Dragonsong

by Anne McCaffrey

  At Meadowbrook House, Anne finally had the room for her beloved horse, Mr Ed.

  Beautiful Meadowbrook House was proceeded by Site #11, Rochestown Avenue, and then by the slightly more spacious 79 Shanganagh Vale. Anne’s mother had decided to join her daughter in Ireland and was living with the family at the Rochestown Avenue house. It was then that Anne was invited to be Guest of Honor at Boskone, the New England Science Fiction Association’s (NESFA) annual convention in Boston. They would fly her out, pay her room, and treat her wonderfully. Best yet, NESFA had a tradition that the Guest of Honor would write a short something to be published by their small press – and would she be willing to write a Dragon story for them? Money was very tight right through to 1975 so Boskone’s up-front fee was quite welcome. As an added bonus, her publisher had arranged for her first signing tour in the States.

  The downside came on the home front. Anne’s mother, who had moved into her own separate apartment when the difficulties of mixing teens and tinnitus-afflicted seniors became apparent, was found one morning, collapsed – a stroke had crippled her entire left side. Anne’s mother had a second stroke and passed away. Anne was distraught, saying, ‘She wouldn’t have wanted to live that way’.

  Anne could never find A Time When she could write the novelette for Boskone, and that’s how its name came about. (That story was later to form the first part of the New York Times’ bestselling novel, The White Dragon.) However, Anne did finish the story for Boskone and it sold well, and she won the prestigious E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith Award, her third major award. The signing tour was a success. Royalties flowed in – enough to turn the telephone back on.

  Things started to look up. But the booster-rocket for her career came when Beth Blish, daughter of James Blish and Virginia Kidd (Anne’s agent), suggested that Anne consider writing a Young Adult book on Pern. This time, when it came to writing Menolly, Anne had a ready-made template to hand: Derval Diamond. Derval was one of a growing contingent of teenagers who Anne welcomed into her home, short of supplies though it might be. There were always enough tea bags, instant coffee, milk, and sugar to make do. Sometimes there were biscuits, too.

  With Derval as a model Anne wrote Dragonsong. It was finished in 1975, and published in 1976. She and the publisher – Atheneum – quickly agreed on a sequel which became Dragonsinger. Perhaps more than any, these two books contributed to the ever-growing and always-loving fan base that surrounds Anne’s Dragonriders of Pern® series.

  Buoyed by so much and distracted by the fact that the lovely rental home of 79 Shanganagh Vale was discovered to be suffering from a severe structural failure (the middle wall running the length of the house was built on nothing), Anne decided to reach for her biggest dream – a home of her own.

  She found it in a marvellous four-bedroom bungalow house in what was then the wilds of County Wicklow, in Kilquade. She is buried not far from there. Anne named her home Dragonhold, and it was there that she finished The White Dragon, picking up from where she’d left off with A Time When. Michael Whelan’s gorgeous cover sold that book and put it on the New York Times bestseller list.

  In 1984, Anne bought a farm, Ballyvolan Farm and established Dragonhold Stables there, which Derval managed. Anne decided that her farm was too far from her home and so, with typical directness, she decided to build a home – to her design – on lands of the farm. It required a certain ‘finesse’ with the county planning board, including a fair bit of excavation so that the house wouldn’t mar the view (according to the county council) and thus it acquired its name, Dragonhold-Underhill.

  There Anne lived the rest of her life, becoming a grandmother to four grandchildren and remaining a ’universal mum’ to many men and women, young and old, near and far. Between writing and living, Anne travelled abroad to promote her works or gain more awards, including the prestigious SFWA Nebula Grandmaster Award, induction in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Literary Achievement Award for Young Adult Literature, and a further slew of honors too lengthy to recall but all gratefully received by the green-eyed Dragonlady.