall of buildings emerged up ahead of them. The feel of the place indicated that it was an upmarket area of London. There were some business fronts on the ground floor of some of the buildings, but others were just residential.

“Woah!” exclaimed Yas, as she watched an ethereal person appear in the street ahead of them and float in their direction.

“Readers,” McVale replied matter-of-factly, stepping aside for the ghostly person to pass between them.

“So, they don’t see us?”

“They have a ghostly presence here because they are present in the outer realm, explained McVale.”

“The real world, you mean?”

“Yes,” replied McVale. “You sound like your mother.”

“Sorry,” replied Yas, not really sure what she was apologising for.

“No need,” dismissed McVale with a wave of her hand. “You have her determinedness and your grandfather’s sense of curiosity, rolled into one. I believe it will serve you well.”

McVale continued, switching topics again. “The human mind has a great ability to ignore things that don’t make sense. On some level readers do see everything, but they are expecting to see a particular story play out in their mind’s eye, and so they ignore anything else that doesn’t fit.”

Yas heard children’s laughter somewhere above her and looked up, straining her eyes against the fog. She glimpsed children flying, holding hands, before they disappeared over a rooftop.

 “We each imagine things slightly differently,” explained McVale. “To a reader, the realm offers Victorian London. Different stories, different paintings of scenes can be played out here, without a reader of one book consciously aware of what another is reading or seeing in their mind’s eye.”

“Like theatre stages?” asked Yas, remembering something her grandpa had said to her a long time ago. “So, the realms are a collection of stages on which different stories can be played out by readers?”

“Yes, quite so,” confirmed McVale. She seemed pleased that her student was understanding how the realms worked. “They may not always be geographically or historically accurate, but the realm provides a gathering place for the most read stories. “Look up there,” she pointed to a rooftop further up the street, where chimney smoke billowed upwards and characters were dancing.

As they moved away from the park, Yas looked around with renewed interest. She was intrigued to see what other stories she could spot. Either side of them were more business fronts and shops, with two or three floors above. Occasionally also, there were steps leading down into basement dwellings.

Up ahead, at the entrance to an alley, police were gathered around someone who was still on the ground. They caught glimpses of a plain clothes detective bending over, wearing a distinctive hat. Several ethereal readers floated about the scene.

“Is that?” Yas pointed. “Yes,” replied McVale. “You know your fiction.”

Intrigued to learn more?

The above excerpt helps explain how the realms work within the Word Guardians series. If you want to learn more, please visit the link below and buy book 1.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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