Droids & Dragons Author, Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Juleigh Howard Hobson

 As the parade of 'Droids & Dragons' authors continues, we welcome back Juleigh Howard-Hobson. Juleigh lives in Oregon, on the Pacific Northwest coast.

"I’ve been writing since I was 16 (so let’s say it’s been a long time).  It was the poetry of John Keats that inspired me to start—I mostly grew up in Australia and Keats was a prescribed text on the syllabus for the Higher School Certificate we had to take. Everyone in my class groaned about his work but me—I’d found my calling in life! Never looked back since."

Juleigh is a published author and in all sorts of places. "Happy fact: I have two poems in 518’s 'Catskill Chaos'' anthology, which came out last year."

When we asked Juleigh what book or author who had influence her storytelling style the most, her answer, "I’ve changed my style/focus (gradually and sometimes abruptly) a lot over the years, so there’s no one book and no one author that influenced me the most. That said, poetic formalism was the biggest influence on me at first, and it still is now."

Two of Juleigh's poems are featured in the 2026 anthology, 'Droids & Dragons'. Her first poem is 'Biomimetic Man--On Sale Now For A Limited Time'. The inspiration for the prose came while she was wrestling with a short story.

"I write those too! The story was about fallen angels and how they would look and act while trying to blend in perfectly with humanity …it was a short hop, imaginatively speaking, to thinking about how modern AI empowered robots might be doing this very soon, and that led me to writing this poem about a perfect man-droid…"

Juleigh's second poem is 'Cadabororaurus'. Her inspiration, "sprang directly from where I live. Sadly, whales sometimes wash up on our beaches here on the Oregon coast. At dusk and dawn, when the sun hits the beach at a certain slanted angle, these poor dead creatures cast shadows that resemble long dark stretched out dragons (to me). That led me to wondering: what would happen if one actually turned out to be a live dragon…after that the poem virtually wrote itself."

 Snippets from Juleigh's poems:

“No robotic jerk, he’ll be smooth as silk.”—Biomimetic Man

“Then it roared.”--Cadabororsaurus

Everyone has a superpower. Juleigh has super-superpowers. "I write down (on paper, on my phone) just about every stray wisp of inspiration that comes to me. Some wisps are complete first lines, some are last lines, some are just words that sound good together...  I don’t use every one of these, of course, but I use an awful lot of them."

To find out more about Juleigh Howard-Hobson, check out her social media.

X (which used to be Twitter): @PoetForest

Bluesky: @juleigh.bsky.social 

Instagram: black_candle_poet 

Droids & Dragons is available on Amazon for preorder. The drop date is 9/25/2026.