YEAR OF THE DRAGON

It started as an idea for doing a book about dragons in general. Then as the Chinese Year of the Dragon was due Colin Webb, Pavilion's boss at the time, suggested calling it that and focussing on Chinese dragons. Because of the title I did a chapter on Chinese astrology which duly suggested doing a series of books upon each of the astrological signs in turn. Unfortunately only a couple got done before the publisher was taken over and plans changed. For a while in the US though, this was apparently the best selling of Barnes & Noble's own published books.

The wonderful thing about these books was that they gave Wayne and me a chance to explore Chinese culture. We never got to actually visit the country while doing them but on a spiritual level it was the next best thing. The interesting thing about China, from a European viewpoint, is that for most of history the country developed in almost complete independence from the rest of the world and, faced with the same puzzles, the Chinese came up with often similar and often quite different solutions.