Dragons and Shapeshifters
By C.L. Kraemer
“What if?” are the two most dangerous words in a writer’s life. Those two words have started the journey for more books than are in the New York City Library. It was those exact words that started my love affair with dragons and shapeshifters.
A challenge to myself to put words on paper and create a story in a call for an anthology set down the dragon path. The anthology was for fantasy stories. I could have gone a dozen different ways; as many ways as there are fantasy directions. But the inkling of an idea took root and I opted to write a reverse princess and frog story. This was back in 1998. I sent the result off to the contest and was surprised when my story was accepted. Go figure. With very little editing [a LARGE mistake on my part], I became published.
However, my ‘I-don’t-read’ husband had been the test subject for the story and he nagged me to expand on the tale. He felt the characters deserved more than ten or twelve pages. So, I sat at the computer and let them tell their own story, and thus was born Dragons Among Us. I was certain the novel would be a short story about the love affair between a human who discovers she’s a shapeshifter and the dragon who guides her in her new life but the characters had other plans.
Before I knew it, I had a novel of nearly five hundred pages. Dragons from all parts of the globe weighed in and the shapeshifters in those lands added their voices to the story. Now each feels the need to have their individual stories related. I am ruled by my characters but have developed a relationship with each clan of dragons and shifters. I allow them the format to relay their history and provide the lesson they want us all to learn. At last count, there will be a dozen books. [Two are already published.] Dragons Among the Eagles was just released June 2011.
As my heroine in Dragons Among Us asks her boss, “If you can believe in UFO’s and Bigfoot, why can’t you believe in shapeshifters or dragons?”
Why not indeed.
I justed wanted to say how much I loved the first book in your series. I really need and want to read the second and already have it on the list. Your idea and your story telling of the characters, the dragons and the shapeshifters is fantasic.
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