Level Up, Nan

She can't lift a sword. She can't run. But one look from her can stop a dragon.Joan Bostock is 78, widowed and a retired paintress from the Burslem potbanks. One Tuesday she picks up her grandson's VR headset to give it a dust, and wakes up inside Ironvale Online, the fantasy game he plays every night.The game doesn't know what to do with her. It gives her a class nobody has ever had: Pensioner. Her Strength is 3. Her Agility is 2. She can't find the log-out button. But one skill is already maxed out, because she's been practising it on Stoke for sixty years: Disapproving Look.Back in the real world, Joan lies in a hospital bed in Royal Stoke while her grandson Kieran guides her through the game by text. In Ironvale she adopts a tutorial goblin called Grimble, rescues a knight who has guarded the same bridge for eleven years and talks a gang of bandits into founding a co-op. She haggles a dragon down to a Boots Advantage card. She gets her XP from sorting out rows and feeding people, and she levels up faster than anyone in Ironvale has ever done.Then she goes viral as "e;Battle Nan"e;, and Vexx, the top player in Europe, puts a bounty on her head.With a back door out of the game waiting in the distant capital, a world full of characters who are starting to wake up, and a corporate update set to switch every one of them off, Joan has to decide whether to go home or stand her ground. Either way, she'll need her handbag.Level Up, Nan is a cosy LitRPG comedy for fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl, Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax and The Thursday Murder Club. It is the first book in The Nan Chronicles.