Hello, everyone! As a three-times Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off entrant (and that’s counting this one), I am doing spotlights and interviews for SPFBO9 books and their authors! This 11nth of July, we have The Blood-Born Dragon, an adventurous sapphic story, by JC Rycroft, who loves bringing together apparent contradictions.
The Blood-Born Dragon
A bond she didn’t choose.
A love she can’t escape.
A creature so powerful it bends the limits of time…
Smart, sassy, and sanguine, Des Mildue is a traveling sellsword in Rescalin, a dry and dusty kingdom full of rogues, opportunists, and thieves. She keeps her nose clean, brazens it out with a blade when she can’t, and keeps others at arm’s length where they can’t mess up her plans.
That is, until a sword fight gone wrong leaves her tied by blood to the first dragon hatched in centuries. Suddenly, Des has to contend with a new voice in her head: haughty, willful Esquidamelion. Des wants to leave Squid by the roadside, but the blood bond has other ideas.
With half the world on their tail – including Liv, her beautiful, faithless ex who Des is definitely over – Des must search for answers for why so many are willing to kill, maim and torture to get their hands on Squid. But she’s beginning to suspect her blood bond has tied her not only to a dragon, but to a fight for Rescalin’s future…
…and no one else even knows it’s at risk.
If you like the kind of story that grabs you by the shirtfront and hauls you through mystery, magic, adventure and betrayal, with a side of sapphic romance, pick up The Blood-Born Dragon, first in a new trilogy from debut author J.C. Rycroft.
Ooh, what a name for the dragon!
Onto the Questions!
As a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Entrant, you’re not just independently published, but self-published. Can you start by explaining a bit about why you chose that route and how it’s been for you?
I’ve written for most of my life – I have a bundle of trunk novels, only some of which are likely to ever see the light of day. And as I was heading up to my meaning-of-life birthday last year (iykyk), I realised that the various efforts I’d made at publishing – pitching to agents and such – were just taking too long. I probably hadn’t worked at it as hard as I should have done, but it was a bit disheartening to be that by writing about queer folks – especially as the main characters! – I was likely reducing the likelihood of being picked up by a trad publisher.
Not that they don’t publish queer stories, but there’s far fewer of them in the trad world than the indie world.
And I’d joined TikTok and was a bit blown away by the indie authors I’d seen on there. So all of that culminated in me releasing two books (the novella and my SPFBO9 entry, The Blood-Born Dragon) before I ticked over another year. It’s been intense. But it’s felt like a joy and a relief as well.
That’s awesome! I’m really grateful to live in a world where indie publishing is an option, for those of us with stories that just don’t appeal quite as much to traditional publishers, mired in whatever it is they’re mired in.
On a related note, why did you enter the SPFBO contest? How do you expect to find it? Refreshing your blog’s page every five minutes, or sit back and chill?
I heard about it and heard it was free! Its reputation is also really great, and I wanted to tap a little bit more into the fantasy writing community. It also felt like a celebration of finally getting my book baby into the world! My designated blogs (Critiquing Chemist and Lynn’s Books) are quiet and calm most of the time, so I’m leaning more towards chilling.
That’s how I first entered, too, back in round 7 – I knew nothing about the reputation, but it was free, so I took a try! It is a great celebration, I think!
Book titles. Why did you name this book, The Blood-Born Dragon?
This is approximately the fourth title this book has had! As a WIP, it was known as The Player, because my main character is an actor in her world and I like the old language of ‘playing’ as acting. But of course, it sounds like a billionaire romance which is approximately 180 degrees from what it actually is, so that couldn’t stay. I tried on The Blood Bond, but it sounded like paranormal romance. But I wanted mention of the blood and of the dragon, and so this is where I wound up!
That is a neat story! I can see the appeal of The Blood Bond, but this one you picked on is really cool! The Blood-Born Dragon. And with that dragon’s name, oh!
I won’t ask for your favourite scene since I know some people don’t have those (like me; I never have favourites), but can you share a (non-spoiler) scene you really like and you just can’t believe how awesome it is every time you go back to re-read it?
It’s funny and strange, but although I feel sometimes like I need to haul my pacing forward in edits, my action scenes tend to have me in a flow state, and I think the adrenaline I felt in the writing shows on the page. My editor told me the other day that they read these scenes two inches from the screen and usually need to re-read because they’re too exciting!
So one of my action scenes has our hero and her comrades pelting down a beach on horseback towards what they hope will be their sanctuary – a castle that is on an island just off-shore, connected by a causeway. They’re being chased out of the dunes by a bunch of soldiers, and the tide is coming in, waves crashing over the causeway. And then the baby dragon gets shot… it’s pretty exciting stuff…!
A tiny snippet of what is actually a very long scene:
Tide’s been out, but it’s coming in now—one of the best natural defenses I’ve ever seen on a castle—but it gives us precious little time to make it inside the enormous gates.
“Go!” I scream at Liv.
“You can’t make it once the water is over,” she shouts back. “No one can. They told me never to try. We have to turn back.”
“We’ll make it,” I yell, and lead the way, Liza’s galloping hooves clicking neatly on the rock of the causeway.
“Fuck you, Des!” Liv cries behind me, but she follows.
Neat! I think when action scenes flow like that, they turn out the best in the long run! 😀 And — Eeks, the baby dragon gets shot? Cool castle. Okay, I’ll shut up now. And ask my last question!
What are some elements or themes, or combinations thereof, that really make your book stand out to you?
Sometimes I hesitate to talk about my book in terms of themes, because my background as an academic means I have a LOT of weighty words for describing what I’m talking about, but my fundamental aim with these books was to wear that conceptual apparatus pretty lightly. At its heart, The Blood-Born Dragon is a rollicking adventure story, with a heroine who plunges from one crisis to another, improvising her way into either safety or the next round of danger.
But as I mentioned, Des is an actor – a player in her world’s language – and there’s a lot of questions about performance, integrity and identity floating around in this book. More broadly, Des’s relationship with Esquidamelion – she snips the lofty name down to ‘Squid’ pretty quickly – asks some questions about independence and dependence, about being and becoming, about mortality and immortality, about the nature of time, about what it is that makes us who we are, and how change is ever possible. And swordfighting. Quite a bit of that.
Des is a queer woman in a heteronormative world, and I love watching the resistance of her desires as they play out in this context – how she carves open a space for her various loves, romantic and otherwise. I draw on a bundle of romantic tropes – we’ve got the kidnap, one-bed, enemies-to-lovers, second chances, mild bdsm – and when the sex comes, it’s just as gritty and emotionally-driven and real as the fight scenes. But the romance is tangled up with the main plot, and the two play off each other to heighten the stakes and raise the tensions. At its heart, The Blood-Born Dragon is an exploration of how we are tied to others, and what that means – for us, and for the world.
I did want to mention that Des has a prequel novella, which takes place about 6-12 months before The Blood-Born Dragon, and it’s available free on signup to my mailing list. If you like sword fights, sapphic spice, feminist storytelling, caravans vs brigands and untrustworthy mercenaries, I reckon there will be something in here for you. Remember to pack your tissues if you join the journey though.
Those sound like some pretty interesting questions to explore! I love it when books explore questions like that!
JC Rycroft is a queer fantasy author living and writing on unceded Wadawurrung land in Australia. Their work draws on high and epic fantasy tropes, mixed with a dollop of queer romance, humour and wit, flawed but fabulous feminist heroes and diverse-in-all-the-ways characters, liberally sprinkled with philosophical concepts brought to life. She loves bringing together the apparent contradictions: high theory and silly humour, profound theoretical concerns with a rollicking good story, and ordinary people with unexpected demands to heroism that somehow only they can answer.
Website (go here to sign up to my newsletter and get your freebie!)
The Blood-Born Dragon on Goodreads.
The Blood-Born Dragon on Amazon.
Enthralled By Love 