The Story Behind Dragons Gone Wild

I always planned to release genetically engineered dragons into the wild. It just took me three books to get there.

Years ago, when I first wrote about the Build-A-Dragon Company, my literary agent asked me, “Why dragons?” He had just read an early draft of my book in which a genetic engineering company develops the technology to create living, breathing dragons. I told him, “I don’t understand the question.” If you had the technology to bring living dragons into the world, why wouldn’t you do that? He gently pointed out that companies exist to make money, not fulfill wishes, so there should probably be some kind of market demand for dragons. Irked by these questions, I decided to kill all dogs with a canine epidemic. Then we’d really need something to replace them. Customized dragons as pets, made to order. That was the business model in Domesticating Dragons.

New Dragon Markets for Build-A-Dragon

Of course, killing most of the dogs in the (fictional) world upset many of my canine-loving readers, so I had to bring them back eventually. Once the dogs returned, the Build-A-Dragon Company needed a new business model. Fortunately, the US Department of Defense was interested in developing dragons for use by the military, and they had deep pockets. As readers of epic fantasy know quite well, in any armed conflict, the side that has dragons will usually prevail. So, in Deploying Dragons Noah Parker and his team of dragon designers developed attack dragons that could be deployed on land, in water, or in the air. That gave the company a steady supply of revenue to support other projects.

Noah has always wanted to design dragons for release in the wild. What he needed was a good excuse.

I needed an excuse myself: another story to write for Baen Books. I’d learned over the course of two books how wonderfully supportive they are of their authors. Getting in with them is like marrying into a really cool family. All of these people — editors, staff, and my fellow Baen authors — now have my back. I didn’t want that to change, and of course I wanted to write more books. So I put together a proposal and a detailed outline for a possible book #3 in the Build-A-Dragon Sequence. My publishers at Baen were kind enough to indulge me, so I got to work.

In Which I Am Bad At Outlines

What I ended up writing had little resemblance to the outline, which had more of a mystery/thriller angle. The actual book as it came together, though, did start the same. Noah gets a call from a botanist who studies rare desert plants. She wants to know if Build-A-Dragon’s reptiles can help control a swarm of locusts that’s devouring its way toward her research oasis. So begins a new phase for Noah and his fellow dragon designers: customizing dragons to tackle specific ecological threats. Of course, it’s hard to design the perfect predator without firsthand, boots-on-the-ground information about the problem and the environment in which it occurs. Thus, the work takes Noah all over the globe, from the scorching heat of Arizona deserts to frigid islands in Antarctica. Which would be fine, except it keeps pulling him away from his team, his dragons, and his fairly-serious girlfriend. And of course, there’s the lingering unspoken possibility that these ecological-control dragons might become a new threat themselves.

This is the setup for Dragons Gone Wild, which was published today by Baen Books. It’s available in print, ebook, and audiobook (narrated by Austin Rising). As I wrote in my acknowledgements, it takes help from a lot of people to bring a book into the world. I was especially grateful to:

• Toni Weisskopf, my publisher at Baen who continues to support my books
• Griffin Barber, my new editor, who blazed through books 1 & 2 in like four days so he’d have context for his edits
• Brady McReynolds of Jabberwocky Literary, who adopted me when my former agent left the business and has been an excellent business partner.
• Dave Seeley, the cover artist who continues to produce jaw-dropping cover art for my series.

Last but not least, I’m deeply grateful to my readers and followers who to buy, review, and talk about my books enough that I get to keep writing them. Thank you!

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