How to Request a Signed Bookplate

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Sep 252007
 

Most of you already know that you can request a bookplate signed by Anne, since sending books through the mail to be signed can be so very perilous. However, we’ve received many requests that don’t give us quite enough information, so here’s a handy-dandy guide to bookplate requesting!

In order to request a signed bookplate…

At this time there’s no need to send money or stamped envelopes, but for those who have offered to do so — thank you for the consideration! Please note: Sending correspondence of any other sort with your address may delay your bookplate, or the additional correspondence, or confuse the process entirely. Please keep your bookplate requests separate from anything else, and only include the pertinent information. We really appreciate it!

And… that’s it! We will do our best to fulfill the requests you send in, but please remember that we receive a large number of requests every day, and we may need to limit the bookplates we send out. Thank you for your understanding, and happy requesting!!

Important Update: We added a post that explains why we are going to be limiting bookplates to 20 per month. Please take a look!

 Posted by at 12:58 pm

A Letter from Sharon

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Sep 232007
 

Sharon wrote:

Dear Anne McCaffrey:

I have a few questions for you, but first would like to tell you how much I have been enjoying your Pern novels, especially during this last Year or so. I first saw Pern through Menolly’s eyes a number of years ago, and admit to being drawn in right away by the fire lizards. They bear an uncanny resemblance to our Italian Greyhounds! Flighty, intelligent, mischievous, loyal, affectionate, cuddly and a bit knobbly, our dogs even look something like fire lizards without wings. Anyway, last year was a traumatic one in our lives, and Pern was a wonderful place for me to rediscover and visit as a respite from dealing with the fire, death and injury that beset us, one after another, in 2006.

Do you still knit? I have read Stitches in Snow, and also noticed occasional references to knitted garments in the Pern books (I recall that Sharra knit Piemur a pair of cotton socks). I’m a spinner and knitter, and relish the opportunities to listen to several of your books on my MP3 player while I work on various knitting projects or while outside barn-rebuilding or gardening.

I wondered, too, about a couple of times you mentioned Kansas; one of the colonist families was from Kansas, and of course the scene, preserved by Aivas and shared with F’lar and Lessa’s generation, of the colonists singing ‘Home on the Range’ at Landing, was one that I could easily envision. As a proud Kansas native and lifelong resident, those really hit home with me. Do you have any connection with Kansas, or did the song just seem to be appropriate for the occasion?

Thanks for letting me share with you a little bit about how your writing has become a part of my life.

Best wishes always, and warmest regards from Sharon

Anne’s response:

Dear Sharon,

I’ve taken to patchwork quilting, as something to do when the hands are otherwise unworking. I did Arran sweaters until I ran out of bodies to make them for, though my grandson is growing now into the age when a good Arran would delight him. I have a box in the attic full of needles and a marvelous book on Arran patterns which allows me to make new patterns from the instructions.

I quite agree with the likeness to Italian Greyhounds…for fire-lizards though I am more familiar with cats, having four in the house at the moment and two who live on my bed. Maine Coon cats, in fact.

Dragons are not horses but more similar to equines than to saurian or reptilian appearance.

Kansas, well Missouri would be closer, I think…my brother lived in St. Louis most of his adult life and I would visit him. I have also book toured in Kansas and been warned about cyclones, though I never, thank God, even saw one. I suppose the Kansas is a flip remark…”I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto.” Sorry. But ‘home on the range’ would be as well known to most folk and it seemed appropriate at the time. I have this weird sense of humor which pops up now and then.

I, too, have comfort books when the world starts being eminently unfair to me. The Liaden group by Sharon Lee and Steven Miller. Quite a few novels right now, so one can read through an entire hospital stay and ignore things. As I just did. I’ve had a nasty infection the medics are trying to squash but night now I’m shedding the non-appetite condition so too many antibiotics and can’t eat much. But I know what you mean about getting through bad times in books. Do you read Lilith Saintcrow? She’s well worth finding. She has a series of Dark Protectors, men who are trained to keep the bad guys from killing Lightbringers, i.e. People with parapsych talents. Very good, I also recommend it as well as Bujold.

Nice chatting with you, Ciao now,
Anne McCaffrey

 Posted by at 5:58 pm

New Biography, and Notes from Anne

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Sep 182007
 

A note from Anne, yesterday:

On the eve, more or less, of my trip to Eurocon at Copenhagen, let me assure you that the biography, A Life with Dragons by Robin Roberts, is excellent. She manages to know more about why I write than I do, and does it in such a smooth manner that I was bloody well glad she wrote it. She researched everyone still alive, and figured adroitly why and how I write as I do. It is seriously well done and I’m very pleased I was her subject. She’s done me proud and those I wanted to get credit – namely Virginia Kidd, RIP – who skillfully managed to make me better than I started out to be.

Regards,
Annie

Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons (by Robin A. Roberts) was published this month by the University Press of Mississippi. Emily Hubbard forwarded us the press release, which is included below.

Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons
By Robin A. Roberts
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN 1-57806-998-X, hardback, $28

Book News for Immediate Release

Life of Dragonriders of Pern series creator revealed in new biography

Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons (University Press of Mississippi) by Robin Roberts is the life story of a writer who vividly depicts alien creatures and new worlds. As the author of the Dragonriders of Pern series and the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula awards, McCaffrey (b. 1926) is one of the most significant writers of science fiction and fantasy.

Robert shows the ways that McCaffrey’s life shapes her writing. Conversely, the biography gives a rare glimpse into ways that McCaffrey’s writing influences her personal life. In her introduction Roberts explains, “Like all writers, Anne transmutes the features of her life into art. Charting her life course reveals the frame from which she built her art.”

This biography reveals a fascinating and complex figure, one who creates and recreates her fictions by drawing on her experiences. At various stages, McCaffrey has been a beautiful young girl who refused to fit into traditional gender roles in high school, a restless young mother who wanted to write, an American expatriate who became an Irish citizen, an animal lover who dreamed of fantasy worlds with perfect relationships between humans and beasts, and a wife trapped in an unhappy marriage just as the women’s movement took hold.

Meticulously researched, Roberts draws her narrative from interviews with McCaffrey, her children, friends, and colleagues as well as archival correspondence and contemporary reviews and criticism. Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons is a nuanced portrait of a writer whose appeal extends well beyond readers of her chosen genre.

Robin Roberts is associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of English and women’s and gender studies at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Sexual Generations: “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Gender; Anne McCaffrey: A Critical Companion; A New Species: Gender and Science in Science Fiction; and Ladies First: Women in Music Videos (University Press of Mississippi).

For more information contact Clint Kimberling, Publicist, at ckimberling@ihl.state.ms.us.

Visit our website at www.upress.state.ms.us.

 Posted by at 7:14 pm

Eurocon 2007, Copenhagen

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Sep 172007
 

This coming Friday through Sunday, Anne will be attending Eurocon in Copenhagen. Hans has posted some additional information at The Pern Museum and Archives:

In less than a week the 29th Eurocon will start. The yearly European Science Fiction convention is being held in Copenhagen, Denmark from 21-23 September. This years edition is very special to us Anne McCaffrey fans since our favourite author is one of the Guests of Honour. Most of Anne’s program participations take place on Saturday, September 22. The staff of The Pern Museum & Archives and several staff members of the international Anne McCaffrey forum board A Meeting of Minds will attend the convention.

Link. (Currently the second item down the page.)

There are several excellent links in his post, including the entire convention program and Anne’s specific programming, and a couple other items fans will find interesting. Enjoy!

 Posted by at 1:17 pm