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:

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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.