McCaffrey Letter Update: The Reply

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I'm not the type of fella that writes a lot of fan mail. In fact, in my life I've only written one piece of fan mail (well, now two but I'll get to that later). In August 2011, I wrote the author of one of my favorite fantasy/science fiction series of a time, The Dragon Riders of Pern series, Ms. Anne McCaffrey.

Please take a moment and check it out.

As you know, Ms. McCaffrey passed away a mere three months after I sent my letter. I very much hoped she got the letter but since she lived in Scotland and it had to be routed through Random House, I figured the odds weren't good. Regardless, I resigned myself to never knowing and moved on.

Anne and Todd McCaffrey

That is until I got back from a visit to my field site in early April and found a reply letter in a stack of mail my wife had left on the counter. I'm sad to say it wasn't from Ms. McCaffrey but happy to report it was from her son, Mr. Todd McCaffrey, who has picked up the torch and written a number of the Pern books with his mother and several on his own.

I won't go into the details of his letter since they were rather personal but suffice it to say that Todd was good enough to take the time out of his busy schedule to write a full page response. He even shared a couple antidotes about his mom and passed on a great tip about writing that I would like to share with you.

"If there's any time in your studies, you might want to add at least one acting class to your courses - Mum's sense of place and placing were very much developed from her love of the theater and, as she called it, "off-off-off-off-Broadway" productions."

Of course I replied to Todd's letter thanking him for his generosity and asking him, as a fan, to continue what his mother started and keep the Pern series alive. I hope he does.