
{"id":67324,"date":"2021-02-27T01:12:54","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writers-exchange.com\/?p=67324"},"modified":"2025-07-18T21:18:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:18:48","slug":"author-chat_karen-wiesner-gamers-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/author-chat_karen-wiesner-gamers-in-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Chat: Karen Wiesner: Gamers in books&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical-200x300.jpg?resize=200%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Author Chat: Karen Wiesner 27 February 2021: Gamers in books...\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-67330 size-medium\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?resize=655%2C983&amp;ssl=1 655w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How many 50-something, diehard gamers do you know? Other than my husband, I don&#8217;t know anyone else who plays videogames as much as we do. Even my 20-something son and his friends probably play less than we do. Our normal nightly routine is to work all day, then play videogames until bedtime.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.writers-exchange.com\/Forever-and-all-that-Jazz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/forever-and-all-that-jazz-3d-cover-new-200.png?resize=200%2C278&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Friendship Heirlooms Series, Book 3: Forever and All That Jazz 3d cover\" width=\"200\" height=\"278\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-66079 size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always wanted to put gamers in the books I write (or find them in the books I <em>read<\/em>&#8211;a rare thing indeed!). Unfortunately, rabid gamers are rarely sensible enough to just play the 20 minutes moms are always touting as all anybody needs in a day. Seriously?! 20 minutes? It took 20 minutes to get the game to load! So, if a gamer is in a book, the &#8220;addiction&#8221; has to play a part in the plot, lol. In 2014, I wrote a story called <em>Forever and All That Jazz<\/em> (Book 3: Friendship Heirlooms Series) in which the pastor of a church has been a bachelor most of his adult life, falls in love when he least expects it, and suddenly his gaming is curbed by his wife, who doesn&#8217;t think much of videogames in general, especially for a grown man who has a lot more important things to do. Several times, poor Wesley&#8217;s gamer time (playing <em>Dragon Age: Inquisition<\/em>, from a series that&#8217;s a favorite of mine) is seriously curtailed and derailed by the woman who now shares his life.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.writers-exchange.com\/Once-Upon-a-Cliche\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/once-upon-a-cliche-3d-cover-new-200.png?resize=200%2C260&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Once upon a Cliche 3d cover\" width=\"200\" height=\"260\" class=\"alignright wp-image-63779 size-full\" \/><\/a>My newest book with a gamer is <em>Once Upon a Clich\u00e9<\/em>, A Peaceful Pilgrim Novel. The heroine Brayla is a video gamer, oblivious to the world outside her favorite games. Her space boyfriends may be Garrus Vakarian, Kaiden Alenko, or Jaal Ama Darav (of my absolute favorite <em>Mass Effect<\/em> games), but she has no clue what to do with a real man in her life. Her story is an everything-has-to-go-wrong-before-it-can-go-so-right type. Creating Brayla was honestly some of the best fun I&#8217;ve had writing a book. I relate to her than I do to more than any of my other characters. If you&#8217;re a video-gamer and a reader, check out these stories with characters who share the passion. I hope to write more in the future.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Karen Wiesner <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"QQia9KTceE\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.writers-exchange.com\/karen-wiesner\/\">Karen Wiesner<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Karen Wiesner&#8221; &#8212; Writers Exchange E-Publishing\" src=\"https:\/\/www.writers-exchange.com\/karen-wiesner\/embed\/#?secret=PJPBke912m#?secret=QQia9KTceE\" data-secret=\"QQia9KTceE\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; How many 50-something, diehard gamers do you know? Other than my husband, I don&#8217;t know anyone else who plays videogames as much as we do. Even my 20-something son and his friends probably play less than we do. Our normal nightly routine is to work all day, then play videogames until bedtime. I&#8217;ve always wanted to put gamers in the books I write (or find them in the books I read&#8211;a rare thing indeed!). Unfortunately, rabid gamers are rarely&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[836],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-chats"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writers-exchange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/author-chat-karen-wiesner-cap-3-vertical.jpg?fit=1000%2C1500&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tQiy-hvS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67324"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224598,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67324\/revisions\/224598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/67330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writers-exchange.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}