10 Fun Facts About My Book, Dragonhearted

As some of you know, my book, Dragonhearted, will be published this year. I know lots of people are excited for me, and to get you interested in reading this book, here are 10 fun facts about it.

1. Dragonhearted wasn’t originally supposed to be a children’s book. I wrote a chapter of it and submitted it to my university’s creative writing class, where my professor Jen Crawford and everyone else said that it was written for children. The subsequent chapters came together over a period of five years, and the first draft was complete in 2012.
2. The protagonist’s name, Xin Long, literally translates to “heart” and “dragon,” thus giving the book its title.
3. The idea for “Dragonhearted” came from the Chinese idiom, 望子成龙, 望女成凤 (wàng zǐ chéng lóng, wàng nǚ chéng fèng), or “hope son become dragon, and hope daughter become phoenix” and it’s usually used to express hopes and success for one’s offspring. The son was always the dragon and the daughter was always the phoenix. I thought of reversing the idiom, and that’s kind of how the idea for this protagonist came about.
4. Parts of the book were written at 2am in the morning, on my (now dead) blackberry while I was riding in an MRT train, in an art gallery while looking after paintings, and more.
5. The school depicted in the book takes after my primary school, which underwent renovation a few years ago. My sister went to the same school as me, and remarked that it looked like a “Chinese temple”. That remark stuck with me ever since and went into the embellishments in the book. You can google for Nan Hua Primary School to find out what it looks like.
6. The uniforms the characters wear in the book also take after the students who go there. Take note of the cover when it comes out!
7. My friend, Jean, saw the first raw draft of the book and told me that the protagonist was too smart, so I had to change it.
8. The dragon in the book, Xiao Lan, looks something like the dragon below, because his look was inspired by the mural of nine dragons in the Forbidden City. Sadly, I have not been to the Forbidden City yet.
9. The experiences of the three protagonists (Xin Long, Shu Ping, and Four Eyes) are based on what my and my sister’s (and perhaps some of my primary school friends’) childhood was like.
10. And yes, the three kids have Chinese names (Four Eyes has a proper Chinese name, too, but we’ll get to it later) because it’s not often that I read books in which the names of the protagonists are Chinese.

Dragonhearted will be out in May.