Hello, everyone,

Yes, I know, I've not put together a newsletter since Christmas. I'm sorry about that, but as I said, I was very busy over Christmas, mostly in finishing Lady Beware. (Incidentally, the page proofs arrived recently, and that's the last work I'll do on the book, so after that it'll be in the hands of the fates.) Then somehow the rest of January and the whole of February slipped by me, and here it is March, with Dragon Lovers arriving on the shelves, and where did the time go?

That's the main news in this newsletter. The anthology, Dragon Lovers, is moving onto shelves around North America. This is the collection put together by me and my friends who did Faery Magic - Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, and Karen Harbaugh. The strength of that collection was cohesion; the stories even interwove a little. This one is more diverse, but in interesting ways. We all approached the subject of women and dragons in different ways.

Mary Jo explores the dragon-slaying medieval knight in a typically subversive way. Karen draws on her Samurai ancestry for a water dragon from Japanese mythology. Barbara uses South West American native beliefs. And I ran off to fairytale land to play.

My story started as a spoof on the fairytale/nursery rhyme castle and its inhabitants. It even had the king in the counting house, counting out his money as the queen sits in her parlor eating bread and honey. My princess wore a high- waisted floaty dress and a tall pointy headdress with a long veil spilling out of it, and the knights in shining armor rode snow white horses.

But then something happened. It became real, and I had to figure out this world. A dragon turned up every now and then, and a princess had to go through a symbolic sacrifice to appease it. But why? Why did the dragon come? Why did it go after the offering of a little blood? When I realized that this time something would go wrong, I had more whys. Also, at nineteen Princess Rozlinda of Saragond is older than the usual SVP -- the designated Sacrificial Virgin Princess -- and distinctly restless about it. Especially the V part. Why, why, why? Well, I know the answer to the V part, but the rest?

So in the end a simple little play project became a world. Two worlds, really - Saragond and Dorn, the dragon lands - and Rozlinda discovers she's the key to the survival of both. I think you'll enjoy it, perhaps especially Seesee the dragon. If you haven't already read it, chapter one is here.

Because Mary Jo and I are both members of the Word Wenches blog, the other Wenches have graciously agreed to designate March Dragon Month. There'll be dragon-related posts here and there throughout March, and the two other Dragon Lovers authors, Barbara and Karen will be guests. In addition, Shana Abe, who is writing the wonderful Drakon series featuring Georgian shape-shifting dragons will be a guest. Check out the blog for more details.

We have a web site for Dragon Lovers.

I've put up my travel itinerary for 2007. You'll see it's a light one with not much travel far from home. I'm sorry about that, but last year was so hectic, including a trip to England, that I cut way back. Check out that page here.

For your amusement, I offer some humorous dragons. I bought a collection of dragon pictures, and some struck me as so strange that I had to put captions on them. You'll find them at this page.

All best wishes,

Jo

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