Why I wrote “Please Don’t Feed the Dragons.”

There’s a moment when a young person realizes the world isn’t quite as simple as it was yesterday.

Maybe it’s the first time they notice unfairness. Maybe it’s the first time they see someone hurt and no one steps in. Maybe it’s the first time they realize that adults don’t always have the answers. Maybe we try to explain things away to ourselves when we want to keep holding on to the idea of who we once thought we knew, and who we think is really our friend.

Please Don’t Feed the Dragons was born in that moment.

Why This Story Exists

I didn’t set out to write a book about dragons. Not really.

I set out to write a story about the things we feed without realizing it. Our habits, fears, angers, and small choices can become much larger than we intended. Dragons just happened to be the most honest way to show that.

For a story like that, dragons make sense. They’re big, obvious, impossible to ignore. If a dragon is burning down your village, you don’t debate whether it’s real. You don’t scroll past it. You don’t pretend it’s someone else’s problem.

But the real dragons? The ones we deal with every day? Those are quieter.

The truth is, most dragons don’t arrive fully grown.

They start small. They hatch from a grudge we hold onto. They feed from moments of cruelty we excuse.
They grow from lies we tell because it’s easier than telling the truth. A system we benefit from, even when we know it’s hurting someone else.

We feed them a little at a time. Because they grow slowly, we convince ourselves they’re not dangerous. Not yet. Not really. Not ours.

Until they are.

Writing for Young Readers (and the Adults They Become)

I wrote this book for teens, but not in the way people sometimes mean that.

Kids don’t need watered-down truths. They need clear ones.

They already see more than we think they do. They notice contradictions. They ask uncomfortable questions. They feel the tension between what we say and what we do.

So instead of explaining the world to them, I wanted to give them a story that respected what they’re already starting to understand: choices matter, small things grow, and ignoring problems doesn’t make them disappear. It makes them grow.

And maybe most importantly, I wanted to show that they are not powerless. No matter how big their problems are, or the circumstances they cannot control, we are still fully in charge of what is really important about our problems. That is, what we make them mean with our words and actions.

The Question at the Heart of the Book

Every story starts with a question, whether the reader realizes it or not.

For this one, the question is simple:

What are you feeding?

Not in a grand, dramatic sense. Not in a way that requires you to change everything overnight.

Just… today.

What are you encouraging?
What are you ignoring?
What are you allowing to grow?

Because whether we mean to or not, we’re always feeding something.

Why It Matters Now

This book was written for anyone who has ever looked at the world and thought: “How did things get this way?”

The answer is rarely sudden. It’s rarely one decision, one moment, one person.

It’s accumulation. It’s the slow, steady feeding of things we hoped would stay small. And if that’s how monsters grow, then maybe the opposite is true, too. Maybe what we choose to starve matters just as much. What we choose to nurture matters even more.

I wrote Please Don’t Feed the Dragons because I love how stories have a way of slipping past our defenses.

They let us see clearly without feeling attacked.
They let us ask hard questions without shutting down.
They let us imagine change before we believe it’s possible.

And if even one reader at any age finishes the book, inspired to get up and make their lives mean something better, then the story did its job.

Because the goal was never just to tell a story about dragons. It was to help us recognize them before they get too big to ignore.