Hello all! I’ve had the pleasure of working with this awesome author and am happy to be a part of the Pawn Takes Rook: Conventional Love Blog Tour! This is book three in the world and you’ll want to get them all! Check it out!

Hello, everyone! I’m Lex Chase and thank you for joining me on stop #5 on the Pawn Takes Rook: Conventional Love blog tour. In this final installment of the Checkmate trilogy, we bid a fond farewell to Rook and Garth. For this tour, I’m talking about the Checkmate series as a whole. I’m sharing behind the scenes goodies, inspirations, and my crazy journey for the first year as an author. And that’s not all! I’m giving out trading cards drawn by yours truly. Make sure you check them all out in the tour!

For today’s topic, is the spy vs. spy element of Checkmate. When I had written the first book, Pawn Takes Rook, the whole Checkmate super soldier program wasn’t planned up front. I knew I wanted Rook to be a part of some kind of secret program. And I admit I’m totally a sucker for characters being linked together by destiny somehow. (If you don’t believe me, check out my first novel Chasing Sunrise in Summer 2014)

So, Garth had this dead grandpa that apparently left him everything. Garth wasn’t really living in the lap of luxury, but his grandfather made sure he was cared for after he passed away. Grandpa Dawson, his alleged brilliance, the creator of the crucial Google algorithm, and just how Garth seemed to idolize him.

It was just a big blob of things that made you go hmmmm… So, since I hope we’ve passed the grace period for spoilers, Grandpa Dawson is what tied Rook and Garth together. Garth’s Grandpa, Conrad Dawson, was the mastermind behind the Checkmate program. And in the course of Pawn Takes Rook, I had just enough to go on that this rabbit hole went pretty deep. Some readers didn’t care for it, or didn’t really have enough to go on. And that’s fair. Honestly, I was still figuring it out too.

I had Rook pretty set, it was Garth that was tricky. Because Garth was raised by his grandfather. Granted, we can all agree Garth was that kid brimming with an overload of ADHD, but he had to have noticed something. Hints have been dropped along the way with Garth’s place in the world. Pixel in Pawn Takes Rook: Cashing the Reality Check has a very crucial line about the whole thing. If you know what you’re looking at, or looking for, it’s spelled out right then and there what purpose Garth serves. And that comes to fruition in Pawn Takes Rook: Conventional Love.

I’d like to be that author that said “OH I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT!” but, you caught me. I had a vague idea at first. But with both Checkmate books done and out in the wilds, I had to figure out how to connect the dots. Or how the dots were going to go together. My hope in Conventional Love I made the dots connect in a satisfactory way. So when I am dead and gone, scholars can look back at my sheer foreshadowing brilliance.

Continue reading Blog Tour: Conventional Love →