The Writing Nut

Last night at Torrance Borders, I had the pleasure of meeting Todd McCaffrey.

He is the bestselling author of the Pern novels Dragonsblood and Dragonheart  and the non-fiction Dragon-holder–where he paints an entertaining portrait of the early life and career of the great Anne McCaffrey.

(Anne McCaffrey, with her award for Grandmaster of Science Fiction at the 2005 Nebula Awards Ceremony)

In case you didn’t know, Anne McCaffrey is the first woman to win a Hugo for “Weyr Search”  in 1968.  She also wrote The White Dragon , which was the first Sci-Fi hardcover to reach the New York Times bestseller list  in 1978 .

She also happens to be Todd’s mother.

Todd Johnson McCaffrey is a mechanical engineer, pilot, screenwriter, artist, self-confessed geek and most importantly, heir to his mother Anne McCaffrey’s beloved Pern series. He has already co-authored several Pern novels her, such as: Dragon’s Kin, Dragonsblood and Dragonharper, and is poised to write more.

He answers 20 questions about himself on his website: www.toddmccaffrey.org. You can read his answers here.

The answers he gives are not only informative, but downright entertaining. In real life, as I discovered last night, he is just as funny and upbeat. He arrived early at the book signing and immediately began an informal version of the event with some of his fans (who also arrived early).

Here he is talking about his new novel  Dragongirl:

In the following video, he talks about writing as therapy, and writing as a journey:

It’s always a wonderful experience to meet authors in person and get to talk to them about their books and about writing.  Like most of the authors I’ve met, Todd McCaffrey was eager to share writing tips and more than willing to give aspiring authors like myself advice and inspiration.

Here is the advice he gave me, in his own words:

I left the bookstore that night feeling energized and eager to write.

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