Gamertell

I just received a message from Christina Simmons, Assistant Account Executive Public Relations and Social Influence Marketing at Mullen Public Relations about an event taking place on Gaia Online May 26, 2009. Fans of The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series will have another chance to talk to the books author Michael Scott.

I asked if this event would include additional games for Gaia users to enjoy while they participated in the forum chat.

“Yes, Gaia is planning to extend the partnership with Random House for 3-4 more additional book-related promotions this year,” she said and added she wasn’t sure if all the book-related programs would include games yet. “Michael (Scott) will participate in an online forum chat with members of Gaia Online about his new book, as he did with the first two books of his series. This Michael Scott promotion on Gaia Online is part of a larger online campaign that immerses fans in the world of Nicholas Flamel through a game that features the author guiding them along their experience. A link to this game can be found at GaiaOnline.com.”

After speaking with Simmons I was given the opportunity to talk to Michael Scott about his books as well as his feelings about the upcoming event. My first question was why he felt this book has become so popular among Gaia users and how this book came about.

“I think the series struck a chord with the Gaia users because they could very clearly identify with the world and the main human characters - Sophie and Josh. My heroes are 15 and would have the same worries and concerns as many of the Gaia users,” Scott explained. “They’re concerned about school and clothes, they listen to the same music that many Gaia users would listen to, play the same games. They also have laptops and cell phones; Josh goes online the first time he discovers Nicholas Flamels real name. He does the same when he first comes across Scathach. Sophie and Josh use email - Josh has multiple accounts, with AOL, Fastmail, Yahoo and, of course, Gmail. So that made my characters believable.”

He said his stories are well researched and took years to create using information anyone can find for themselves in books.

“I started researching this series a long time ago. I had been developing the idea of a modern fantasy, a contemporary fantasy set very much in the here and now, using recognisable places as the settings and using modern teens as heroes.  Because of my life-long interest in mythology, legend and history, I also knew I wanted to use that as the basis of the story,” Scott explained. “When I initially started developing the story, the hero was Dr. John Dee, but Dee was never quite right. And then, in the year 2000, when I was in Paris, in the Rue Du Montmorency, I came across the oldest house in Paris, the home of the alchemist, Nicholas Flamel.”

Scott went on to explained that Flamel was famous in France and during his trip even found his characters.

“There are even streets [there] named after both Nicholas and Perenelle. But Nicholas was also a bookseller and, while I have been a writer most of my life, I was also a bookseller.  I loved the idea [which is the basis of the Flamel series] of a bookseller buying a magical book which changes his life forever,” Scott said and added he started the series from locations people would be familar with. “The series opens in San Francisco. It is set in locations where the Gaia readers are either familiar with (they know what the Golden Gate Bridge looks like), or they can go online and look at images of Notre Dame in Paris, or Stonehenge in England. All of these contemporary elements made the series so accessible.  And of course, what was really interesting is that the Gaia users began posting questions about the series, which were, in turn answered by other users.”

During the interview I asked with books like Harry Potter already in circulation, what makes his book different from the already familiar Potter series.

“I know The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series has been compared with Harry Potter but then, most Young Adult writing is.  Mine perhaps more than most because Nicholas Flamel is mentioned (though he never appears) in the first Harry Potter book,” he said. “What makes mine different is the fact that it is contemporary. All the places mentioned in the text exist. I give street and place names. It is possible to track the twins across Paris or through London. All the characters exist, so the readers can go online and research the historical Flamel, Dee and Machiavelli, or look up the myths and legends surrounding Scathach, Bastet or the World Tree. All of this additional material adds an extra layer to the story.” 

Scott added that meeting fans on GaiaOnline is an interesting way to bring attention to his books by meeting his audience and though at first was unsure of what to expect, but was surprised of the immediate response he received in the first session with fans on GaiaOnline.

“I did a 90 live chat for the first book, The Alchemyst. In those 90 [minutes] there were 427 pages of questions, with each page having multiple posts. Over 70,000 Gaia users voted in a poll. That day, and for several days afterward, there were so many hits to my website at DillonScott.com that the site went down on three separate occasions,” he said. “When we looked at the logs, about 90% were coming from the Gaia site. It was an inspired piece of marketing. When users logged in, they got a virtual item - an icon of The Alchemyst book - for their characters. I later learned that over 78,000 Gaia users had claimed their icon. When book 2, The Magician, was published, users got a red diamond - which appears on the cover, for their character. Additionally, the first few chapters of each book were available to download.  However, in advance of the publication of book 3, The Sorceress, we went one further and offered the entire text of The Alchemyst available to download. Gaia has this in advance of anyone else and, in the first weekend, 13,000 copies were downloaded.”

Scott said he still visits his GaiaOnline page to answer questions if there are any and was amazed to find out how much his fans knew about his work.

“I went back to Gaia for book 2 and indeed will be back again for book 3, though, to be honest I never left,” he said. “My avatar is still active and I continued to log onto GaiaOnline for months afterward answering questions, though by that stage the fans were active enough and were answering for me. Sometimes, they even knew stuff - like publication dates of foreign editions - that I didn’t.”

The next session with Micheal Scott will be held on May 26, 2009, to attend register on GaiaOnline and visit his page. The site is free to join and once registered visit Scott’s page and enjoy. There’s even a link to his interactive game featuring Scott himself guiding players through each puzzle.

Site [GaiaOnline] Site [Micheal Scott’s Official Website]