The captors drop the legally required amount of food in a huge pile out in the open, ensuring that prisoners riot and fight to get it. Other acts on the lineup included Forever the Sickest Kids, We the Kings, Senses Fail, Asher Roth, All Time Low, Metro Station, the Cab, the Aquabats, Silverstein, Bloodhound Gang, Hollywood Undead, Cobra Starship, the Get Up Kids, Stereo Skyline, Fight Fair, the Friday Night Boys, the Morning Light, Sonny Moore, Breathe Carolina, Brokencyde, the Limousines, Care Bears on Fire, Valencia, MyChildren MyBride, Stick to Your Guns, Parkway Drive, the Dangerous Summer, Sing it Loud, dog chewed seresto collar Hey Monday, Never Shout Never, Before Their Eyes, Blessthefall, Haste the Day, Peachcake, Ultraviolet Sound, Every Avenue, Patent Pending, Anarbor, Twin Atlantic, the Scene Aesthetic, Eye Alaska, Suicide Silence, the Vandals, the Used, Taking Back Sunday, the Bled, Shwayze, Saosin, Thrice, Deftones, Ten Second Epic, I Am Ghost, Forgive Durden, Underneath the Gun, Closure in Moscow, Attack Attack!
Planet Earth. I went back to the nature documentaries for ideas, and I ended up finding one called Life in the Undergrowth, which is amazing, and terrifying-don’t watch it right before bed. I started writing the books right after my first son was born, so I was thinking a lot about parenting and character-building, both as a parent and as a writer: how do you shape these characters, these little people? It started off as a five-book series, and I planned them all that way. This is their way of trying to rid their body of toxins. I don’t think I did that-he just turned out perfect, the way he is. When I was starting to think about the continent in book 11, and what kinds of dragons I wanted to have there, I knew I wanted to have some new tribes. That’s very intentional. I want it to feel like real kids having these adventures, even though they’re dragons. I much prefer funny books myself, and I wanted kids to feel how amazing fantasy can be: the giant plots, the crazy twists, the shape-shifting and all kinds of stuff that can happen, but in a voice that feels relatable, that’s fun to read and fun to write as well.
Yowza. Then we find out that Master-level martial artists can easily break out. Then his younger brother came along, and he’s such a huge personality. I was picturing my firstborn as the older brother of the family. Certainly the HiveMind is something that has shown up in fantasy before, but here it was based on a wasp that can inject a caterpillar or ant and have it do its bidding for a while. This place contains many inky, black pools of thick liquid, each one a Tailor-Made Prison for a very powerful and destructive demon or Eldritch Abomination that was sealed here by a Demon Lord, god, or group of gods. When it comes to fantasy stories, I’m less interested in the idea that there’s one hero who’s going to come save the world, and we have to sit around and wait until that person shows up. Every new character I met I wanted to understand more, especially as they started meeting their siblings out in the world, or the gentler rainforest dragons. These animals do things worse than anything I want my dragons to do! So each five books is finishing a story but getting you ready for another one, if you want more.
We’d like to ask about violence in the books, because deadly events occur with frequency in the first five books. Books one through five are one arc, books six through 10 are another one, and books 11 through 15 will be its own arc as well. As I expanded, I realized that I didn’t want just five good dragons and a whole world of bad guys. I was trying to contrast my five little dragons against the rest of that world. He’s the funniest, craziest little person. I couldn’t exactly say Clay was based on my son because he was a baby, but I think he’s turned out like that; he’s nine now, and I feel very lucky. There are certainly things I’m thinking about now, like the social-political situation that we’re in, and how to sort of apply it to a dragon world. I never get bored because I’m switching to a new character and dealing with their situation and their history and how they handle it. Why did you decide to imagine each book through a different character?