Let's talk novellas! DRAGON'S OATH

Let’s talk novellas! I’ve begun working on the last HoN novella, KALONA’S FALL, and I thought it would be fun to talk a little about each of the preceding three, how they came into being, and my favorite parts of them. The whole thing began one evening when I was having dinner with my publishing family at St. Martin’s Press. SMP isn’t just my publisher – they are big HoN fans as well. We were talking about the series, and the subject of Dragon and Anastasia Lankford came up. I said something like, “Yeah, they’ve been together since before Dragon went through the Change. Anastasia was a professor at his HoN, and older. It took a lot of convincing for him to woo her!” My amazing publisher, Matthew Shear (who we lost to cancer last year – we miss him very much), said, “Wait, you know all the backstories for your adult characters?” I said, “Yep!” He said, “Could you write them for us?” I said, “Yep, if we can work them in between the HoN books.” And Matthew said, “Done!” From there we discussed the format of the novellas. We all felt very strongly about publishing them in a format that was different than the big HoN books. I didn’t want my fans to think they were buying a full-length book, and then get home and realize it’s just a novella and be disappointed (books are about 80,000-100,000 words – novellas are about 25,000-50,000 words). Matthew and I liked the small hardback format, and I insisted on the chapter illustrations to more fully set them apart from the big books. So that’s how the novellas came into being. Now you’ll understand why DRAGON’S OATH was the first of them to be published! I set DRAGON’S OATH in St. Louis, beside the Mississippi River. I used to camp with my family along the river as a young girl, and I’ll always remember the lovely train trip my grandma and I took up to Minneapolis, MN, that ran along the river and those beautiful bluffs. My favorite scene from DRAGON’S OATH was when Anastasia cast the spell that called forth the grownup version of Dragon. Loved writing that! And my favorite illustration was the one that showed Bryan and Anastasia’s hands side-by-side – his holding a sword and hers holding a sunflower. What’s your favorite illustration from DRAGON’S OATH? Favorite scene? XXXOOO PC