I wanted to write Game of Kings because I have spent 20 years playing Tournament Chess and I thought people might find this world intriguing, because of the nature of the game and because of the strange assortment of people I met and got to know.
I chose to use a template plot, and picked my favorite, the tried and true structure of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I did not use the character names, but just the personalities and plot points. I’ve always been intrigued by the brilliance of these plot devices. I love how Lizzy and Mr. Darcy are thrown so believably together by her sister’s love interest in his dearest friend. The chemistry is built into the relationship by the fact that though they dislike each other, they are confined together in a closed space for lengths of time.
Chess tournaments are ripe for this. We often joke that we are really like a big dysfunctional family. Even if you hate each other you might find yourself paired against each other in a game, forced to sit across from each other for as long as 7 hours for a game.
Another feature that I like about Game of Kings is that I didn’t write this one alone, I wrote it as a team with the wonderful editor I used for The Oshkosh Trilogy, DJ Natelson, an author whose work I respect and admire. I believe that working alone I could not have achieved the level of success that Game of Kings has had, because I simply would have put way too much chess in there, and alienated the bulk of my readers.
After all, this book is not for chess players, it is for fans of Jane Austen. And most chess players, as you will learn from the book, are so obsessed with chess they rarely raise their head above the board to look around at the world, much less the romance novels contained in it.