Interview with Kate de los Conejos

A good friend, Kate de los Conejos, submitted a character description/intro for a writer's contest, and won! She let me interview her, and was even willing to share some writing advice with us.  

What gave you the inspiration for this intro?  Why did you pick a dragon to be the character you introduced?

Actually, a friend of ours had a contest on her blog. Her prompt asked us to write about a winter dragon, so I wrote a short vignette, just a scene, for that contest. When the ICL contest came up, I chose characters from three pieces I'd already written, for my three entries, and this dragon was one of them.

Can you see this being turned into a picture book, with a little bit more detail? 4 Why or why not?

No, because the voice and vocabulary are way too old for a PB... and, in the original vignette, the little dragon was destined to melt when spring came, so that would be too dark, also, I think.

Will there be more intros like this in the near future?

Who knows? If there are more contests! But I'm more likely to write a fantasy story that might include material for a similar intro.

Do you have any encouragement, advice to offer your fellow writers?

Just write. Don't limit yourself to the genre and age-range you're most comfortable with. And join the ICL Writers' Retreat, so you can enter their Monthly Write-Off contests. There are no prizes, but you'll get some useful critiques.

Thanks, Kate, for letting me interview you, and thanks for the great advice. I'm looking forward to more awesome character descriptions/intros, and even stories, in the near future.