Monday, July 14, 2014

BLOG TOUR: Mindwar by Andrew Klavan


Welcome to the Official Blog Tour for Mindwar, the first book in The Mindwar Trilogy, by Andrew Klavan!

Genre:
Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller
Series:
The Mindwar Trilogy
Publish Date:
July 15, 2014
Publisher:
Thomas Nelson Publishers

Summary from Goodreads:
Rick Dial has the potential to be a hero. He just doesn't know it yet.

Rick's high school football team couldn't be stopped when he was leading them as their quarterback. He was going to Syracuse on a scholarship. But then his dad abandoned them and a terrible accident left him crippled.

Certain his old life is completely lost, Rick spends months hiding away in his room playing video games. He achieves the highest scores on so many games that he's approached by a government agency who claims to be trying to thwart a cyber attack on America that would destroy the technological infrastructure of the entire country. The agents say that the quick-thinking of a quarterback coupled with Nick's gaming experience make him perfect for this assignment. The problem is that there are no extra lives and this isn't just a game...but Rick doesn't have many other options at the moment.

Entering "The Realm gives Rick the one thing he thought he'd never have again: a body that's as fast and as strong as he ever was before the accident. But the more time he spends in The Realm, the more questions he has. What secrets are these agents keeping from him? What really happened to his father? How many others have gone into The Realm already...and failed? And perhaps most important, is he the hero they think he is?


    

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Andrew Klavan on Books, Movies, and Video Games

One of the reasons I wrote MindWar is because I love video games. I find them really exciting and cool. So I wanted to tell a story in which the hero had to travel inside a video game and use his gaming skills against overwhelming odds.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that video games, as much as I like them, don’t usually have very good stories. I know there are exceptions, but the odds are against it.

Think about the games that have been turned into movies, for instance.  Super Mario Brothers, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider. Great games. Terrible movies. And the reason is pretty obvious. Video games basically have one story structure: run, fight, solve puzzle, run, fight, solve puzzle, run, fight...  and so on. It makes for great gaming, but not for very good story telling.  Characters don’t have to think much or feel much or talk much or fall in love or do any of the things that make stories interesting. (Again, I know there are exceptions.)

On the other hand, plenty of movies and books have been turned into good games: Spiderman, Batman, Lord of the Rings and so on. It’s easier to reduce those stories to run and fight games than to move in the other direction.

MindWar takes place both inside the “MindWar Realm,” a sort of deadly video game,  and in real life. The things that happen in the Realm affect the real world and vice versa. That’s the way I tried to make the story better than the story in a video game...  but hopefully just as exciting!

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**About the Author**
Andrew Klavan is a best-selling, award-winning thriller novelist whose books have been made into major motion pictures. He broke into the YA scene with the bestselling Homelanders series, starting with The Last Thing I Remember. He is also a screenwriter and scripted the innovative movie-in-an-app Haunting Melissa.

Stay connected with Andrew Klavan
  

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***The Giveaway***




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