Interlude One

What got me into Dragons, sort of....

I've always loved the exotic, the strange. But I've also always loved science and learning. Realistically I should have gone to college to get some kind of degree. More than likely it would have been in something rather useless to me today. It would have changed the course of my life, and not - I think - for the best.

I hate school. With such a passion that even the thought of going back for a night class gives me the shakes. I just hate the formality of it all. Now, to be fair, I have had terrific teachers and subject matter that I loved. I remember my elementary school teachers on and off: violent and abrasive Ms Brown in first grade, neglectful and heartless whatsherface from fifth. But my third and fourth grade teacher - Mrs Baccus - was the finest young teacher anyone could ask for. She got me into the orchestra, took me to see Jean Pierre Rampal one time... Taught me that science was as much about figuring out what to do, as what you're trying to find out in the end.

Junior high school was an unmitigated disaster - I failed two classes in one semester, both by the same teacher though I still honestly think that I learned a lot more than she was giving me credit for in either. Junior High was where I learned that chemistry and I do not get along. To this day, more than twenty years later, I still have a grudge because I could not figure out what that final project substance was... It might have been cat litter for all I know. I tried hard, and failed. Never again.

High school for me was spent in a hippy stoner school, which had a better track record for sports than it ought and a way of just hanging out instead of fighting with itself. Race relations at that time were still somewhat oddly strained, there were busloads of kids coming in from the south side of town, which was fine by me. The first time I'd ever even seen a black person was in seventh grade - I had tons of asian and hispanic friends in the neighborhood I grew up in, but honestly I hadn't been around anyone else until junior and senior high.

Seminar for the 'gifted' kids was a blast, if something that really didn't help me much. I suck at higher math, though I really enjoyed physics and science. In favor of a passing grade, I ditched my upper division history class and went for a more modest American History class which I still remember vividly, and enjoyed quite a bit. I'd far rather learn than wallow.

We were given a room, the seminar students. It served us as our base of operations. As a suite with two other classrooms and a joining alcove with books and supplies in it, we could get to most of our classes quickly and easily. Desks with walls, early office room cubicles I suppose, were where we could crash and keep our stuff, do our homework, and generally relax. We could also decorate the cubicles, within reason, and I went to town. Actually I took the one which already had dirt painted on it, but my own work graced several of the walls of the room. The whole place used to be an art class, framed with many drawers along the counters. In those drawers, we found crayons by the boxload, paint brushes and cans, and weirdly enough, an entire drawer filled with elusive (and now in this modern day, quite valuable) Micronaut figures.

We had fun there. We ditched pep rallies there.

Other than school, however, my life was somewhat more boring than all that. I went from one house to another, during my school life, and went from the innocence of childhood to an annoyed angst ridden teenager. I learned the joys of pot, but the responsibility of cooking. Sharing my back yard with my friend Mike was the experience I needed to help me grow.

Mike was blind in both eyes - glass ones replaced his eyes which I assume were damaged somehow. He was a psychology student, which was tough because he had to have people read his books, and then transcribe his notes from braille to text. This was long before home computers, as well, so what might have been a five year degree had turned into a thirty year long stint in various schools.

Mike loved music, he was a sound engineer by trade actually, but I got to fiddle with high tech (at that time) equipment and listen to a fine variety of music that I otherwise would never have heard of. Stoned.

He had a hibachi, we got a deep fat frier, and we went on the search for the Perfect French Fry.

None of this has much to do with dragons directly. However, by the time I'd moved in next door to Mike, something amazing had hit the PBS radio airwaves. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Mike mentioned this once or twice and then I got the chance to listen to it all, taped it (which tapes I still have). He bought the book, and I read it - my first excursion into sight-reading for the blind, and I did a great job considering the complexity that Doug Adams put into that book.

The Guide opened up worlds to me that I hadn't thought of before. Suddenly the phrase that meant the most to me was this:

"In an infinite universe, everything - even the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - is possible."

That has been my eternal hope through the rest of my life.

It meant that somewhere, everything really was happening. And instead of making me afraid like so many others would be, it made me happy. I knew for the first time what infinity really meant. It's a lesson that I take with me.

I drew on everything when I was a kid. My desks at elementary school were simply covered by stick-figure theaters. Ski lodges and mythological battle fields, beach scenes and all that. All done in stick figure format, because no one had bothered to ask me if I wanted a piece of paper and a pencil to draw with.

One particular drawing has stayed in my mind since I was quite young, maybe 5th grade. We were painting and learning how to do depth and layers and composition - a fish tank is what I decided to paint. There were big fish and little fish, seaweed drifting to the surface... bubbles... That kind of thing. However there was one little fish that I'd drawn. It was a squishy shape, but it had a face that had the cutest expression on it, very snide, almost sarcastic as it looked up. A little grin.

My mother threw out that drawing, without even asking me if I wanted to keep it. I didn't know she'd done it until years later, when I went looking for it and she simply told me that it'd gone out a long time before. Of course I cried. I still almost cry about it. She'd done that several times after too. One was a set of my original "paper people", a goth-kind of family, web dresses and spooky clothing. I still have one of those pictures, and the family dog that I drew and cut out. "That stuff was just in the way!" she claimed, and I cried again.

But at that point, I also knew what I would replace them with.

Dawnlight was born.

From there, it was just downhill entirely. I drew characters all the time, exploring each one of them a bit before moving along. They all had family names, connections, political sway, jobs... It'd become a 900 page novel, by some many years later. I keep extensive notes and records about these and all my work.

I'm an obsessive record keeper. I organize my notes, characters, stories, worlds.

So when I finally moved out on my own, I had a lot of stuff to take with me. I get things out of my head and put them on paper as quickly as I can. And that means now, onto a hard drive. (Back up the drive, I think to myself, must remember to back up the drive.)

When I moved in with a couple people I knew, they were heavy into the Pern MOO Harpers Tale. I wanted to get into it too, because I'd read one or two of the Pern novels way back when. My memories of the world were dim, and the specific stories even muddier. So I picked up the Dragon Lover's Guide. That was a godsend - it meant I didn't have to plough through endless books about dragons.

I think one of my first dragon rider characters was drawn in high school, maybe late Jr high. She wasn't named anything other than SKG 9 or something, as I was categorizing myself into roles by that time. I did a picture of me with my flitters - I had Menolly's Batch of Flits with me, I think there was at least one of each color. And already then, I knew that they were ridiculous to have that many. I should find that picture. It's somewhere, I know, because I wanted to scan it but it's really pale, and hard to scan.

So at the house, with an internet connection that actually worked, I got online. My life has *never* been the same.

I went to web sites and discovered that you could right-click. I picked up a batch of images from Sweetwater, and then found Gallimim and Seascape weyr. I got my first dragon at Seascape - Shard's blue Jeremoth; and my second, H'dar's blue Jarmuth. I got my next couple dragons, and first Gold, at Gallimim with Tanis.

I had designed Baeris and her sister Cheyanne for the HT Moo, but frankly I was less than impressed (so to speak) with that setup. I knew nothing about how to make a room in a mush, the commands were hard to understand and the people in the setting were simply atrocious when it came to friendly greetings of noobs.

God forbid I want silk for Baeris to wear. "We have sisal, it's silk." Which I learned later on from another fan was totally unlike silk, it's a rough, nasty thread. Hardly silken. My issues with the science of Pern started early.

I didn't start drawing my own dragons until much later. I learned that glass island, or Seascape, was going out of business. The owner held a contest and gave away the sets of images to two or three new places, and mine was the only one which actually held more than one hatching before going belly up, that I know of. One might have done a couple - and now it's long gone too.

But by this time I was busy running Buenos Weyr. Though it'd been started by someone else, who had no idea about fanfic and how not to play a game, I was tired of being left in the dust by others who just wanted to flirt and chat. I took control over the story line, and brought in new players. A handful of them are still playing in our worlds. Most have gone but some remain.

Then there was Windtoss. But I won't go into that. Everyone ought to know about that mess already.

I started running Blackstone Weyr, and then designed the Healing Den for flitters. Right about this time was when I realized that three web sites were not going to do for my needs. Now I have more than 40.

And the Kshau Protectorate. My site is not the longest running single weyr - I believe that honor goes to either Falas or Ryslen, with Dragon Soul in there if Hydee'd open it up again. :) Even so, I am quite proud of having one of the largest collections of online cyberdragons, probably in the world... Legally gotten of course. I'm sure there are people who stash drawings of all of our pages, somewhere.

But I've written up more than 700 characters for dragons, gryphons and the like.

Every hatching still gives me a rush. I always love seeing who gets the rare, which one walks away with the sturdiest brown. I love throwing my guys out for mating flights. Mainly, I think, because I love to write about them.

That's the main reason I love to be in the culture online. That I get to see art and writing styles change over the years (or in some cases, weeks!), to contribute to the success of budding creators. It's my job to be a story teller.

Had I gone to college, I might be ... I don't know. The idea is so foreign to me, that I can't even think what I would be doing. Psychology is a great subject, and I still use a lot of the information that I gathered with Mike's guidance. I'd love to have been exposed to proper logic and philosophy at an earlier age - I can hold my own in discussions with my ex's peers in the field. Plus I helped him solidify his thesis and gel his ideas of what philosophy can do for the world. That feels quite good. It's important to him, and it's actually more important to me than I ever realized.

Yet, I'd only be teaching with it, and that's not something I would be able to do well. I'm patient, but only to a point. And I know realistically that I'd never be put into the right class right away. And sending out resumes? Hah!

Every job I've had has bit me on the butt, and I'm thankful for that. I'd sit and write my hands to the bone, if I could.

I am a writer - a creator - a designer. And I always will be.

If I had to do anything over again? ... nope. I don't think I would. I'm happily a product of all the schooling, learning, ditching, drug use (which I don't do any more, by the way), music influence, and now the internet. I'd go back in time and find my lost artwork, that's what I'd do. And I'd go sneak into the Tangerine Dream concert in San Diego in 1982 which I missed, because I was still into heavy metal and not new age.

Dragons are a part of me, because they're a symbol of this grand network we have. I don't have faces or voices to go along with the codenames we have - but I know every dragon by sight, and I will never forget any of them.