Jo Beverley:

My story doesn't really come from my heritage -- except that I feel as if both Faery and fairytales, along with the best stories from British history, are what fed me as I was growing up.  Faery is, of course, the mythological land that includes those winged people, often of great power, elves, goblins, banshees, leprechauns, and all the rest of the mysterious people. Fairytales are the folk tales, sometimes of peasants, sometimes of princesses, with magic and a lesson in there somewhere.

My inspiration for THE DRAGON AND THE VIRGIN PRINCESS came from another childhood favorite -- the lighter fairy stories and nursery rhymes. In talking with someone about my medieval romances I said, "Wouldn't it be fun to write a fairytale medieval some day. No sweat, mud, and rust. A castle with conical towers, banners flying. Knights in silver armor upon snow white horses. A princess in a gorgeous dress, a long veil floating from her tall, pointed hennin. A dragon needing to be placated by said princess, who would be rescued by one of the knights...."

And there you are. The idea was in my head. So I wrote a beginning, which isn't the beginning of the novella in the book. Because I was playing with nursery rhymes the king was going over the kingdom's finances, (The king was in his counting house...) while the queen, of course, was eating bread and honey. My princess was bored because she didn't really have a purpose except to wait until a dragon swooped in to eat people and animals. Then she'd be paraded around in a symbolic gesture and the dragon would go away. It was light and silly.

But the idea was in my head, and questions stirred. Why would the dragon go away after a ritual? So, perhaps a little blood. Why would a dragon want a little princess blood? Why not the blood or all of a disposable virgin peasant? Why a virgin? If a virgin, why not a child? Why not a male? I understand the sub-texts of sexuality and rape in the traditional stories, but I was looking at it from a practical point of view. Before I knew what was happening, I had a cultural history of Saragond and the outlines of the history and biology of the dragons.

As I wrote, new questions would pop up. Why do the dragons invade so infrequently?  What's the connection between the mother stone so essential to the health of the royal family and the dragons that create it? How does a dragon take off from flat land?

So from a simple piece of writing for fun I ended up with a world and a novella. In case you're wondering, it's not loaded down with all the above. That's my knowledge necessary for me to make the story make sense. THE DRAGON AND THE VIRGIN PRINCESS is a fast-paced story about a princess with attitude who's determined to do her duty and get on with her life -- then finds her duty is her life. And a dragon master with a tender heart who must be ruthless to save his people. And, of course, how they find a solution in the end.

Karen Harbaugh:

My story began with the knowledge that my samurai Japanese grandmother--who died during World War II--was born in the year of the Dragon.  She was a fiery, highly intelligent woman who alternately negotiated with and threatened her elders with outrageous behavior unless they agreed to fund her medical school education.

Not your usual image of an old-time Japanese woman.   But that's the nature of dragons in Japanese culture:  highly intelligent, cultured, and fierce.  My grandmother had one other unusual characteristic:  she had brown, almost curly hair, instead of straight black hair.  When we came up with the idea of writing dragon stories, I immediately thought of her, and dug into Japanese history to explain her very wavy hair and also her very fierce, intelligent nature.  It turns out there is a dragon's cave on the island of Kyushu, not far from where she was born, and a "bottomless" pond near it that's said to be a dragon's stream--dragons are thought to be water/river creatures in Japan.  My mother has visited that cave, and seen the pond. 

Since the Dutch were allowed not only in Nagasaki but in Arita (where they picked up Arita ware, and copied it into Delftware in the Netherlands) in the 1600's, I decided there might, just might, have been a curly-haired Dutch girl left orphaned in Japan to fend for herself.

By the way, I found out--coincidence?--that there were around that time a clan of Japanese who called themselves Nakagawa-Ryu, or Nakagawa dragons. Nakagawa was my great-grandmother's family name.

For a sample of Anna and the King of Dragons click here.