Who says holiday camp, says laughter and scary stories around the fire! And if, this summer, the camp was rather the opportunity to discover a disappeared city… The author Audrée Archambault presents an original and fun concept, with her series of Éléalix game books.
How did the idea for a gamebook come about?
I got the idea after getting a scholarship to do a residency in a primary school. I had to have a personal project to work on, to develop my writing process. I had decided to study the book Of which you are the hero. However, in my series, the reader is not the hero himself; he is rather a master of history!
Creating a gamebook must be quite complex!
I love the universe I created, but it’s also the literary project that caused me the most headaches (laughs)! I should show you my plan… It looks like a big spider’s web, with a thousand paths available to readers! In Éléalix, there are relationships between the characters and quibbles. Depending on the path taken by the reader, these are settled or not. I have to make sure that the psychological side and the friendship evolve at the same time as the quest! In all, there are eight possible outcomes in the first volume of Éléalix.
What can we expect from the second volume, Le secret des Tututcho, which has just been published?
I think that the Tututcho is an element that piqued our curiosity in the first volume… This half-turtle, half-bird creature! Thus, the characters are really looking for the Tututcho, whereas at the start, they were more to wonder if the legend of a disappeared city really exists. There is still a lot of action in this volume and we fear for the lives of the characters… The last part of the Éléalix trilogy should be released in the spring of 2023.
The starting point of the story of Éléalix is a holiday camp. Did you attend camps during your childhood?
Not at all ! My mother was a teacher, so in the summer, we were with her at home. I actually think, as a child, that summer camps had something that made me dream, because I imagined all my friends in camp, without their parents and being able to do a little what they want (laughs) ! It really sparked my imagination.
What is your must-have around a campfire?
I have not attended the camps, but I have worked there before. I had been taught to make bannock. It is a recipe with flour and chocolate chips, among other things, which are cooked on the fire in aluminum foil. It gives a dough, like bread. I thought it was excellent, because I’m not a fan of roasted marshmallows on the campfire!
Notice to interested parties, for the bannock recipe: cuisinez.telequebec.tv/recettes/1524/banique-ou-pain-du-campeur
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