Hello, and welcome to the final interview with my fellow A Plague of Dragons (Kindle link) authors! Please welcome Jenna Elizabeth Johnson! Her story in the anthology is called Flame and Form.
Tell me a bit about your story.
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Tell me a bit about your story.
Flame and Form tells the story of Brienne, a Faelorehn woman from
the Otherworld, and Dorran, a draghan shape-shifter from Firiehn, a neighboring
realm. Brienne is on the run, having
recently escaped a life of slavery from the Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of
war. While passing through a small town,
she gets the opportunity to help a captured draghan. Knowing the creature will probably end up in
the Morrigan’s hands, she sets aside her own plans of escape in order to take
the draghan out of the reach of its tormentors.
It isn’t too long, however, before Brie discovers this draghan is really
cru-athru, a man of Firiehn who can take draghan form. This story began as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast (a favorite tale of
mine), but soon started to develop its own personality. There are still the common themes of a man
taking beast form, and looking past the outer self and seeing the beauty
within, but Flame and Form also
introduces elements from my Otherworld universe as well.
Dragons are inherently magical; they
cannot exist in nature. That being said, did you give any consideration to
natural or physical limitations when you were dreaming up your dragons? Why or
why not?
The setting of my story is a land
rich in magic, so it wasn’t a far leap for me to incorporate a magical
creature. The people of the Otherworld
and Firiehn have glamour, fae magic, and can utilize it in different ways. Dorran, my dragon character, uses his magic
to take draghan form and breathe fire.
Despite the fact that my characters wield and use magic as part of their
natural existence, there are limits to how much they can use and if they use
too much, they need to rest and recharge before they are at their best once
again.
How many average-sized adult sheep do you
think the dragons in your story would have to consume per day?
Unfortunately, Dorran, my dragon
character, isn’t a huge dragon. When he
is in his beast form, he’s about the size of a Clydesdale or Shire horse. So I would say, if he were to stumble upon a
hillside full of sheep on an empty stomach, he might be able to consume one of
them. Though, I bet he’d be too stuffed
to take flight afterward for at least an hour.
The dragons in your story are
shapeshifters. In many shapeshifter stories, people lose their humanity while
in their animal forms; werewolf tales are a well-known example of this. Do your
dragons retain all aspects of their humanity when in dragon form?
This is a good question, and the
way I usually approach characters in my stories who have the ability to
shapeshift is that they retain enough of their humanity not to go entirely
feral. I like the idea of the animal
side of them lending their sharpened instincts to either form (because if they
don’t go a bit wild, what’s the point of turning into an animal?). In Flame
and Form, my shifter characters take on all the aspects of being large,
fire-breathing reptiles. They are
fierce, they are strong, they are naturally graceful. They recognize the human (or in my case,
Faelorehn) woman who is their friend, but they also have no trouble identifying
the enemy and treating them as such. I
didn’t spend a lot of time on this subject in Flame and Form, but I do hope to explore it further in future
books.
Tell me about some of the other dragon
stories you’ve written.
I have one other series that
directly features dragons as important characters, and that is my Legend of Oescienne series. The Oescienne books are appropriate for
younger readers (10 years old and up) and they tell the story of a human infant
found and raised by dragons in a world where her kind no longer exist. The dragons in this series are highly
intelligent and capable of speech (in fact, Hroombra, the dragon mentor to my
girl hero, Jahrra, was responsible for tutoring the human children of the royal
family from long ago). This series is an
epic fantasy adventure along the lines of Lord
of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Eragon.
There are currently four full-length novels and one short story
collection in the Legend of Oescienne
series, with the fifth and final book in the works. The titles of the books are The Finding (Book 1), The Beginning (Book 2), The Awakening (Book 3), The Ascending (Book 4), and Tales of Oescienne. The
Finding has recently been made available in audio format.
Will there be a sequel to Flame and
Form?
Yes! I have this terrible habit where, if I start
a shiny new story, it usually decides to grow into something larger than a
single book. I do have plans to write at
least two follow-up novellas to take place after Flame and Form. No set
publication dates yet, but hopefully one or both of them will be out before the
end of the year. It all depends on how
busy my other writing projects keep me.
If you could take one of your characters
to a book event to help you sell books, who would it be and why?
I’ll go ahead and pick someone
from Flame and Form since this book
is the one featured in the new anthology, A
Plague of Dragons. Let’s see… I
would bring all my characters if I could, and although I think Mynne (Brienne’s
blind, spirit guide wolf) would be a fun addition to any event, I’m going to
have to go with Dorran. In his Firiehn
form, he’s a ruggedly handsome, tall, dark-haired, flame-eyed man; a warrior
from a realm of magic. I mean, who
wouldn’t want to wander over and get a picture with him? And if he wasn’t impressive enough in his
more human form, he could shift into draghan form. A soot black draghan the size of a large
horse who happens to breathe turquoise fire?
Yeah, if I was attending a book event, that would DEFINITELY get my
attention.
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