One of the great advantages of being an author is being able to meet the fans as well as just hear from them by letter or e-mail. Chris used to love signing autographs, and in the dim and distant past would practice his signature endlessly (or so it seemed) in hopes of “just once” being asked to sign a book or two. Time and circumstances have changed, and now he gets writer’s cramp just thinking about it. The record for the most number of books signed in a single session currently stands at around seven hundred, I believe.

In these numbers, Chris will only sign his name, but if he has the time he will also add a dedication — the person’s name and a short message, too. Incidentally, we found out that a book signed by the author but with no other wordage added is more valuable than one signed to someone.

The only exception here, apparently, is if there is what is called “good provenance” in a dedication. This means that if the book was signed to someone who was famous in their own right, say, and it could be proven that the dedication was genuine, then that would be worth more than a book with the author’s signature alone. Of course, a personal message is always worth more to the individual than any monetary value that could be put upon it, and quite rightly so. Chris has twice signed books with messages in a foreign language: German and Welsh. He had to learn them deliberately before he started, but the recipients were surprised and delighted.

And while we’re on the subject, the Last Dragon Chronicles are themselves available in a number of different languages. The countries where translated editions are published include Germany, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Brazil, and Japan.

The dragon books are incredibly popular in the United States. Chris now wishes he had tacked a map of that country up on the wall, so he could stick a pin in for every state that he’s had an e-mail from. He thinks it must be every single one by now. It would certainly seem so, as the series has consistently appeared on the New York Times bestseller lists.

The foreign editions are beautiful creations. Some have a few black and white line drawings in them, but the Japanese versions are especially awesome. As well as line drawings, they also have full-color illustrations at the front of the book. Or rather, the “back” of the book, as we would perceive it, since the Japanese language is written in ideographs (glyphs or “pictures”) and read from top to bottom and right to left, in columns. So starting in the top-right corner, you read down the rightmost column first, then go back up to the top of the page and read the next left column till you get to the bottom of the page again, and so on. Thus you would appear to be reading the book backward when compared to the way we are used to in the west.

The Fire Within – Czech Republic

Icefire – Germany

Fire Star – Japan

The Fire Eternal – UK

All the translations for foreign editions are done in the country of publication (Chris is ace at English and passable in dragontongue and felinespeak, but useless at any other languages), and according to friends who have read the books in their own native language and in English, they are pretty faithful to the originals. Translations do not seem to pose too much of a barrier for those doing them, except that once Chris had a frantic e-mail from the Japanese translator, desperate to know what “daft as a brush” meant. The complicated plotlines and esoteric mysticisms were easy-peasy, allegedly, but that one had them stumped. Colloquial English is a tricky idiom to explain, even for the English native speaker, and Chris did his best, but he’d love to know how that phrase was expressed, in the end.

Chris also wrote a spinoff series from the original novels, for younger readers mainly, though it seems all age groups (including adults) are enjoying them, from the feedback received. Each book features one of the Pennykettle dragons and tells the story of its creation and its own special ability.

The two books currently published are about Gruffen and Gauge, both of whom appear in the Last Dragon Chronicles series. The Wayward Crescent books are meant as a prequel to The Fire Within, as they are all set in the Pennykettle household before David arrives as their tenant. They also fill in a lot of background history to the Pennykettles and their dragons, which is what has piqued the interest of some people from older age groups.

Chris has also recorded a couple of songs relating to the Last Dragon Chronicles. Called “Fire Star” and “The Fire Eternal,” they can be found on Chris’s Web site (www.icefire.co.uk), but as yet they are not available to download (though this may change if any record companies take an interest!). All instruments are played by Chris, and all the vocals are his, too, but sung from David’s point of view. The lyrics are as follows, for those of you who are interested:

“Fire Star”

There is a sign in the heavens

Another light in the darkness

A better time is beginning

There is a fire star coming

I see the mark of the ice bear

In the tears of the dragon

And you’d better start wishing

There is a fire star coming

Stay with me, my love….

There is a sign in the heavens

Another light in the darkness

And you’d better start wishing

There is a fire star coming

“The Fire Eternal”

It’s like breathing in several degrees of the sun

The ice and the fire all rolled into one

And look at the shape of the man you’ve become

It ain’t easy, touching the sky

It ain’t easy, learning to die

It ain’t easy, stepping outside of the circle

Into the Fire Eternal

How could you think this is all we were worth?

My love for you beats at the heart of the Earth

I was around with the stars at their birth

It ain’t easy, turning the page

It ain’t easy, taking the stage

It ain’t easy, facing the final rehearsal

Before the Fire Eternal

And, hey, what you thought was finality

Preys on your fears of mortality

Here, in this changing reality world

Stand on the edge of the light with me

Take in the wonders of flight with me

in this calling, truth and love are one … om

Atoms and dust at the core of your star

But what you perceive here is not what you are

The journey to wisdom is not very far

It ain’t easy, taking the stage

It ain’t easy, turning the page

It ain’t easy, stepping outside of the circle

Into the Fire Eternal

Into the Fire Eternal

Love is the Fire Eternal….

The first line of the “Fire Eternal” lyric was inspired by a line David speaks in Dark Fire, in response to a question that Zanna asks.

Chris also has several other songs, unrelated to the Last Dragon Chronicles, posted on the Internet at www.myspace.com/chrisdlacey.

 

And for those few of you who have been astute enough to notice the dots at the beginning and end of the poem at the conclusion of the third book, Fire Star, yes, that does mean that the published lines are only a snippet of a longer piece. They are an abridged (and slightly adapted) version of a poem Chris wrote, again from David’s point of view, called “G’lant.” G’lant is an invisible dragon, given to Zanna by David when he has been pierced through the heart with a spear of ice. For the first time in print, here it is in full:

“G’lant”

That night I gave you a Valentine dragon,

a fissure opened deep within the Earth

and all below me tilted. Frosted crystals

chimed the air, melting on your tender kiss

as all your warmth and bliss came mine,

for one degree of sway, of time.

On that beat, my heart struck up

a plangent chord and drew

whatever magma rose to light

that single shining spark within

your dark, breathtaking eyes.

So brown, so like the Earth herself.

This moving ground, this slanted shelf.

Here is my quest, my pledge to you:

that life and all its tangled plights

could not call down a single wake

to quench this dragon’s winter task.

Until the stars have blinked their last,

wherever on this Earth you walk,

he will arouse, excite, inspire,

and keep alight that spark,

this fire.

I trust you’ve found this ramble through the Last Dragon Chronicles and its author’s life entertaining and informative, but I really can’t finish this book without a last word from Gadzooks — which is, of course, hrrr….