Day: January 16, 2015

With the release last month of The Revenge Masquerade,the second book in The Dragon Legacy series I’ve been thinking about the next book in the series,working title is Egyptian Chaos.

If you read my author interview on Tracey Rogers’ blog last week you will know I am undecided whether to continue with the series. I still have two more stories to tell but it’s so hard to get your books noticed by your potential audience. Should I write something more mainstream, in the hope of catching a well established publisher’s attention, or self publish the remaining two books? I’d be interested to know what you think. 🙂

So all this introspection made me think back to how optimistic, (some would say naive) I was when I wrote The Dragon Legacy and what inspired me to write, what turned out to be a quirky, fantasy romance set in the English Lake District.

Three things inspired me to write this story:

1. Dragons are my favourite mystical creatures.

2. I have loved the lake district for thirty years , since I was first introduced to it, in my early twenties by my first boss.

3. My fascination with murder mystery.

Dragons are usually portrayed as evil in English fairy tales, something to be feared and slayed but this isn’t how I see them at all.

They are powerful,intelligent creatures, a source of ancient knowledge and magic.

From this viewpoint it was easy to create Lukas Draco, one of the ancient dragons. He exists in two dimensions; our world in his human form, whilst his true dragon form survives in a parallel world, living in deep still water until Lukas requires his powers. The dragons  are champions of good and fight against evil demons to protect humanity.

The Lake District has long been a favourite haunt of mine and it was on one of my holidays when I visited Lake Ullswater and the surrounding hills that I imagined how paranormal creatures could hide in plain sight in such a setting.  Combined with  my love of dragons, The Dragon Legacy began to take shape.

  The final ingredient was my love of murder mystery  games , parties and weekends. I love the drama of these events, the dressing up and taking on a new character.  My shy  Fleur  became the street wise business whiz, Megan and managed to ensnare herself a dragon.

The original draft of The Dragon Legacy contained far more scenes devoted to the murder mystery event but these scenes were cut from the final story as they didn’t move the tale forward. Still I loved writing them and they were among the first words I wrote of The Dragon  Legacy’s first book.

I hope you found this look behind the pages of The Dragon Legacy interesting.

 Have a lovely weekend.