Dreams of Gold and Fire

From the award-winning Gold and Fire Series - 1st Place (Tied), 28th Annual Critters Readers' Poll, Children's Books; Finalist, 2026 Imadjinn Awards, Best Middle Grade Book; Nominee, 2025 Kearsells Indie Book Awards. Aron is a twelve-year-old shepherd's son who spends more time daydreaming about slaying dragons than watching the flock. When a coyote nearly takes one of the family's sheep while he's lost in another fantasy, his father pulls him off pasture duty and sends him to muck out the pig pens instead. Humiliated and convinced he was built for something greater, Aron slips away in the night and crosses the mountain on foot to the city of Lanfield, intending to demand entry into the King's Knights. The gate guards laugh him out. A street bully takes everything he has. A murdered guardsman he never touched lands him on the wrong end of a manhunt. Fleeing into the mountains, he finds shelter in a cave - and discovers it's already occupied. Doubloon is eight hundred years old, deeply distrustful of humans, and convinced this scrawny, persistent boy is going to be nothing but trouble. He helps him anyway. What starts as uneasy shelter becomes something neither of them expected: a friendship built on honest conversation, first flights, fishing lessons, and hard questions about why we fear the things we don't understand. When Aron spots an army of goblins marching toward his village, he has to make a choice that will define the kind of knight he wants to become - and discover whether a boy who never stopped believing in dragons was right all along. Dreams of Gold and Fire is a fast-paced adventure for boys ages 8 to 14. It features a believable hero who earns his victories, dragons with actual personalities, and battles that feel genuinely dangerous. The adventures of Aron and Doubloon will continue.