Recently, I entered a competition on Vocal, a platform where readers can read for free, but writers are paid for those reads and also have the opportunity to enter competitions and win prize money.  

The prompt: 

Write the first chapter of a fantasy novel, beginning with the line: 
There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

Since I can’t resist a prompt about dragons, I had to enter. The result was adventurous and funny, and the beginnings of a whole new series. 

Here’s a sample:

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Until I was twelve, the closest I’d gotten to a dragon was reading stories about them in the public library.

Indeed, life had been pleasantly dull until four years ago when a stupid tech billionaire named Willard Ensell, trying to compete with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, had succeeded in opening a portal to another dimension rich in precious metals and raw materials. It was also rich in dragons, but nobody knew that yet.

He’d been hailed a hero. Right up until the first dragons came through and razed Silicon Valley. Now, there were dragons everywhere. Nesting in the Eiffel Tower, cruising around the Space Needle, and I’d heard the Sydney Opera House was like a bat cave, infested with a small but particularly feisty species.

I was glad those had stayed down under. The Sapphire Blues and Razorbacks that had settled here in the Pacific Northwest were bad enough. Of course, nobody knew what was happening in any of those places now. Civilization hadn’t fared well under the constant attacks, and things had gotten primitive fast. Which was why I was standing in a training yard, trying not to make a new hole in my leathers, with a sword that was far too big for me.