Dear Todd
Tell your mum that my brother and I have loved ALL her books. I think you’ve made a great job of following the tradition of Pern story telling, keep it up we’ll be waiting. You wouldn’t like to expand on the Crystal singer and Catteni series too, would you ? I’d really love to hear some more.

G.M.(England)

Dear G.M.,

I’m glad that you and your brother have loved Mum’s books. I shall try my best to keep up the Pern tradition.

As for Crystal Singer, I don’t know if there are more stories to be told. Mum felt that she was done and I haven’t got any. Maybe my sister will.

I’m rather hoping that Mum will write more Catteni, you never know.

Cheers,
Todd

Hi ^_^

When you and Anne wrote “Dragon’s Kin”, how much of it was yours and hers?
Did she come up with a story line, and you just fill in everything?
Or you wrote everything, and Anne just proof-read it?

Joe

Joe,

It was like nothing ever done before. Mum originally thought when she was working on “A Gift of Dragons” that she could include new stories by anyone — so she invited my sister and I. She suggested that I think about a story with Piemur as a young lad. I wrote back with a plotline but by that time she’d discovered that she was supposed to write all the new stories in “A Gift of Dragons” by herself.

But she liked my idea and asked if she could write to my outline. I said, “Certainly!” The next day she wrote back and said that she couldn’t do that, she felt it was unethical. Well, I was crushed. I’d had a nice idea and now it would never go anywhere. But I realized after a bit that, barring Piemur, the story stood alone and could be told pretty much anytime on Pern. As I’d already started work on Dragonsblood and didn’t know much about the early lives of those characters, I could easily take one of those characters and use him (Kindan). On further reflection, I realized that Piemur would have to be too young to be an active hero in any story (he’d have to be about six or so), so it was just as well. When I suggested that I use Kindan instead of Piemur and that we collaborate, Mum was ecstatic.

When it came to the actual writing, Mum wanted to know what she could write. As I was having trouble with the first two chapters, I asked her if she wanted to write those. She took a stab at it but didn’t have much luck either. Then I realized that there needed to be an earlier chapter (the present Chapter One) and wrote that in. The book still wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted, so I went over to Ireland for a week before Christmas in 2002 and between us we added over 43,000 words (which is over half the length of the book) that week alone. My sister, Georgeanne (Gigi), and various others made comments, helped with research, kept us on track and provided invaluable feedback. I took the book back with me, finished it off, did an edit pass incorporating Mum’s comments and sent it off to the publisher.

Cheers,
Todd

Hi!

I just finished reading Dragon Kin and could not be more pleased with the storyline. I had always wondered why the watch-whers weren’t mentioned more than they are. I think you will admirably carry on your mother’s Pern writing tradition with that something new that a different writer brings to the table. I’ve been reading books by Anne McCaffrey since I was 17, which has been over 20 years. I look forward to reading how you will expand on Pern’s history.

Hi, Ilene!

I’m glad you liked Dragon’s Kin. It was rather interesting that nothing more had been done with the watch-whers since Dragonflight. Mum and I had fun working on the book.

I’m busy finishing up Dragonsblood which will be my first solo Pern novel. I hope you’ll like it!

Cheers,
Todd