Genesis of Death Before Dragons (and a few reader questions answered)

I don’t know about you, but when I’m into a new TV show or book series, I love to hunt down extras and behind-the-scenes stuff online. Remember the good old days when we got DVDs that had director and actor commentaries included? Maybe they still do, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a computer that even has a DVD player so I’ve wandered into the streaming world like everyone else.

Anyway, I thought I’d answer a few questions and share some thoughts about my new series in case you also like extra tidbits.

Genesis of Death Before Dragons

If you’ve read my space opera or my heroic fantasy, you’ve probably guessed that I’m a fan of stories that take place in made-up worlds far, far away. It’s what I grew up reading (Eddings, Brooks, Feist, Tolkien, about a thousand Forgotten Realms and Star Trek novels…), and it’s always seemed fun to make up all new worlds for my stories.

But here with Death Before Dragons, we’re in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up and still visit. The main reason is because Val, the heroine of the story, popped into my mind as someone from my own time. I first came up with the character when I was rewatching Gross Pointe Blanke. The dialogue is fantastic in that movie and I always liked the idea of the hitman main-character Martin trying to figure out why he’s not satisfied with his life… through visits with a therapist who is totally not into him. I thought something like this would be fun to do in a fantasy story.

Since it would be hard for my heroine to call and text a therapist in a steam-age or medieval setting, I came around to the idea of having Val live in our world. I also wanted to give her a health challenge or two to work through (she doesn’t have it as bad as poor seizure-prone Casmir in my Star Kingdom series, but she’s otherwise a badass, so she needed an Achilles heel), and as someone who keeps an inhaler in my purse, it seemed like it was time to do a character with some lung issues. We’ll find out more about the why on that (for her) later.

I knew right away that if I was going to do an urban fantasy series set in a modern era, I would want to bring in some of my favorite creatures and beings from epic fantasy. Dragons for starters, but you’ll see some elves and maybe even some dwarves and gnomes as the series continues. Oh, and the goblins. You’ll meet the goblins in Book 2, and they’ll be back in 3. Who doesn’t love goblins?

As a nod to typical urban fantasy stories, I’ve got some werewolves and vampires in there too (though I’m not sure Zoltan the alchemist with the YouTube following quite counts as a typical vampire).

I was a bit nervous about jumping into urban fantasy (would my epic-fantasy-loving readers follow me?). It and paranormal romance are the largest sub-genres of fantasy, and they’re the most competitive. I’ve been bidding on Amazon ads and falling over from sticker shock. So far, so good though. Many thanks if you’re reading the new series!

What’s up with that series title?

Death Before Dragons is of course a play on the saying death before dishonor. As early as Book 1, Val’s fate becomes intertwined with that of the visiting dragon Lord Zavryd, and she finds herself involved with a whole world of dragon politics that she knew nothing about (and would have preferred to go on knowing nothing about).

Those dragons have a tendency to see humans (and half-elves) as minions and think little of magically taking control of them. But as Val tells us a couple of times, she would die before being some dragon’s pawn…

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!

Will Val learn more about her elven heritage and meet her father?

I keep her pretty busy with Earth-based problems in the first few books, but she will get some visits from elves, and she might just get to go to their world one day. Will they accept her? I don’t know, since I haven’t written those scenes yet! We shall see. But I do plan to have her learn more about her heritage and her magical sword (whose proper name is probably not “Chopper”).

Will Zav chill out and become less arrogant?

Well, he is a dragon. A humble dragon would be weird, right?

He does mellow a touch as the series goes on, at least when he warms up to Val. He’s still a bit of a stick with everyone else.

How many books will there be?

I’m not sure yet. I have the first four written and the next one plotted out, so at least five.

To some extent, reviews and sales play into how many books I write with the same set of characters, but I tend to have in mind story arcs that I want to gradually resolve over the course of a series, and I consider a series complete once I do that. That doesn’t mean there won’t ever be more installments (Republic and Oaths were both unplanned novels that extended my Emperor’s Edge and Dragon Blood series respectively), but I’m not usually one to write five more books after I complete the main story arc.

That’s my way of saying it’s a bit up in the air, but it’ll probably be more than five and fewer than ten.