Vanessa Ricci-Thode's Blog

I probably should have included this when I did the post for the Favour Fire release day, but honestly, the final book and the inspiration for the series as a whole are a tad different. It was the second movie specifically that really got me writing this series.

Dragon Whisperer was written before the first movie and came out before the second. That book and Trueflame are more closely connected to each other and less inspired by the HTTYD franchise. It was Fireborn where the influence really became heavy. I kept the things I thought were cool (Hiccup’s dragonpunk aesthetic, people and dragons being friends) and got rid of the stuff that annoyed me (gods, it’s so white and straight and OMG not another dude! And how in all the hells is a FIRE-BREATHING race of sentient creatures so helpless?)

I was never going to write the dragons as the pets. That’s just so beyond ridiculous to me. I think I got my dragon inspiration less from HTTYD and more from Reign of Fire. Except, ya know, not taking over the world and destroying everything. So, as Abyss reveals in Firebound, it’s the people who are more like pets, though what I really wanted was a relationship of mutual respect.

My dragons absolutely could wipe out all of humanity but gods that’s boring and a lot of work when they can just hang out and look at their shiny toys. Besides, humans create really neat stuff with those tiny little hands of theirs and they sure know how to fatten up a cow. We’ll keep them around. Well, most of them.

And so that’s how we got Spark and Abyss figuring out how to be friends and Spark making all kinds of cool shit to help dragons and also so she can go flying. I kept what I liked about Hiccup (clever blacksmith with cool gadgets) and then made Spark someone entirely different.

And while everything is a bit fuzzy because it’s from the beforetimes, I’m pretty sure Hiccup and Valka’s reunion had something to do with me not killing off Neesha in Firebound. I’d also done some work around then in a different, as-yet-unpublished book where I killed off a character, decided that was lazy and boring, and unkilled him to dramatic effect. It made things harder but also more interesting. Keeping Neesha around took the series in a different direction, but a much more interesting one. There’s very little of Hiccup actually working with either of his parents, but when they do team up, it’s magnificent. That trilogy needed more Valka, especially the final movie! So I threw a whole lot more of that in. Family drama and saving the world? Heck yes!

You’ll note that in Fireborn onward, there are not a lot of men in these books. Aside from Croves, few of them have much of a role. All of the POV characters are women, even the dragons. Most of them are queer. It’s actually really easy to not make everyone a straight white guy. (Though I will give the teeniest, tiniest of props to HTTYD for kind of making Gobber gay and/or ace, though I’m not convinced it was intentional with only two throwaway lines and not much else to go on). And they casually made a bunch of characters disabled. So there’s that.

Okay, I’m kind of shitting on the HTTYD franchise and while I really do love those movies, they also earned my ire. Only including BIPOC as villains? Barely including women? Not even passing the Bechdel test? Having only one queer character and probably by accident? Come on!

So yeah, I took the things I liked about the movies and got rid of everything else. Also, I’m biased but I really think I stuck the landing with my series-ender better than the movies did. In my books, the characters worked together and went out to make the world better rather than hiding and waiting for things to just change on their own. I feel like the parting message of HTTYD is “Greed is why we can’t have nice things.” I hope the parting message people will take away from my series is “Greed is why we can’t have nice things and here’s what we can do about it.”

A word on reading order:

While the publication order is the in-world chronological order and you can start with Dragon Whisperer and read straight through, each book contains a synopsis of previous books so that you can, technically, start anywhere. I don’t recommend starting after Fireborn though, as things will probably get a bit confusing.

The first three books each have a different main character and the later books bring them all together. So the first three books are more like interconnected standalones. I mention this because people often start with Dragon Whisperer but end up not liking it. This book is my debut and it’s me at my publishable worst. Which isn’t to say that it’s a bad book, but that my writing is much stronger even by Trueflame.

And there’s The Dragon Next Door, which is a spinoff standalone, if you want to try my work without committing to a series. While this book does standalone, I recommend reading it before reading the final book in the series, Favour Fire. New characters from The Dragon Next Door make an appearance and play a significant role in the final book.

And I’m always happy to answer questions either through my contact form, comments here, or on social media. Happy reading!

Today’s the day! It’s the end of a journey that started waaaaay back in 2009 when I wrote the first draft of Dragon Whisperer for NaNoWriMo. If you’re the sort who waits for a series to end before starting it, today is your day! If you’ve been following me excitedly since the beginning, today is also your day! Insert Oprah gif Everyone Gets A Book!

You can check out more about the individual books in the journey here:

Dragon Whisperer
Trueflame
Fireborn
Firebound
Dragon Next Door

This final installment of the Fireborn series brings together old favourites and new faces for one last, explosive adventure.

The fireborn women discover they aren’t alone with their unusual talents when demonborn aquamancer Tollar and her polycule and dragon daughter stumble into the dragon city for the young dragon’s naming. Despite general mistrust and suspicion from having a powerful aquamancer in the dragon city, Neesha becomes fast friends with the newcomers. While Neesha is used to being distant with her mother, the mistrust brews a new and uncomfortable gulf between her and Spark.

Tollar is used to a hero’s welcome, gaining trust and friends everywhere she goes—and she’s been just about everywhere—so finding neither on her first visit to the incomparable dragon city leaves her with doubt gnawing at her confidence. All she wants to do is go home.

But news of Loch’s whereabouts and plans have the demonborn women all scrambling to learn new skills and to trust each other. In a long journey that takes them across the world, sacrifices must be made if they hope to stop Loch’s expansion, save an innocent island nation from obliteration, and save themselves and their families.

I’ve said many times that when I wrote Dragon Whisperer, I never intended for it to be the start of the series. In my mind, Dionelle’s story was done. I was very wrong! Even now, I’m sure she’s still got journeys ahead of her, some maybe with her daughter and granddaughter. I put her through a lot, but she’s finally in a place of peace.

Another thing I got wrong early on (in planning for this to be a series) was that I was initially going to kill Neesha in Firebound. I got too caught up in the insistence that if it doesn’t have a high body count, is it even really fantasy? And ignored what would actually be interesting. Killing off characters is easy. Keeping them alive and helping them cope with the shit that’s happening? Now there’s a challenge, and a fascinating one!

Neesha woke up after seventeen years no less angry. Possibly angrier? Who can say! I love my rage-filled little disaster and I’m so happy with my decision to keep her around to let her grow and embrace her flaws as something she can use for good. For her to figure out how to be a mother and how to find her place in the world. And then I gave her another disaster as a best friend! If you haven’t read The Dragon Next Door, you’re going to want to before you get to Favour Fire. While DND is a side quest that stands alone, it also feeds into Favour Fire, where I bring all my little dragon riding weirdoes together.

I have always loved Tollar and I have been excited to bring all these characters together since I finished Fireborn and finally knew where this series was really headed. And if I don’t quit writing and publishing entirely, there will very definitely be more adventures with these characters, particularly Neesha and Tollar who I just had absolutely so much fun writing together.

And then there’s Loch. Fuck that guy. Yeet him into the sun. Everything about what I’ve done with him has been intentional. In part as a reminder to everyone that these shitty edgelords ruining the world don’t actually have the power they think they do or that they’ve convinced so many of us they have. That the right people at the right time with just the right amount of push can knock these bastards over more easily than we generally think.

Yes, this is a fun book about dragons, with quirky characters having quippy adventures. But it’s also very much a product of our times. And that’s why along with the struggle, I’ve been sure to include more quiet character moments, of these characters supporting each other and finding joy.

I hope you’ll check it out and that you’ll love it and that it can be a light in the dark and an inspiration for you to join with your community and fight back however you can to hold on to the beauty around us.

If you’d like to learn more about it or add it to your TBR, check out its Goodreads page. 

And Favour Fire (and the whole Fireborn series) is available widely at most major online retailers!

I guess it’s that time of year again and hey one award is great but what if MOAR AWARDS? Self-published work is eligible for most awards! So when you’re nominating for awards—especially the Auroras, Nebulas and Hugos—please think of me and my work! I even had a “trad” story this year with “Billionaire’s Tears” so that was cool.

Real talk, I don’t need anymore awards, but it sure would be neat to win again! I’d especially love to win an Aurora! (And a Lammy, but that’s a judged award so just send me good vibes for that one!)

And currently right now until the end of November you can nominate The Dragon Next Door in the Indie Ink Awards! It’s super easy. Suggested categories: ace rep, LGBTQ+ rep, book cover, friendship, side character, made me hungry.

Anyway, here’s my eligibility for this year.

BEST NOVEL
The Dragon Next Door, fantasy, self-published June 3, 2025

BEST SHORT STORY
“Billionaire’s Tears”, sci-fi, published by Escape Pod July 24, 2025

BEST SERIES
Fireborn series, fantasy, self-published, completed November 18, 2025

It’s been a pretty good year in terms of output and published work. I’m really proud of my works this year and I had a lot of fun writing them. I hope others have enjoyed reading them and think of me come awards season.

The great thing about perimenopause is how stupid it makes me so that I can’t remember most of what happened in this book, except that I really liked it. I barely even remember how to write a review. So that’s been great.

Anyway, this is urban fantasy, which I don’t normally like, but I like the author and wanted to give this a try. The MC is really compelling, and it was really interesting to get a look into the life of someone with a condition I’m not overly familiar with. And bonus points for using someone with steel holding her bones together to creative effect against the fae! The book is well-written, well-paced with a whole lot of broken people kind of being dicks, but in a situation so compelling I don’t even care.

I will definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy!

Okay, so despite it taking me half a century to finish this, I really did quite enjoy it. The problem was that I was listening to it on audiobook, which I only do in winter, and I unfortunately didn’t get it done before spring arrived. I do also listen on road trips too, which was how I finally got it finished despite not-winter.

Anyway, if you like audiobooks, the narrators do a great job with this one!

The duology is marketed as YA but it really doesn’t feel that way, except for Faron’s romance subplot. The MCs are teenagers, yes, but they’re both out of school and doing very adult things. I think it qualifies more as NA though traditional publishing, for whatever very stupid reason, seems determined to deny the existence of said category. Insert shrug emoji.

Look, I can barely remember where the book started or much of what happened in book one, but from the major plot points that I do remember, the ending of this book is fantastic. It’s got satisfying character arcs and a focus on family and community that I deeply appreciated. Love me a sister story that isn’t full-on adversarial.

Highly recommend both books!

We’re getting to the end of flower season in Ye Olde Flower Garden so there’s not much left that’s still blooming. And it’s been very droughty so what is still blooming is looking pretty scraggly, but the passion flower vine and the morning glories are still doing great! With bonus butterfly.

Okay, so honestly I was a bit on the fence about this one because the description didn’t sound like it was gonna be quite my thing. But then I saw the author talking about the book on social media and I immediately put it on hold at my library. The back of the book makes it sound like it’s going to go in once sinister direction while it ends up going in a completely different direction.

I mean, Venita is terrifying. But also not at all what the cover copy would lead you to expect.

This is not the kind of scary that The Family Plot was. I didn’t have to read this one during the day to finish it and still have a hope of sleeping at night. It was more gentle. Less terrifying and more spooky. With ghosts you want to cheer for and humans you want to grab by the shoulder and shake.

I really enjoyed this one. I devoured it in like two days. If you like a good haunted house story and would rather hug the ghosts than fight them, this is the book for you!

I have once again been slacking off with the flower reports. Anyway, here’s a giant ass hibiscus and a strikingly black petunia, as well as my deck boxes where I’ve got more black and fuchsia, black and white, and white and fuchsia. I’ll try to get more photos of what’s blooming, though a lot of it is starting to look a bit scraggly as we get to the end of the season.

I post regularly with butterfly and caterpillar pictures on Bluesky and have had people ask about it so I thought it was a good time to do a blog of what I’m doing and why. I’m not an expert! But I do try to keep up with what’s going on in monarch research, and I’ve got several years of observation behind it.

So for starters, I raise monarchs. Here’s what it looks like: I start by keeping an eye out for butterflies in the spring. I track their migration and when they reach my area, I start checking the milkweed in my yard for eggs. Once I find eggs, I pull the whole leaf off the plant and keep them in sealed containers lined with damp paper towels. I keep the containers in the shade outside on my deck. As the eggs hatch, I move the caterpillar (again leaf and all) to a separate sealed container. Once they hit third to fourth instar, I move them into the bug tent, which has milkweed plants in jars of water. They stay there until they’ve made and then emerged from chrysalis, and then I let them go into my front yard.

Now, here’s why I do all this in this specific way. First, a lot of things (ants, spiders, wasps) will eat the eggs and caterpillars. Even the big chonky fifth instars aren’t safe, unfortunately. I’ve seen wasps eat the bigger ones. I recently saw some bigger ants attacking a fourth instar (which I promptly rescued from the garden and put in the bug tent where it’s now doing fine). So I keep them sealed away from predators.

The sealed containers with damp paper towel keep the leaves from drying out and shrivelling. I keep the eggs and caterpillars separate because the bigger caterpillars will eat the eggs and sometimes kill smaller caterpillars. I’m pretty sure it’s accidental, but it still happens. The caterpillars will spend around 24 hours motionless on a leaf when they moult. They moult several times. If they’re disturbed during the moult, they often die.

Seriously, these things are so fucking fragile and easy to kill. In addition to all the things that want to eat them.

Clearly they survive just fine in the wild. I recently found 6 big caterpillars in my garden because I wasn’t as thorough searching for eggs as normal. Would they have been fine if I’d left them? Probably. Though one I did rescue from ants (it was bleeding and everything) and another I took off a plant that was swarmed by wasps only an hour later. Those two probably wouldn’t have survived without my intervention.

So anyway, I have several containers to keep eggs and caterpillars at different stages of development separate to keep them safe from predators and each other. Everything needs to be cleaned of debris regularly. I keep everything outside because there’s research suggesting that caterpillars raised indoors won’t migrate. I keep the sealed containers in the shade so the sun doesn’t overheat them and cook the caterpillars. Even doing all this, a lot of them still die.

I handle them as infrequently as possible, especially when they’re smaller. I’ve seen ants eat a chrysalis, so that’s why they stay in the tent until the butterflies emerge. I put them in my front yard away from my dogs, because the butterflies aren’t always great at flying their first couple of tries, and sometimes they end up on the ground.

If I leave everything alone and let nature take its course, I’d probably still end up with a dozen butterflies surviving. But with intervention, they do so much better. This year has not been a good year, but I’ve already released a couple dozen butterflies with nearly that many left in the tent. My record is 161 butterflies released in a year.

This isn’t something everyone needs to do. Honestly just planting more milkweed and native flowers is a tremendous help. We can’t do everything, but if everyone picks a cause or two to really throw time and effort into, we get a better future. Helping monarch butterflies is one of the causes I’ve chosen. If it’s something you want to try, I’m always happy to answer questions and offer advice. Monarch Watch is a fantastic resource too.  

This is the follow up to The Last Hour Between Worlds, taking place about 2 months later, and MC Kem is still a fucking badass and still exhausted with a baby at home. The babysitter is perfect and worth reading the book for alone. I laughed!

This is a strong and perfect (and occasionally heartbreaking) follow up to the first book, with Kem still a competent badass, and Rika being Rika and Jaycel being, well, Jaycel, with new characters and returning villains and a deeper look at the magic and lore of the world and its Echoes.

There’s no time loop in this one, so the deaths are permanent. And for some of those who die, this is a fantastic turn of events. For others, it’s rougher. It’s commentary on growing older and how Life gets in the way of really being present with the people we hold dearest.

I loved this book every bit as much as the first in the series, and it looks like there will be more and I’m very excited for it. Highly recommend both books!