Origin of the Dragons of Night
On Tuesday, February 23, 2010, I struggled all day to come up with a new idea to write. I had written three Space Operas, and I felt a little burned out. I wanted to do something special, but every idea that I came up with I could match to another Book, Series, or Movie that came before.
I was frustrated beyond words. My last book had made a splash with Horror Fans, and I couldn't get the cult success of Phara-un out of my head. It was a limited run, and it is no longer available anywhere, but people constantly asked me about it. I wanted to continue it. Words wouldn't flow. I was blocked.
That night, Brian and I went out shopping. About half way through the store, I had an strange image pop in my head. I sat in one of the benches in the back of the store, and opened EverNote, and added a strange note.
I could feel my skin crawling. Something strange lingered in the air. A musky bouquet wafted down from somewhere, muscling out the odors of the city.
He looked up, knowing what he would see, and there it was atop the Redd-Bishop building- an enormous black dragon perched on the pinnacle with its wings out stretched. He doubted anyone would see it. Its scales blended perfectly into the skyline. In a moment it was gone.
Relieved, he took several steps towards the restaurant before he paused and looked again at the night sky. What is a dragon doing in the city? He thought, then realized he probably didn't want to know the answer.
Hmm, there might be something there. I titled the note "Dragon Knight- Nathan". I rushed out to the car and tried to capture more of the idea. It didn't work. I ended up just reading these three odd paragraphs over and over again.
The next day, I remembered a note I had in one of my notebooks for my Space Opera Setting:
I am not going to say that it was necessarily an original idea, but it awakened a new idea in me. The idea had merit, whether it had a future or not.
I started playing with the idea, and experimenting with new formats.
I wrote that post March 5, 2010, and explored the idea of a Epistolary Novel, crossed with a blog and a magazine until November 29, 2010. I still like the idea, but it felt forced and unnatural. I even explored doing an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) for a while, but again it felt strange and wrong.
During this period, I asked myself a very important question:
That one badly paraphrased Shakespeare quote changed everything, and made be delve into world history and construct a world that developed a parallel history to the one we know, and gave a spin to special events.
This early seed of an idea eventually grew to the world I am sharing with all of you. I can only hope you love it as much as I do.