When I decided that the heroine of Her Perfect Game would be a gamer/hacker, I must’ve been crazy. I knew nothing about either. Well, I do have a teenaged son, so I know a little something about video games—like there’s lots of killing, and I can’t play because they make me dizzy, and they also have some fabulous storylines (I learned that when I was writing a video game creator hero for a different book).

Of course, not knowing much about a topic means research must be done. I started with paying my son. I offered him $20 to create a fake game (on paper only) that I could use for my novella. He thought this was a little nuts, especially when I told him that most of it wouldn’t even make it into the book. But hey, he’s a teenager and twenty bucks is twenty bucks. This was the beginning of The Order of Resskaar. It’s an MMORPG, which means massive multi-player online role-playing game (Look at me – old lady understanding the acronyms). It’s a world where my heroine, Charlie, can not only feel safe, but also take charge. She’s like the Robin Hood of this world.

Once he had the game outlined for me, I had to have a better understanding about what could and couldn’t happen in game (which sometimes meant I walked down the hall and interrupted his game time with silly questions). He suggested I actually play, but I don’t have the hand-eye coordination for games because there’s too much going on at once. It’s really sad. So I did the next best thing: I watched YouTube videos of other people playing similar games. I heard their voices and watched what happened. It was actually fun.

After getting a handle on the game itself, I had to explore the other pieces of the book: hacking and a Comic Con-like experience. Hacking is the smallest part of the book, but I did spend some time learning about Def Con and black hats vs. white hats. In looking at the convention experience itself, not only did I visit web sites that posted schedules of the con panels and workshops, but I also watched some TV shows about cosplay (people who dress up in costume for the convention).

I learned so much in doing research for this novella, and I only scratched the surface. Part of me wants to write another hero or heroine like this because the subculture is so fascinating. It’s a separate world so far removed from my own, but it seems like a ton of fun.

Her Perfect Game (Hot & Nerdy # 2) by Shannyn Schroeder
Release date:  October 26^th, 2014 by Kensington

Synopsis

Spring break is supposed to be a week of fun in the sun for three childhood friends about to graduate from college. But one of them is ready to get her game on somewhere else…

Charlie Castle is an expert archer and a fierce warrior—in her favorite video game, anyway. But college life was a program she couldn’t quite master. To land a cybertech job without a degree, she’s entering a “hackfest” over spring break—where she also hopes to meet the sweet gamer who’s been flirting with her online. Instead, she runs into the hot guy who walked away years ago, and can’t fight the desire that comes rushing back.

Jonah Best has never gotten over Charlie, whose kisses were always as deliciously creative as her coding. But now that they’re face to face again, he doesn’t know how to admit that her online admirer is really him—or how to convince her that he’s offering her a job for her incredible skills, not her sex appeal. Can Jonah cut through their communication glitches and persuade Charlie that the next level up for them should be forever?

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About Shannyn Schroeder

Shannyn Schroeder is the author of the O’Leary series, contemporary romances centered around a large Irish-American family in Chicago and the new Hot & Nerdy series about 3 nerdy friends and their last spring break. When she’s not wrangling her three kids or writing, she watches a ton of TV and loves to bake cookies.

Connect with Shannyn:  Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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