I hesitate when readers ask me if I have a favorite among my books; it almost seems like a mother confiding that she loves little Suzie more than Johnny, doesn’t it? My first novel, The Sunne in Splendour, will always have a special place in my heart, for it opened the door to a writing career and allowed me to escape the practice of law. But if I were compelled to confess, I would probably name Here be Dragons as my own favorite of my books. There are several reasons for this. After spending twelve years writing Sunne, it was a relief to have characters still alive at the end of Dragons. And I was intrigued to be able to write about a time and place unfamiliar to many of my readers, to introduce them to a man who would become known both to history and his contemporaries as Llywelyn Fawr–Llywelyn the Great. From a writer’s viewpoint, Dragons had everything—suspense, tragedies and triumphs, a clash of cultures, a remarkable love story that happened to be true, all set amidst the bittersweet beauty of a land overshadowed by a more powerful neighbor. Or as Llywelyn put it in Dragons, “Poor Wales, so far from Heaven, so close to England.”

There is another reason, though, why Dragons continues to resonate so strongly with me. Quite simply, this was the book that began my love affair with Wales. I have quite a few Welsh branches in my family tree, so that might have been a factor. So was the stark splendor of Snowdonia and the sunrises that set the sky on fire and the ruined majesty of the castles of the Welsh princes, rising like tombstones over a forgotten past. But the impact was emotional and immediate; whenever I crossed the border into Wales and saw the little red dragon on the sign proclaiming “Croeso i Gymru,” I felt as if I were coming home.

I’ve been asked how Dragons became a trilogy. That answer is easy; while I was able to give Llywelyn and Joanna their happy ending, there was still so much of their story to be told. I’d originally planned to write a sequel about their children and grandchildren and their English ally, Simon de Montfort, but soon realized that Simon needed his own book, and so Falls the Shadow was born, followed by The Reckoning, which related the history of Llywelyn’s grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. Even though many of the events in these books take place in England and France, my readers began calling them the Welsh trilogy, and that is how I think of them, too. You can find the spectacular Castles of Wales website link here: http://www.castlewales.com/home.html