Battle for the Nether: Book Two in the Gameknight999 Series
ABoUT ThE AUThoR i ve come to love playing Minecraft with my son I didn’t get here easily though in fact my son had to drag me there kicking and screaming But now I love it You see he saw a video about Minecraft on You Tube and of course said he had to have it Over the next month he was persistent in reminding my wife and I that Minecraft was great and the he couldn’t live without it So finally we caved and bought Minecraft I helped him load it on the computer create his user name Gameknight999 select his character appearance and off he went At first he played it on his own but soon he was calling us into our office so that he could show us what he created and it was pretty amazing He had built a gigantic castle and then an obstacle course with moving parts and then an underground village his cre ations blew us away As an engineer anything that offers me a chance to build something sounds in stantly intriguing So I sat there with my son and let him teach me how to play Minecraft In no time at all I bought a license for me to use Monkey pants271 being my user name and off we went into
xiV MARk chEVERTon the digital realm together building towers fighting with zombies and dodging creepers He loved playing Minecraft so much that we bought a server for him the next Christmas He spent months building things on his server cas tles bridges underwater cities factories every thing and anything his imagination could conceive Next he brought in his friends from school to build some really gigantic structures Of course I helped too partially to monitor what was going on but also because I’m a big geek and like playing the game I was overwhelmed with how proud he was about his creations He made videos showing off his creations and posted them on YouTube Well one day some other kids were able to get onto the serv er probably because my son or one of his friends gave out the IP address These new kids destroyed everything that he’d built griefed everything until only a crater was left They leveled everything to the ground obliterating months of work The next time my son logged on he saw his creations de stroyed and was crushed Then to make matters worse these kids posted the video of their griefing his server on YouTube This was the ultimate teachable moment to talk about cyber-bullying I tried to answer my son’s questions about why someone would do this what kind of person would take pride in destroy ing someone else’s creation but my answers just fell flat That was when I came up with the idea of teaching my son through his favorite thing Mine craft I wrote the first book called Invasion of the Overworld and it taught kids about cyber-bully ing and how it affects others as well as hammer ing away at the importance of friendships using
BATTlE foR ThE nEThER xV Minecraft as the tapestry on which the lesson was written My son and I are still playing Minecraft together and have built structures that appear in Battle for the Nether Looking ahead I’ve nearly finished writ ing book three Confronting the Dragon which fol lows Gameknight999 and his friends into The End In addition a fourth book Trouble in Zombie-town has been started and will see Gameknight999 fac ing a new Minecraft villain Thank you to all the people that have emailed me through my website www markcheverton com I appreciate all the kind comments from both kids and parents I try to reply to every email I receive but apologize if I’ve missed anyone Look for us Gameknight999 and Monkey pants271 out there on the servers Keep reading be nice and watch out for creepers Mark Cheverton
