Todd Lockwood Told Us About His New Book – The Summer Dragon

Especially known for his Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance works in Turkey, illustrator of many best-selling books and one of the best fantasy artists of our time that first comes to mind, Todd Lockwood, squares the circle for novel writing and began to write his own fantasy series!

Behold! Here is “The Summer Dragon” first book of Evertide Series!

Don’t worry, he also painted the cover of his own book –and not to avoid some extra illustrator cost we can assure you- This series tells the story of a thing which Todd enjoys drawing the most: dragons! The official release date is May 3, 2016. We didn’t know much about the book until our dear friend Todd told us some specifics about it.

“Maia and her family raise dragons for the political war machine. As she comes of age, she anticipates a dragon of her own to add to the stable of breeding parents.  Her peaceful life is shattered when the Summer Dragon–one of the rare and mythical High Dragons–makes an appearance in her quiet valley. Political factions vie for control of the implied message, threatening her aspirations, her aerie, her entire way of life”

As you can see our book contains many many dragons. Although this is the first fantasy series Todd has ever written, he also wrote several short stories which recieved positive critics. You can find additional information about those short stories in this article.

Here is the extra information Todd shared with us;

“It features twenty interior illustrations, including two maps. I painted the cover and directed the design of the typography. It’s my baby, from front to back. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing and illustrating it.”

You can find what other certain fantasy authors wrote about Todd’s book down below…

“The master of dragon art brings the same skills to dragon storytelling. This is a compelling, fully realized story which is as detailed and exciting as anything since the Pern tales. A sure winner.”

— Terry Brooks, Author of the Shannara Tales

“It’s no surprise that Todd Lockwood can build a wonderful setting and world—he does it with his art all the time. But what strikes me about The Summer Dragon is that, using words instead of his paintbrush, Todd builds characters you care about, laugh with and cheer for. And, wonderfully, we have here a powerful female lead.”

— R.A. Salvatore, Author of DemonWars and The Legend of Drizzt

“The world of The Evertide is beautifully wrought and the characters–particularly our heroine Maia—masterfully realized. A strong female lead, an ancient evil, a believable cultural backdrop, and a magnificent brood of dragons. Who could ask for more! Bravo, Mr. Lockwood!

—Lou Anders, author of Frostborn and Nightborn

“THE SUMMER DRAGON offers a welcome new take on the dragon-riding genre. Todd Lockwood’s dragons come to life on the page: more than animals, different from humans, and beautifully plausible without losing their fantastic touch.”

—Marie Brennan, Author of The Natural History of Dragons

“Renowned artist Todd Lockwood shares his debut novel at last, a written work as vivid as the dragons he so loves to paint.”

—Shawn Speakman, Author of The Dark Thorn

As we come to the short stories he’s written…

The first short story that we wanted to tell you about is “Keeper of Memory” from the collective book “Unfettered: Tales by Masters of Fantasy” which was written alongside with the short stories of many other reowned fantasy authors, in order to relieve the cancer treatment debt of Shawn Speakman. Amongst these other authors; Terry Brooks of Shannara Series, R.A Salvatore of Drizzt and DemonWar Series, Brandon Sanderson of Wheel of Time and Mistborn Series, Peter V.Brett of Demon Cycle Series and many others.

The short story Keeper of Memory is actually a prequel of sorts to the world in Evertide series. So if you want to get some pre-information about this new world and setting, you should definitely check Unfettered: Tales by Masters of Fantasy.

The other short stories he’s written are “Between”, which was published in “Tales of Emerald Serpent” novel and “Four Faces” which was published in “A Knight in the Silk Purse” novel, which are also collective books and contain many other short stories written by different authors. Todd also painted the covers of these books by himself and interior arts with Jeff Laubenstein.

Todd also told us how he came to write his book…

“Between was my first published short story, Keeper of Memory my second. Scott Taylor edited the first anthology and Shawn Speakman the second. Both had read an early draft of my book and liked it, and invited me to submit a story to their projects. Maybe they did it because I was already doing their covers when I floated the idea… But they already knew I could write.“

So here is a book that has a very strong background and setting. I even would buy this book just because of the artwork inside of it!!!

You can pre-order the book from Amazon.

You can read our interview with Todd Lockwood