Curious things have been happening of late. Ever since I began posting “Dragonborn” news, excerpts, and images on my Facebook page, I’ve had fans of The Elder Scrolls game franchise commenting on the similarities between my book and the games. It surprised me somewhat, because I am not a gamer, and had never heard of these games before the first comments started pouring in.
On their warnings and advice, I did a little research into the matter. What I discovered was that there are no similarities in the structure, plot, or characters between my books and the popular RPG games, other than their being high fantasy and including dragons and other classical creatures of fantasy and mythology. That’s the good news. The bad news, and the source of all these comments, is that the game creators had apparently Trademarked the name “Dragonborn” as a person with the soul and blood of a dragon, and body of a human being. It’s kind of unfair, if you ask me, since dragons are such a huge part of the fantasy genre across the board, especially in romance where they also include an element of shape shifting. I don’t believe any one work of fiction regardless of medium should hold any rights to words associated with a creature so central to the very definition of fantasy, but that’s just me.
While, in the context of my series, “Dragonborn” literally meant someone born or descendant of a dragon, which of course would include having the blood, and at least part of the soul of a dragon, I have absolutely no wish to clash or compete with The Elder Scrolls game creators over the title. Therefore, I have gone through considerable effort this morning to change the titles for my series, as well as the second book in that series from Dragonborn to Dragonblood. This includes changes made not only on the titles and covers, but also in the texts of the books themselves, URL links, tags, and anything else I remembered to change. I can’t go back and change every mention I have ever made of it on social media, but going forward, the series will be referred to by the new name only.
I have already submitted the changes to all the distributors for The Royal Wizard, so they should be appearing everywhere in the next few days. I hope this clears up any residual confusion or worries over possible infringement (of which there is none–I made sure of that) in the future.
Thank you to The Elder Scrolls fans for bringing this to my attention. And thank you to all my readers for your patience and understanding over this necessary change. It will not affect the progress or release schedule for book 2 in the least. Just means the title is now one letter longer. 😉
I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.