Hi folks,

Exciting news! I have a short story coming out in an upcoming anthology called Dragons and Heroines from Dragon Soul Press! It is coming out on the 30th of January 2022 and you can pre-order it now from Amazon! Link here!

I am super excited about this anthology since it is one of those where I am really intrigued by the idea of the theme (dragons and heroines, obviously) and I want to read what all the other people have written! My head has been stuck pretty firmly in the Regency period lately, what with a LARP I am going to at the end of November being set then and all the Jane Austen Fanfiction I’ve been reading, so I ended up setting my story in an Alternate History version of that era.

The story features two main characters, Miss Antonia Haversmith and Sir Aldrydd. I modelled Antonia a bit on Anne Elliott and Fanny Price from Austen’s novels, so while she is a fiercely practical and competent young woman, she is also very aware that she is only kept around by her family out of pity and because she is useful to them. Sir Aldrydd is a dragon. A dragon who really loves paintings and art history and has been lured to the house to see one of their paintings, but finds out along the way that things are not quite what they appear.

It was really fun to write this story, it called for lots of world-building which is always my favourite part of writing anything, but also I felt really connected to these characters, Antonia especially. The poor cousin archetype is a favourite of people writing historical romances because it sets up a character as an outsider and gives them obstacles to overcome from the get-go, but I wanted to try writing a version of the character who has managed to regain some control over her life anyway. So I wrote Antonia, who has basically made herself indispensable to her relatives by running their household. She is a really interesting character, but a very lonely one.

Then comes along Sir Aldydd, who as I said earlier, is a dragon. In my version of Regency Britain, this is not that weird, since there have been dragons all over the place since the mid-1600s, but they’re not exactly common. Sir Aldrydd can turn back and forth from his massive dragon form into a smaller, appropriate for having drinks with at afternoon tea, sized version. He loves art and art history and I loved playing with the idea of a dragon’s hoard and making it so that maybe it’s not always gold or jewels, maybe it is beautiful art and the knowledge of how to create it.

But that’s all the information I am going to give for now! If I have tempted you or you want to support me, you can pre-order the book here at Amazon! Pre-orders are really important for books from smaller publishers like this because the interest you show now will change how the algorithm on Amazon views the book. Basically, Amazon only advertises things if people are already interested in them, which can be a bit of a problem, I’m sure you can imagine. 

So tempted? If so please go and pre-order the anthology, Dragons and Heroines out January 30th 2022!

Link here!

Stay safe out there,

K