dumping a dragon (TO Trust A Dragon)
When you’re a tattooed curatorial graduate student who’s been dating an alleged dragon for over a year, you expect a certain level of whismy in life. But for Noeli Corazon, a year of belieivng that her handsome boyfriend Sivarthis is really a dragon starts to wear her down. Just as she breaks up with him, though, her younger sister Adriana is suddenly missing, and there’s evidence it was a dragon who took her. However, Sivarthis blames a former dragon lover for the kidnap, and Noeli convinces him to take her to his world to rescue her sister from a dragon who keeps humans as slaves. As they journey in his dangerous world together, Noeli must come to trust herself before she can have what it takes to trust a dragon.
2016-2017
novel and graphic novel
24k and 50 completed pages
inspiration
This story is 100% a triumphant return to writing after several years without trying. It still feels a little silly that I got the idea for this story almost entirely from a dream. But since it was a dream I had because of all the Skyrim I’d been playing, it balances out. I had a really rough time, as per usual, getting into Noeli’s character as it started out, and neither of my readers had any affection for her in the first dozen or so pages. But as the story progressed and the action picked up, I let her coast on the plot and as I dug into her feelings towards Sivarthis, a really neat, vulnerable character emerged. She’s definitely got the lowest self-confidence of any of my leading ladies so far, but that was kind of the point. The only thing about this story that makes me sad is the whole time I’d try to doodle this pair and just like, nothing came up. I did a good painting of Noeli and I loved my profile image of Siv, and when I finally wrote the last scene a painting immediately emerged, but it took a while.
In August when I was reading a novel about dragons, I started rereading this novella and then decided to take a stab at making it into a graphic novel. I wrote 50 pages, celebrated it, and then immediately lost steam becaues it was just going to be Noeli among a bunch of dragons, which sounded boring.
recurring characters
This story is relatively sparse on the recurring characters front. Noeli’s boss is a real person from my life. Sivarthis knows the security guards at the art museum, who are Micah and my IRL best friend.
gallery
