By Dave Freer

I suppose it depends on where you came from, and how much of it rubbed off on you. With dogs the amount that rubbed off you depends on two things: firstly if you are wearing your good trousers, and secondly how smelly what ever they rolled in was.  I haven’t, cough, to be honest, done a lot of dragon-cuddling, but I gather they’re rather like cats.  Anyone who knows cats know they love you if you don’t love them. A cat allergy will bring them in from miles around.  Cuttlefish, speaking from the lofty pinnacle of having had one try to bite me, will cover you in ink and cephalopod slime if there is any rubbing done.  But that wasn’t, strictly speaking what I came to write about today.

I came to write about my publishing schedule and tell you all how wonderful I am and the books are, because that’s part of the job. When I blundered into this I was very ignorant (indeed, even worse than now), I had this delusion that writers wrote books, which they then turned over to publishers who did all the rest. That, after all was why the new author got 6% of the cover price. This worked for me. I’m quite a private person, and know nothing about any of the rest of the publishing process, bar reading, and wasn’t very interested.

I learned, to my cost, how wrong I was. In rare cases you may be the author that your publisher decides to push — but in that case they will have paid a vast advance. Otherwise they’ll toss your book out to sink or swim… which is something you could influence a great deal (Baen’s Bar at that time was a very powerful tool. I didn’t know, and no-one told me what I should be doing there. My fault, I should have picked up on it a lot quicker and better. But it was very confusing to a newcomer without the cultural background–I got access to the net a few months before I had THE FORLORN come out). Seeing as I came from a culture which regarded telling everyone how wonderful you are is slightly less socially acceptable than regurgitating your dinner at a party and picking out the choice bits with your toes and offering them to your hostess, I’ve always had a little trouble with this.  A fair amount rubbed off on me, and it’s about as hard to get rid of as cat fur from velvet.  Now, I know telling everyone you’re a broth of fellow and a slightly better writer than Heinlein works in some circles, but I’m not.  I hope I’ve at least made you laugh, which is as far as I’ll go with the shameless self-promotion rigmarole. Instead let me tell you about the books and stories.

This year I have DOG AND DRAGON coming out from Baen, and the last of the three-way collaborations. Misty has decided she didn’t like my end, and has added one of her own, and Eric is now busy editing it. As far as I am concerned I’ve written over 90% of the wordage these books and that is enough of an investment from me.  This will be the last ever of those collaborations.   I don’t know when it will come out.

DOG AND DRAGON however, will be out on April 3, 2012.  I found DRAGON’S RING  a very hard act to follow, but I believe DOG AND DRAGON stands on its own and… um… may be a better book.  It’s rooted (mostly) in Cornish Celtic, which is a little different! And of course the Dragon remains a trickster and the dog… remains loyal, and too clever… and yes, a sheep dog.  It’s dedicated to my own beloved Old English Sheepdog, Roland, who died earlier this year. I loved him, and I love this book.

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            They walked on, the wood even darker than the cloudy night sky, with trailing branches drooping over the track. A sliver of watery moonlight peeked out from the cloud as they came to a stream with a shallow ford.  Díleas ran forward to drink  as if there were no other water ever to be found.

Fionn was beginning to wonder whether he had been wrong, and this was somewhere else entirely, or that times had changed for the bandits or wolves or monsters. He was also thinking about the trilith-gated road, and wondering about the mathematics of joining planes thus, and how it could be that the outcome was uncertain. He was so deep in thought he almost didn’t see the afanc slithering closer to the dog. He barely had time to yell and leap as the crocodilian jaws clashed shut…

On Fionn’s cloak and the arm rolled in it, giving Díleas a chance to utter a startled yelp as he leaped back and pulled his head aside.  Without Fionn’s yell the monster would have had the dog, and even with it, the afanc would, for a certainty, have had Díleas by his nose, except Fionn had stopped the jaw closing on the dog with his arm.

The downside of this was that the water-monster had Fionn instead. And while dragonskin is tougher than human skin, by several orders of magnitude, and the thick woolen cloak would have stopped a knife thrust, the afanc still had a truly vice-like grip, and it was using all of the strength of its massive legs and beaver-like paddle tail to haul its prey back into deep dark water to drown him.

Dragons are not easy to drown, and the afanc would need more than just patience to manage that. But no-one told Díleas that.  The crazy dog latched itself onto the afanc’s nose, burying his sharp teeth inside the sensitive nostril.

The afanc was now trying to get away, shake off the agony attached its nose, and deal with Fionn.  And Fionn knew that he wouldn’t drown, but there was no such guarantee for that obstinate dog.

So he stuck the fingers of his free hand into the afanc’s eye, and at the same time hauled with all the strength of his legs.

And got wet. Fell over and got showered. The afanc did not like having its eye poked out. It loosed its grip briefly, and, with a ripping of cloth Fionn pulled the arm and cloak free, and dealt the afanc a wallop alongside the head that would make the monster regard anything bigger than a field mouse as hard chewing on that side for a month. As Fionn fell backwards he grabbed Díleas by the scruff of the neck and flung him back up the bank, before scrambling that way himself.

A minute later he was sitting high above the stream, wet and a little wary, with a sheepdog nearly on top of him, inspecting the damage to himself and the dog.  Fionn could feel Díleas’s heart pounding.  Fionn realized that under the all that fur, he was still not a very large dog. He was not too sure if the dog thought he was defending the Dragon, or seeking a safe spot. “I think,” said Fionn, “that we’re in the Forests of Brocéliande, dog. That makes that thing one of the nicer creatures that inhabit these dark woods. I think my dragon-form is probably wiser and safer. The blasted thing has half shredded my cloak and given me a rather sore forearm. But that could have been the end of you. And I do not want to have to explain that to your mistress. So, could you cope with riding over the water on my back?  And I should probably take those boots of yours off. You’ve got them full of water.”

Díleas held up a foot in the moonlight.  The thongs were wet, easier to cut than untie, but the dragon-leather hide was still good.

Fionn became the black dragon, and was sure that the eyes watching from the water, and quite possibly the woods, would sheer off.  He wondered, as always, just what happened to his clothing and gear in such changes. For years he’d set them aside. He still was wary about a pack, but it appeared that somehow they were with him, but yet not with him.  He could still feel the ghostly touch of them, as a dragon.

The logical answer now was to fly across the water, but he had no idea how the dog would deal with that. And it was unlikely the afanc would seek a second encounter, just yet. “Up on my back,”  he said, wondering what would happen. The answer was readily supplied. Díleas jumped up. Stood between his wings. “If I have more trouble with the afanc, you’re to jump off and make for the bank. I can deal with it, but not if I am trying to stop you getting drowned or bitten.”

Díleas growled at him.

It was a good thing, reflected Fionn, that he’d taken the dragon skin foot coverings off Díleas. The dog was getting far too big for his boots. Fionn walked slowly into the water of the ford, trying to keep his back even and steady.

He was prepared for Díleas to fall off, or even for the afanc to make another try. They really weren’t very bright. What he wasn’t expecting — and it nearly had him lose his footing on the slippery rocks — was for Díleas to bark at the water, the whole way across. A sort of ‘come and get me if you dare’ bark.

Fionn had to try and ignore it and concentrate on keeping his balance on the slimy shifting round rocks.

On the far side, having had enough of barking in his ear, Fionn, said “off.”

“Hrf?”

That was definitely a questioning note to that bark. Or was he beginning to imagine speech from the dog too? “Yes, off. You enjoyed that didn’t you? You were taunting him. Well, I suppose he did very nearly snap your nose off, and possibly would have eaten you. But – although this advice may seem odd coming from me – make sure the beast you taunt is not merely making you advertise yourself to the rest. Because unless I am very much mistaken those are wolves howling a reply to you. You had better stay up there after all. But no barking in my ear unless you’re warning me of something. My fore-leg is somewhat tender from the last effort.”

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CUTTLEFISH  I can’t tell you the release date yet, but I can say that, despite being officially ‘YA’ it is written to have a quite a lot broader appeal than just the little narrow band YA been sinking into.  Your teen daughter will probably like it, your teen son almost certainly will, and I gather from my first readers, that I’ve managed to stick with my own beliefs — if it’s not good enough for adults it’s certainly not good enough for anyone younger.  It’s set in a world where Coal rules – and the pollution from it, particularly carbon black (which China and India are generating at a horrifying rate in our world, and the US isn’t) have had a disastrous impact. It’s steampunk, but it’s alternate history, and it’s fast and fun.