What's it like writing with Anne McCaffrey on Pern?

Difficult! Originally, when I was working on Dragonholder, Mum and I talked about doing a collaboration following on from All the Weyrs of Pern. We batted about some ideas. I was particularly interested in exploring the concept of "two riders, one dragon" — the idea that perhaps some tragedy had occurred wherein one dragon had given his life to save another's.

As I got late on Dragonholder, I learned from Mum that she'd decided to start without me. I got a phone call from her late one saying with her sobbing, saying, "I can't kill the dragon!"

She didn't, and everyone loves The Skies of Pern.

However, by that time I'd had the idea for Dragonsblood and was slowly working on it.

Before that, Mum had thought that perhaps we could collaborate on sequels to Nimisha's Ship. Nothing has come of that yet, although we have copious notes and some good thoughts.

However, not long after, Mum wrote to say that she was doing an anthology of Pern-related short fiction, and would I write one for her? She thought perhaps something to do with Piemur before he came to the Harper Hall. I thought about it for a bit and wrote her back with an outline which she loved.

Only then she discovered that the anthology was only to be of her original stories, she couldn't use stories by me or my sister, Gigi. Sigh. I was really quite depressed by that.

Then she wrote and asked if perhaps she could write the story based on my outline.

Whee! I was thrilled. Anne McCaffrey write a story based on my outline? Yippee!

Only moments later a new e-mail came in — she couldn't do it, she felt it would be unethical.

Sigh. I was heartbroken. I had this great idea which involved Piemur — only, I realized, thinking about it some more, Piemur would be too young for the story. And Piemur was the only Ninth Pass person in the story — the rest were all new. And, hmm! I had a character who was much like Piemur but older and didn't have a backstory.

So I wrote to Mum and suggested perhaps we could do collaboration on the story, only using Kindan instead of Piemur. She gladly accepted and that's how Dragon's Kin was born. I made one rule: that, as senior author (and universe owner), her say was final.

When it came time to write it, we had an outline, so we knew where we were going (sort of). So it was relatively easy to split it up — after it got started. However, I was having the devil of a time getting the story to start. Mum phoned and asked what she could do, so I told her what I'd got thus far and asked if she could take over the chapter and I'd go on with a new chapter.

About two weeks later she phoned and said that she couldn't get anything done with it, either, so could she switch. So we switched.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that it was the wrong first chapter — it was the right second chapter. So I phoned Mum (I live in LA, she's in Ireland) and explained and she gave me the go-ahead.

Things moved forward (we added yet another "first" chapter which stuck) but we weren't getting much movement so I decided that I'd fly over for two weeks around Christmas.

We got a lot done. Mum is not the most computer-literate person (it took a lot of coaxing to get her seated behind her first Kaypro II), so I decided with my background in software engineering, that I'd be responsible for keeping the master copy and synchronizing all our changes.

First we talked a bit about the technology, stuff we hadn't really thought about until we were knee deep in story. We had to figure out how much coal was being mined in order to figure out how many workdrays would be required and we had to figure out how much each workdray could haul.

By the time we got done, we had written in those two weeks twice the number of words we'd written in the two months prior. It really was great to be able to bat ideas back and forth.

We agreed on the final chapters of the book and Mum let me write those.

And now when we're together at book signings, Mum pats me proudly on the shoulder and tells everyone in earshot, "My son, the author!"