Often my stories are born in ordinary places, like the back of a crowded coffee shop or nestled in a midst of a busy library by my house. But every now and then a story is born in a place of magic. For me, Mikhail’s story was born and written in a wintry castle in Southern France in November 2016.
I was staying in the castle with a group of fellow writers. As we shivered by the fireside and watched a family of feral cats play upon the stone terrace in the winter sunlight I was struck by the light glinting over the window panes and how it made me think of diamonds…the kind of diamonds a dragon would hunger to steal and hide in his cave. Thus Mikhail’s story was born. My dragon jewel thief then would need to steal a hoard of impressive jewels and as luck would have it, history had already s
