Wright worked in public relations for DuPont and when his job offered him a six-month stint in Dusseldorf, Germany, the whole family went. Here Anne met up with a voice coach and worked assiduously to develop her talent as an operatic soprano. Sadly, the coach insisted upon overworking a part of her register with the result that her higher range was forever spoiled and her dreams of opera stardom dashed. Years later, she turned this bitter disappointment into a story, Crystal Singer.
Returning from Europe Anne re-established contacts within the science fiction writing community. At one point she was brought aside by James Blish who asked her why she’d stopped writing. ‘You’ve written one beautiful story, please don’t stop!’
On the way home, Anne thought to herself, ‘Jim Blish says I can write! Jim Blish says I can write! Jim Blish says I can write!’ Enthused, she returned to her writing, producing the short story, The Ship Who Mourned.
In 1965, the family moved up to Sea Cliff, Long Island, following Wright’s job. Anne started working on a novelette, Weyr Search. Her agent, Virginia Kidd, read it and said, ‘Oh, Anne! Do please finish it!’
Weyr Search was followed by Dragonrider and, also by her first full-length novel, Restoree. The ‘Ship’ stories continued and were collected into the anthology, The Ship Who Sang. Anne wrote another novel, Decision at Doona.
Betty Ballantine at Ballantine Books bought all her novels and bought Dragonflight when it was finished. Dragonflight incorporated both Weyr Search and Dragonrider plus new material.
At first, Wright was intrigued by and supportive of Anne’s success; as time went on, less so. Famously he said, ‘You’ll never pay a phone bill with your writing!’
For various reasons, their marriage slid into disarray and Anne finally decided that she had to get a divorce. But where to go? How to live?
She’d been on a trip to Ireland in 1968 with her Aunt Gladdie and loved it. Harry Harrison (of Soylent Green fame) regaled her with the lure of the Irish artists’ tax exemption. The cost of living was much lower in Ireland than on Long Island or in Los Angeles, her other possibility.
And so, with her two youngest kids – her eldest now starting college – she departed for Ireland in August 1970.
Anne and the two children lived in a rented, suburban house in south County Dublin. The kids were already enrolled in nearby Avoca & Kingston School. Once settled, Anne re-wrote Dragonquest, and finished two gothic romances, The Mark of Merlin, and Ring of Fear, and took herself and her two kids on their first journey to England and Wales over the 1971 Easter Spring Break, taking in the English Eastercon, held that year in Worcester. The convention was great, Anne made many friends and afterwards the family toured around, down to Stonehenge and through other beautiful countryside, wending back up through Wales’ scenic but seriously twisty roads.
Next year found them living in a Georgian mansion, Meadowbrook House, and Anne trying – and failing – to write the story of Menolly. ‘It just wouldn’t write!’ she complained. She did manage to complete Cooking Out Of This World and other stories – it was here that she penned The Smallest Dragonboy -but times were tight. Fortunately, her eldest son Alec came over from the United States and took up trawling. As a fisherman he could bring home a share of the catch and the family dined on Monkfish and other rarities. Still, there was a great deal of truth to Gigi’s, ‘Gee, Mom, wouldn’t it be nice to have pancakes for dinner because we wanted them?’
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.
Also by Anne McCaffrey
Anne McCaffrey’s books can be read individually or as series. However, for greatest enjoyment the following sequences are recommended:
The Dragon Books
DRAGONFLIGHT
DRAGONQUEST
DRAGONSONG
DRAGONSINGER: HARPER OF PERN
THE WHITE DRAGON
DRAGONDRUMS
MORETA: DRAGONLADY OF PERN
NERILKA’S STORY & T
HE COELURA
DRAGONSDAWN
THE RENEGADES OF PERN
ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN
THE CHRONICLES OF PERN: FIRST FALL
THE DOLPHINS OF PERN
RED STAR RISING: THE SECOND CHRONICLES OF PERN
(published in US as DRAGONSEYE)
THE MASTERHARPER OF PERN
THE SKIES OF PERN
and with Todd McCaffrey:
DRAGON’S KIN
DRAGON’S FIRE
DRAGON HARPER
DRAGON’S TIME
SKY DRAGONS
by Todd McCaffrey:
DRAGONSBLOOD
DRAGONHEART
DRAGONGIRL
Crystal Singer Books
THE CRYSTAL SINGER
KILLASHANDRA
CRYSTAL LINE
Talent Series
TO RIDE PEGASUS
PEGASUS IN FLIGHT
PEGASUS IN SPACE
Tower and the Hive Sequence
THE ROWAN
DAMIA
DAMIA’S CHILDREN
LYON’S PRIDE
THE TOWER AND THE HIVE
Catteni Sequence
FREEDOM’S LANDING
FREEDOM’S CHOICE
FREEDOM’S CHALLENGE
FREEDOM’S RANSOM
Individual Titles
RESTOREE
DECISION AT DOONA
THE SHIP WHO SANG
GET OFF THE UNICORN
THE GIRL WHO HEARD DRAGONS
BLACK HORSES FOR THE KING
NIMISHA’S SHIP
A GIFT OF DRAGONS
The Petaybee novels
written in collaboration with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
POWERS THAT BE
POWER LINES
POWER PLAY
CHANGELINGS
MAELSTROM
DELUGE
The Acorna Series
ACORNA (with Margaret Ball)
ACORNA’S QUEST (with Margaret Ball)
ACORNA’S PEOPLE (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S WORLD (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S SEARCH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S REBELS (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S TRIUMPH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: FIRST WARNING (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: SECOND WAVE (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
ACORNA’S CHILDREN: THIRD WATCH (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)
and published by Corgi Books
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk
THE ROWAN
A CORGI BOOK : 9780552137638
9780552166836
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448152117
Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press,
a division of Transworld Publishers
Bantam Press edition published 1990
Corgi edition published 1990
Copyright © Anne McCaffrey 1990
The Estate of Anne McCaffrey, Literary Trustee, Jay A. Katz
Anne McCaffrey has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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The Rowan Page 31
