Today I welcome author Rebecca Roland, author of the just-released Fractured Days, the second book in her Shards of History series from World Weaver Press. She’s here today to talk about her love of dragons.
I am one of those fantasy readers who loves dragons. I love Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, I love Temeraire in Naomi Novik’s alternate history series of the same name, and you’d better believe I seriously considered dressing as Daenerys Targaryen for Halloween last year. Dragons are truly awesome. They’re huge, they’re powerful; they breathe fire for crying out loud!
My first encounter with a dragon as a kid was Puff the Magic Dragon. I watched the cartoon endlessly. I knew all the lyrics to the song at one point (I tried singing it right now and after a couple of lines started humming). Puff is one of those stories about growing up and losing the magic of childhood. As a kid, those types of stories always made me sad (and they still do). It’s like losing the part of yourself that thinks of all the possibilities. Part of me saw Puff as a warning against growing up too much, if that makes any sense. I definitely believe in keeping in touch with one’s inner child. Otherwise (and pardon me for sounding a little new agey), you might lose touch of where to find the deepest joy within yourself.
But I think I really fell in love with dragons when I watched The Neverending Story. Falcor was a gentle dragon, and he was furry and cuddly and enjoyed scratches behind his ears like a great big sweet dog. And when Bastian or Atreyu rode on Falcor, I felt like I was flying along with them. That has got to be one of the best advantages of having a large dragon. If you can’t smite your enemies from the air, you can fly away from them quickly.
Since I love dragons so much, I had to include them in my Shards of History series. I didn’t want them to overpower the plot too much, though. As cool as dragons are, I didn’t mean for them to be the focus of the series. They are more like horses in the books. They’re mounts for the Maddion, who use the fire-breathing dragons to their full advantage, striking quickly from the air and inspiring terror in whoever they attack. The dragons can’t communicate like Temeraire, nor are they intelligent like him. If they were, the Maddions’ power would far outweigh that of my antagonists.
Dragons can be beastly, beautiful, enormous, or tiny enough to ride on one’s shoulder. They can be clever or not. Perhaps they breathe fire, or maybe they spit acid instead. They might allow you to ride on their backs, or they might turn you into barbeque and then pick their teeth with your femur. Dragons demand respect and wonder. I always dreamed of having a dragon on the cover of one of my books, and that dream has, at last, come true.
BIO:
Rebecca is the author of the Shards of History series, The Necromancer’s Inheritance series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction, and she is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net or follow her on Twitter at @rebecca_roland.
Fractured Days at World Weaver Press
I first fell in love with dragons (or, rather more precisely, under their spell) while reading the Earthsea novels of Ursula K LeGuin. So old, so powerful, so other…
Very well said!