Why Dragons with Susan Lute on Release Day

This morning, coffee in hand, I found myself asking a question I probably should have answered a long time ago.

Why dragons?

Not in the big, mythical sense. Not the kind of answer you’d find in a history book or a deep dive into folklore.

I mean… why did I choose the personification of fire-breathing strength, loyalty, and bravery? When I first started writing the Dragonborn Chronicles, I didn’t plan to build a world around dragons. I didn’t map it out or weigh the pros and cons of one kind of magic over another. I was feeling the harsh sting of one more rejection when, on a flight to I don’t remember where (somewhere in the mid-country), I decided to write something so far outside my comfort zone that no one would know it came straight from my floundering heart. I ended up in a bar in Orleans, called The Pirate’s Cove, following Logan Pen, the dragonborn leader of the Pen strike team, who had orders to hunt down and capture an Umbra shadow thief and bring him back to answer questions about a weapon of unimaginable power. Imagine his surprise (and mine) when the shadow walker turned out to be a girl.

By the time I reached my destination, the Pen dragons were simply … there. And over
time, I think I’ve begun to understand why. Dragons are power. And not the easy kind.
Not the kind you can hold in your hand and control without consequence. Dragon power
demands something in return. Loyalty. A life born from truth. A family bond that is
unshakable and hard to break. It can protect—or destroy—depending on the strength of
those who wields it.

In an apocalyptic world where everything has fallen apart, where survival is no longer
guaranteed … that kind of power matters.

But dragons aren’t just power. They’re also choice. For all their strength, for all their fire, the stories that are passed down to us aren’t about dragons burning the world down. They’re about the moment a dragon doesn’t. The moment power turns…and chooses something else. Connection. Devotion. Love.

And maybe that’s the story I’ve been trying to tell since I described my first dragon. A message that even after everything is broken … even after the world turns upside down…

What we—dragons and humans—choose still matters.

So why dragons? Maybe because there isn’t another creature that holds all of that at once—the danger, the strength, the possibility.

Or maybe … they were the only ones who could carry this story.

About the Author