Jennifer asked Kate Sparkes:

Were you inspired by any specific mythologies/folklores when you created your magical characters? I love your merfolk especially, I feel like I've never seen mermaids like yours.

Kate Sparkes Good question! I was inspired by the mythologies I grew up with: fairy tales, folk tales, the Greek and Roman legends I found in big books at my grandparents' house. My dragons have their roots in our world (specifically European legends), though I had some of my own ideas about why they might act the way people say they do. Other creatures in the books have more distant connections to our legends, or to animals that exist here. Any time I use a familiar creature, I try to look at it in a fresh way and find a new way of understanding it.

As for the merfolk, it's bothered me for a long time that they're always depicted as half-fish. Half cold-blooded. Not that there's anything wrong with that idea, I just always thought it made more sense for them to be warm-blooded, with tails more like dolphins. As for their culture, they kind of brought that with them, and I uncovered it gradually as I wrote. There's a lot more to tell, some day.

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