Dragonholder by Todd McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

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    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.
    â€œIn 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.
    Â 
I’ve already mentioned
    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.”
    Â 
Every book is written differently
    E very 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.
    Â 
Anne was never working on just one
    A nne 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
.
    Â 
I remember once
    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