Ancient, Strange, and Lovely

When I was writ­ing the oth­er Drag­on Chron­i­cles, I had a fog­gy idea that some­time I might want to write a book that brings the drag­ons into the present day. I thought that maybe they had even­tu­al­ly moved west, maybe to some caves in the moun­tains of Alas­ka. But when I fin­ished Sign of the Dove, a dif­fer­ent book was call­ing me (Shad­ow Spin­ner), and some­how I nev­er got back again to dragons.

Years passed. More books called. My daugh­ter, Kel­ly, who was very young when I first told her the sto­ry of the girl who had to baby-sit drag­ons, grew up and became a micro­bi­ol­o­gist, using microbes to clean up envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion. One day she told me about a rare lizard whose spit has spe­cial microbes in it — microbes that might be able to clean up some seri­ous­ly wicked tox­ins. Aha! Sud­den­ly the drag­ons were back again.

Why did lizard spit take me back to dragons?

Glad you asked.

Thing is, right from the get-go, the Drag­on Chron­i­cles were about endan­gered species. Look at some of the chap­ter head­ing quotes in Dragon’s Milk, for instance:

“The wild crea­tures of the earth are as milk for the human spir­it; to destroy them is to starve our souls.”

See what I mean?

Even the drag­on­pod blooms — which I invent­ed for Dragon’s Milk and nobody ever noticed but me — were part of my attempt to explore what we lose when a species goes extinct. The drag­on­pod flow­ers won’t open unless they’re exposed to drag­on fire, but when they’re exposed and giv­en a chance to grow, they make the ground more fertile.

Here’s where lizard spit comes in. If this lizard has microbes in its spit that might get rid of envi­ron­men­tal tox­ins, who’s to say that drag­ons might not have sim­i­lar microbes — only bet­ter? Who’s to say that they might not real­ly help us to clean up some of the envi­ron­men­tal mess­es we’ve made?

So if drag­ons dis­ap­pear, you lose more than just the cool fly­ing-and-flam­ing thing. You lose the abil­i­ty to clean up the envi­ron­ment, too.

You buy­ing any of this?

I have to say, I had a blast writ­ing this book. Some­how, com­bin­ing the awe­some, ancient drag­ons with the funky lit­tle details of 21st cen­tu­ry life — microfleece dog­gy jack­ets, YouTube, poop­er scoop­ers, turkey basters, elec­tric socks, lawn dwarfs — just tick­led my fun­ny bone. Also, I got to make up rock groups (Radioac­tive Fish, Mutant Tide) and songs (“Biopi­rate,” “Cryp­tid Rant.”)

On the oth­er hand, this book was excru­ci­at­ing­ly hard to write. I’m talk­ing tor­ture. So with the fun and the tor­ture hap­pen­ing at the exact same time, it was like when you eat ice cream too fast and it freezes the inside of your nose.

But I hope it’s just ice cream to you!