Dragonholder

by Todd McCaffrey

  Fortunately, we learned from our mistake. And, as it turned out, our mother was far more willing to recognize her fallibility than our father would his. Wright decided that mustard soup was a brilliant idea, he refused to take “no” for an answer and we were all forced to finish off the ghastly stuff over the course of days. All in all though, both my parents were excellent cooks and their rare culinary disaster is all the more memorable because it was so unusual.

  The summer we returned from Germany, we saved up enough Green Stamps (anyone remember them?) to buy a hand-cranked ice cream maker. The ice cream was a bigger success than Anne’s home made bread. Our favorite was peach ice cream with just a hint of rose extract. Heaven. We would mix all the ingredients in the kitchen, carry the container out through the garage door and fill up the ice bucket with ice and salt, turning that crank until we were breathless. That ice cream never survived long enough to get into the freezer.

  Anne could turn out a good dinner from the time she was twelve, when she had made a planked steak with mashed potatoes and lemon meringue pie for dessert for her older brother and his date. She loved to cook.

  Wright loved to entertain and was proud to have a wife who could prepare a dinner party. Cocktails would be served with hors d’oeuvres, and dinner would follow after and all throughout would be laughter, merriment, and good times. A talented wife, three kids, a car, a nice house — it was the American (male’s) dream.

  Life in Wilmington was not perfect. There were the occasional curve balls. Or loaded pistols. Windybush, the estate we lived in, had been built by Mr. Eberhardt — an old, rich man who set himself up in one of the nicer houses.

  He had weak eyesight and strong opinions, particularly when it came to his cats.

  Our German shepherd, Merlin — Wiz’s son — would always follow the paperboy on his route to ensure that no other dogs bothered him. It was traditional and no one ever minded because most everyone knew Merlin.

  Unfortunately Mr. Eberhardt decided that Merlin’s purpose in life was to torment his cats. Despite all our best efforts, Merlin couldn’t be dissuaded from following the paperboy, and Mr. Eberhardt wouldn’t believe that Merlin — who had been raised as a puppy with three cats — wasn’t the dog who chased his cats.

  The situation came to a head one day when Mr. Eberhardt decided to take the law into his own hands and met Merlin and the newspaper boy at the door with a loaded pistol. Elderly, and with poor eyesight, he had the pistol pointing at the newspaper boy, not the dog.

  Once Anne and Wright heard of the incident from the poor boy’s frightened parents, they made an immediate decision — no matter the injustice of it all, Merlin would have to go. It was heart-wrenching for us kids, particularly for me and Alec, who were old enough to understand what was happening.

  As a replacement guaranteed not to scare cantankerous old men into brandishing pistols, Wright got an apricot-colored miniature French poodle whom he named Michelangelo. We all promptly shortened it to Angelo and sometimes even Angie. Now, to my mind, a miniature poodle is no replacement for a German Shepherd. But Angelo was a friendly fellow, and Gigi decided that he was hers, as Alec and I had previously been the “owners” of the shepherds.

  Anne immortalized Merlin in her book, The Mark of Merlin, just as she also immortalized Merlin’s father, Wizard, in The Great Canine Chorus.

  In 1965, Wright’s job with Du Pont moved up to New York City. As a commute would have been impossible, the family chose to move. Decent housing in the Greater New York area was unaffordable. Fortunately, Wright’s assisant, Jack Isbell, was faced with the same move and the same problems. They decided to pool together and found a three-story old Victorian on Sea Cliff, Long Island. Because in 1965 the word “commune” had not yet been uttered in the United States, we children were told that the Isbells were third cousins.

  The house was conveniently located almost in the exact center of the triangle formed by the Franklin Elementary School, North School Junior High School, and North Shore High School. Gigi started first grade that fall, while I was entering third grade and Alec was in Junior High.

  Anne soon found that the amateur theatre group in the area was more concerned about appearances and politics than with having fun, so after playing the Eve Arden role in Babes in the Woods which she got because she could hold B flat for fifteen measures, Anne gave up amateur theatre for good.

  With the kids in school and nothing else to pique her interest, Anne renewed her writing with gusto. In that year she wrote and sold two more Helva stories and started work on what would become her first published novel, Restoree. Restoree was Anne’s earliest blow for women’s rights in science fiction. “I was so tired of all the weak women screaming in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens — I wouldn’t have been — I’d’ve been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I could.”

  Meanwhile Wright worked his way into his new job at Du Pont. Being back again in New York was very attractive to him, particularly as his job involved him in various modeling spots. He got a shoot for Alec, and lined one up for Gigi. This glamorous side of Public Relations appealed to him greatly. He liked mixing in the high glamour crowd, and was thrilled when the job connected him with a real Princess, Galitzine.

  The evening commute was a frustrating hour or more by car or train. Back home, he liked to relax on the veranda before dinner, sipping Martinis with his wife and the Isbells. As the stress of New York working increased, the cocktails before dinner got more frequent, becoming a daily ritual which grew from a single drink or two to a full pitcher or more. It became harder for Wright, trying to rebound from a day consulting with princesses, to communicate with a wife who very often was literally on another planet.

  Wright started blaming not Anne’s writing — but her choice of genre for the gulf that grew between them, and held it responsible for the great change from their Wilmington life style, forgetting that he had changed, that the children were growing, and that America itself had irrevocably awoken from the old Eisenhower era American Dream.

  Anne blamed the friction on Wright’s drinking, and in a series of heated discussions got him to switch from martinis to wine. Wright responded by harassing her for writing science fiction. When Anne said that her writing helped to pay the bills, Wright replied, “Your writing will never pay the phone bill!”

  Anne kept on writing. Wright took to drinking wine in gallon bottles.

  When it was completed, Virginia sent Restoree to Betty Ballantine at Ballantine Books. Betty bought it immediately. When I asked Betty what she remembers about reading Restoree, she said, “What I remember is the thrill that keeps editors going — when they first read something that says HERE IS A WRITER!”

  Anne finished Restoree and Weyr Search before the summer of 1967. As the heat and humidity on Long Island grew more oppressive — particularly for those without air conditioning — the family looked for a cool vacation. The Isbells felt the same way. And, as both families were still recovering from the cost of moving up to New York, they agreed to find a place to vacation together.

  They settled on a large lodge at the Twin Lakes in the Poconos. It would be the first of several very enjoyable summer breaks. The Twin Lakes were segregated — motorboat and sail — and we were on the larger non-motorboat side. The lodge was a huge wooden affair with rooms for everyone, a good-sized kitchen. It had been the assembly hall of a summer camp.

  The lodge came with its own canoe and rowboat. Down a path from the lodge was a short pier where the two boats were moored. I claimed the rowboat for my own most days and just doodled around in it on the lake.

  In the evenings we’d build puzzles — big ones of 1,000, 1500, and even 2,000 pieces. Some were in circles and were quite hard to build. Sometimes we’d play cards.

  But the best thing about our times at the Twin Lakes were the blueberries. They grew wild on bushes where the twin lakes were joined and we’d row or canoe out there with buckets and fill them u
p with what we didn’t eat.

  Anne would rarely go on these trips as she was busy cooking most days, or writing when everyone was out and about. As a cook, Anne will always shine, but here, with fresh blueberries, she made the most marvelous blueberry pies you can imagine.

  When we think of bubbly pies, we think of those fresh blueberry pies.

  Back at home in the 1967 Sea Cliff, Anne used the proceeds from Restoree to buy a Hermes Ambassador typewriter. She had encouraging news from John Campbell at Analog — he wanted more dragon stories. Anne wrote the story of Ramoth’s growth into a full queen and Lessa’s growth into a full dragonrider — the section known as Dragonflight. But John Campbell said he wanted something different — he wanted to see dragons fighting Thread.

  Anne, who had never done more than punch her elder brother out — he had a glass jaw — tried again and wrote the section Crack dust, Black dust. John read it, and said it was fine as far as it went. He gave her some suggestions on how to improve it.

  Once more, Anne took over the living room. And she thought over how John had said to do it. “But that isn’t the way I would do it,” she said. She puzzled it over, and remembered John Campbell’s suggestion of time travel. And suddenly it all came together. Dragonrider was born.

  John Campbell bought it. He invited Anne in to New York City for lunch — he often invited several writers for lunch and would spin off ideas just to see what would come back. He was always very encouraging.

  “In fact,” says Anne, “it was his comment on the novelette Dragonflight — ‘A very good bridger for your novel’ — that made me realize I was writing a novel.”

  Of course it was a good bridger, and became the name of the book, Dragonflight. Betty Ballantine, who already had another contract with Anne for Decision at Doona, gladly bought it.

  I’ve already mentioned that Anne wrote Decision at Doona with her youngest son — me — in mind. Anne’s ideas for her books did not all start in the living room at Sea Cliff. Decision at Doona was conceived in the Franklin Elementary school auditorium. It started when Anne heard that I was the only child the teachers had to tell to be quieter rather than louder when acting in our fourth-grade play.

  Hearing this, Anne asked herself what if you had a very compact society — an overcrowded planet — where just talking loud made you a social outcast? And that’s how Decision at Doona was born.

  May you get what you wish for is one of the three great Chinese curses. Anne fell afoul of it with me and my voice. She spent nearly twenty years saying, “lower your voice” and when I finally learned how — her hearing went. And now it’s, “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  Every book is written differently. The author is the one who gets the words on paper. Very often, the editor helps the writer get the right words on paper. John Campbell helped Anne get the right words for Weyr Search, and Dragonrider.

  With Decision at Doona, Betty had Anne re-write the last third of the novel. She had only asked Anne to re-write two scenes in her first book, Restoree. No changes were needed for Dragonflight.

  The relationship between a writer and a publisher is complex. Betty Ballantine says, “The editor/author relationship is second only to marriage. Any publisher worthy of the name needs also to be a psychiatrist, banker, lawyer, and — above all — friend strong enough to withstand some knockdown, drag out fights. Not that that ever happened with Anne.”

  Betty Ballantine with Anne

  Betty liked Dragonflight. She liked it enough to sign a contract for its sequel before a single word was written. And writing Dragonquest would prove to be a great trial for Anne and a huge triumph for the editor/author relationship.

  Anne was never working on just one story at a time. While she was writing the stories that would become Dragonflight, she hadn’t forgotten about The Ship Who Sang and wrote several more stories in that universe. The story that she had submitted to Milford at the same time she gave Virginia the unfinished Weyr Search to read was polished up and sold as A Womanly Talent.

  I remember once back in her study when she showed me a slide — it was a picture of a spaceship floating on an ocean. The editor of Worlds of If magazine, Judy-Lynn Benjamin, had bought the art for a cover and was looking for someone to write the story behind the picture. She tried and tried with that one and finally came up with a story to match the painting: The Weather on Welladay. It was the first time Anne and Judy-Lynn worked together as author/editor, and it was a rewarding experience for both of them.

  When the check for Restoree came in from Ballantine, Anne put paid to Wright’s taunt about paying the phone bill — she not only paid it but bought him the sailboat he’d been ogling. Wright stopped taunting her about the money, but not about the writing. For him, science fiction was not “real” literature — not the sort he could brag about to his business contacts.

  Only once did he and Anne connect over her writing — when she showed him the early draft of Dramatic Mission — one of the stories in The Ship Who Sang. Wright was really impressed — he felt that it should be a novel and that she should have gone into the psychological trauma the people were having. The disagreement grew so great that I was dragged into it — I can’t remember who asked me but I do recall reading that draft. I was only twelve or so — as a twelve-year-old I thought the story was boring and was not convinced that exploring the psychological trauma wouldn’t make the story more boring — but it might not. In the end, Anne told Wright that if he wanted to write a novel like that, he should go ahead, but it was not the story she was telling. It was the last time that Anne tried to interest Wright in her work.

  Anne was not incapable of taking criticism — her survival at Milford was solid proof of that. More evidence came when she finished her first draft of Dragonquest. Dragonflight had done very well, garnering such positive reactions that Anne could not help but feel that the sequel would have to be better. She worked hard to that end.

  So, when she sent the manuscript up to Virginia Kidd, she was in high spirits. Virginia read it carefully and said the two words agents only rarely say to authors and authors dread: “Burn it.”

  Anne did. “Virginia was absolutely right,” she says now. “It was awful.”

  If the relationship between a writer a publisher is complex, it is nothing compared to that of the relationship between a writer and an agent. The strength of the relationship — and the friendship — between Virginia and Anne has never been so evident as in Virginia’s conviction that she could be so honest in her criticism, and that Anne could be so accepting.

  While Virginia could often tell Anne where something went wrong and give her an idea of how wrong it was, she was not an editor.

  Notes on Dragonquest

  After Anne had burnt the original Dragonquest, she set the project aside and didn’t return to it for six months. When she did, she started completely from scratch. She got all the way up to page 170 and the story stopped. “It just wouldn’t write.”

  The contract for Dragonquest was with Ballantine Books. Betty knew that Anne was going through a lot of stress, so she invited Anne up to the Ballantine’s Bearsville home for the New Year’s break in January, 1970. While Ian Ballantine took Todd and Gigi skiing, Betty and Anne worked.

  Ian Ballantine

  “Well,” Anne says, “anyone may think that they’ve had their work taken apart bit-by-bit, phrase-by-phrase, but you haven’t until you’ve had a topflight editor like Betty Ballantine sitting and making you explain, expatiate, and clarify everything you have written.”

  They were about halfway through that grueling process when Betty had an inspiration. “You know the trouble with this story is, it’s not about Lessa and F’lar, it’s about F’nor and Brekke.”

  And with those words, the frame was set. Back in Sea Cliff, Anne finished the novel in record time and sent it off to Betty. Betty said, “I like your idea about the white dragon.”

  Anne explained that the idea had come from the great science fiction write
r, Andre Norton, who had said that Anne ought to have a sport dragon and he should be white and small. Betty agreed, and said that Anne ought to do more with the white dragon. And so they signed a contract for The White Dragon in the summer of 1970.

  Andre Norton with Anne McCaffrey

  Neither of them thought for a moment that it would be nearly nine years before the book was delivered.

  The tension that Anne was under in 1970 came from a number of things — some good, some bad.

  The good:

  In 1968, Anne felt that the writers in science fiction had given so much to her that now it was time for her to pass on the favor. She wanted to help new writers the same way she had been helped.

  Back in 1965, to promote the interests of professional science fiction writers, Damon Knight had founded The Science Fiction Writers of America or SFWA. All the prominent science-fiction authors joined the new organization and it acquired great status in its efforts to help J.R.R. Tolkien get fair recompense in America for pirated sales of The Lord of the Rings.

  Anne nominated herself for and won the position of Secretary-Treasurer. It was a two-year post.

  It did not leave her much time for writing. She had to get out the monthly SFWA Bulletin and the SFWA Forum — particularly the Forum. As Secretary-Treasurer she inherited the old, cranky mimeograph machine. All too often the fragile stencils would tear apart while the Forum was being printed and would have to be rewritten.

  Once a month, Anne would collect the pages in the great downstairs dining room and rope in “volunteers” to collate them. Actually, it was a whole lot of fun because we had a huge table and we’d place the pages all around it — so you’d do this dance around the table, picking up a page and going on to the next until you came back to the beginning with a whole Forum.