dragon ladies

When Stephanie Burgis read DRAGONS IN A BAG with her ten-year-old, she immediately reached out to let me know how much they enjoyed Jaxon’s escapades. She then invited me to write a guest post for her blog and it went live today: “Zetta Elliott on Dragons, Hybrid Publishing and Reshaping Reality.” Here’s an excerpt:

“I expected I would have to publish Dragons in a Bag myself because most of my fantasy fiction has been rejected by traditional publishers. The kids in my community aren’t their priority but when I publish a book independently, I set my own priorities. Having a book with ‘the Big 5’ has made me realize how important it is to have a sense of your own worth before entering the publishing arena. Otherwise not getting starred reviews, or not making ‘Best of’ lists, or not being treated like a rock star can leave you feeling utterly insignificant.”

You can find both our books on this list of dragon novels compiled by Liz Flanagan for Book Trust. Another dragon lady, Marti Dumas, posted a photo of her homemade dragons online and we got to talking about a recent interview in which Hugo Award-winning SFF author NK Jemisin declared that being a Black woman writing about dragons is “f***ing political!” That got me thinking…what if we three dragon ladies got together to talk about our books? I think it’s a great idea and hope you’ll stay tuned for our pre-holiday blog chat!