Good Evening Sir,

I wonder if you can tell me if you or your mother have written a Pern book where Toric gets his “come uppence”.

Many thanks,

Sue

Dear Sue,

Nope, not yet.

Cheers,
Todd

Todd,

I wanted to tell you that I’ve enjoyed your mother’s Dragonrider books for years and think you are doing a good job carrying on the tradition. I have even given my motorcycle a dragon name… Wraith.

One of the aspects of the Pern stories that I’ve especially enjoyed is that your mother didn’t back away from the relationship angle between the riders of the female green dragons and the riders of the dragons that mate with them. As a masculine gay man (a police officer, in fact), I have been encouraged that same-sex relationships among the hyper-masculine dragonriders was seen a normal part of life on Pern. I was wondering if you had ever considered a Pern storyline where the first generation of dragonriders unexpectedly discover the connection between their mating dragons and each other. I can definitely see how that could create some conflict, within the greater Pernese society (if there was still some carried over bias from Earth), and among the dragonriders themselves. That book would probably cause many gay readers to become Pern fans, like me. Anyway, just a thought.

Thanks.

Bryan

Hi Bryan,

Thank you for your work as a police officer! It’s a tough job.

As for your suggestion — I don’t know that overtly exploring the green-blue issue wouldn’t backfire. As it is now, it’s there and no apologies are made — that’s just the way it is. Mum’s belief is that by the time we’re civilized enough to colonize space, we’ll be civilized enough not to be bothered about sexual preferences, and I agree with her.

In an early draft of Dragon Harper, I looked at exploring the blue-green relationship of J’trel and K’nad from a totally different point of view but I couldn’t quite get it to fit in with the constraints of the story — perhaps I’ll be able to work it in as a separate story later.

Cheers,
Todd

Just thought I would tell you that I met your Mum one year when she was on tour in the USA. She was in the St. Louis Missouri area. I had on a wild t-shirt that day. She commented that the shirt looked like the dolphins of Pern had made it! I will always remember that. I hope she is doing well.

Thanks for the chance to peek at the world of Pern!

Hi Mark,

I have a t-shirt made by dolphins. Mum brought me back one from that same trip.

She’s hanging in there — at 81! I was over in Ireland just recently and she was recovering from a nasty double bout of infections — lungs and UTI but by the time I left, she was much better. We spent some time talking about “Dragon’s Time” which is my next solo book (not, obviously, without input from Mum!).

Cheers,
Todd

Hi Todd,

I have been an avid fan of you Mother’s work all my life and even had the honor of having her reply to an email asking her permission to use the name in my email. I read your first Pern book with delight and look forward to you continuing the wonderful legacy started by you Mother.

I hope to meet you both in person at DragonCon in Atlanta!

Hi Maggie,

I’m sorry to tell you that Mum won’t be able to make Dragon*con this year — doctor’s orders. Her knee won’t be up to the strain by that time (it’s her second new knee, the other new knee is in the other knee and it’s much older).

— Todd