Creating a fictional enchanted world

In my books about the magic game ‘The Tenth Gateway’, the game world was created hundreds of years ago. I therefore wanted the world to reflect aspects of the medieval period. 

So the fictional magical beings and nasty creatures in the books draw on traditional fairy tales and folklore but they live in a world that doesn’t have modern technology. There’s lots of magic and anything can happen but there are no cars, planes, big cities or computers.

Hansel & Gretal

The Brownies

‘An Encyclopedia of Fairies’ by Katherine Briggs was really helpful.  I also trawled through the internet and I remembered all the great fairy tales I have read. 

I love these images that I found in a volume of a very old encyclopedia – J. A Richards Publishing Co., Inc 1947!

Some Writing Challenges

One of the most difficult things to do in writing my stories was the come up with the various challenges and puzzles that the children have to solve to move through the game. Childhood memories also played a major role here.

I remember getting stuck for a couple of months when writing the first book because I couldn’t think how to move the children from one particular world to another. Thank goodness for Eda’s  ‘good magic’ which helps them to play the game. 

I needed to change the gateway worlds and challenges in Book Two – ‘The Spy’s Door’. The growing power of the evil magician Malefic means that he is increasingly able to modify the game to suit his purpose. He wants to escape from the game which keeps him a prisoner. Eda is determined to stop him.

I had lots of fun thinking about how the game would change as Malefic’s evil influence spread.

Book trailers

Alison Tait has a great book trailer for her children’s books ‘The Map Maker Chronicles’. I can recommend looking at the trailer and also reading the books – a great fantasy adventure story. It’s what motivated me to have my first book trailer on ‘The Tenth Gateway’ developed by Austin Macauley (publisher). I (with help of course) included the Youtube links in one of my recent blogs.

I’m not sure how people stumble/find things (like book trailers) on Youtube unless they know exactly what they’re looking for. 

I know about Google. Type in key words and it’s amazing what information you can find. However I’m not sure how people find things they don’t know exist; for example: terrific books or the web sites of other great authors.

I suppose utilising ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) helps a bit.  Sounds like something mysterious to include in a children’s fantasy story! What do you think?