“To Get the D-RgN” started as a request from my son, an advanced reader who could handle the complexity of YA novels as a fifth-grader but had zero interest in their more advanced topics. He was like Greg Heffley suddenly thrust into a world of virginal vampires and school shooters, an easygoing kid who was grappling with his dad’s first cancer diagnosis. One day, on a typical ride home from school, he said “there should be more books about dragons”.

I appreciated my son’s belief that I could just toss together a novel while working at three newspapers but I halfheartedly drafted an intro graf or two then put it aside in the chaos of life. Nine years later, my husband was deteriorating in the end stages of a third cancer diagnosis which he would not survive. One day, I opened up the document where I’d started writing the book for my son and realized he had really been asking for a book about a hero. What if the story was not about defeating a dragon but about defeating the dragon, the thing we most fear on a personal level. Suddenly, I knew the story and I began racing to finish the book for him as an 18th birthday present.

A disclaimer: “To Get the D-RgN” is fiction but sprinkled with details which recall my kids and their friends during that magical age before life gets real. This is not a book about my kids but a book about any kid who has ever wanted to be a hero in a world where the ease of childhood ends too soon.