Dragon shifters and why I write them
As many of you reading this probably are aware, I wrote a certain series featuring a dragon shifter main character (The Caein Legacy). It’s epic fantasy/sword and sorcery, my go-to genre to write. But as I’ve learned, it’s something of an anomaly (in more ways than one.)
When I first wrote The Caein Legacy, I didn’t even know dragon shifters were a thing in the fantasy genre at all. I thought I’d come up with a new idea (I was wrong), and when I was initially searching for comparable titles during my querying days, I couldn’t find anything similar.
It turns out, I was just looking in the wrong place. Fantasy romance has so many books featuring dragon shifters! Even if I’d stumbled across this information back then, it wouldn’t have helped me with comp titles… But it is a theme.
Anyway, I recently did another search to see if anything had changed in the last few years regarding dragon shifters in epic fantasy, or other subgenres that aren’t romance. The number of titles is tiny. I found less than a dozen between Google searches and Reddit posts. Why doesn’t this sort of character show up more in the greater fantasy genre, and why is it so popular in the romance sector?
I don’t really have an answer to that, other than shifter romances of any kind are a big trend right now. I’ve seen wolf-shifters, bears, dragons, birds, even cats… If the creature exists in this world or in myth, there’s a good chance there’s a shifter romance featuring it somewhere.
And maybe this is yet another reason why I had such a tough time querying The Caein Legacy to agents. Dragon shifters outside of romance aren’t the norm. They aren’t the latest fad, they aren’t seen in epic fantasy much if my searching means anything, and while epic fantasy readers love their dragons, there’s a subset who don’t want them “tarnished” by being shifters. (I didn’t know there was so much controversy surrounding dragons and their various attributes in fantasy circles until the recently, and that was…eye-opening. I’m referring to the “dragons should have x number of limbs debate” from July. If you know, you know.)
So why did I write a dragon shifter?
Honestly, I thought it was a neat idea. Why settle for turning into a wolf when you can be a dragon? I also built a ton of lore for my world surrounding the dragons, how they arrived, why they left, their mages, their society… And a big chunk of that revolved around the skin-changers: the half-breeds that can shift forms. After developing all of that, how could I not write about them?
And unusual or not for the genre, I stand by my decision. I’ll probably never be one of those writers who strives to meet trends, because I write what I love and what I would like to read. Sure, my books won’t appeal to everyone, and I’m perfectly okay with that.
You can learn more about my series here: THE CAEIN LEGACY. The last book, Legend, will release November 26 and is currently available for preorder.