Dearest Squad,
As soon as Saturday freed that dragon in Hero, I knew Thursday was going to be the one to have to deal with it. I just didn’t realize it would take me so long to get there.
Hero released on October 1, 2013. I started writing the dragon chapters of Thieftess on April 1, 2026. What would have been Anne McCaffrey’s 100th birthday.
Yeah, it didn’t feel like a coincidence to me either.
My favorite books of Anne’s were the YA “Harper Hall” trilogy: Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums. There was just something magical about Mennolly and her fire drakes. Anne thought so too—the Master Harper was one of her favorite characters of all time. (She also gave me the best answer to an interview question ever…but I digress.)
One of the things I loved most about her work was how much her fantasy was based in science—so much so that I once wrote an article about it for USA Today. (Anne’s dragons existed as a way to deal with the dangerous fallout of living in a binary star system.) Meredith Ann Pierce did it too, setting an entire epic fairy tale trilogy on the moon. Sharon Shinn also did it with her angels of Samaria.
These women walked so I could run.
One of the very first short stories I ever wrote—“Blood & Water”—is a dark retelling of “The Little Mermaid” from the perspective of the sea witch who lives at the hydrothermal vents. Back when I was a wee Marine Science/Chemistry major, I was obsessed with the hydrothermal vents. Entire communities of creatures live down there, chemosynthetic ecosystems (as opposed to the photosynthetic ones you’re familiar with: flowers and trees).
The most famous of the organisms down at the hydrothermal vents is possibly the tube worm. The plumes on these worms are red because of hemoglobin. Yes, the same hemoglobin we have in our blood. It’s literally what feeds them.
So having a species of fish (mermaid) that lives at the hydrothermal vents and needs blood to survive (siren), was really not a stretch for me. Also “It’s a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid,’ only she’s a vampire…and there are pirates” is a story that sells itself, really.
To date, “Blood & Water” is my most republished short story. I wrote it before “Sunday,” but “Sunday” was the one that sold first (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 2006). “Sunday” is the short story that eventually became Enchanted.
But Thieftess could not exist without the bloodthirsty, 100% science-based siren mythology I created in “Blood & Water.”
Now, does anyone else care about all this science stuff I wrote into my fantasy novels? Probably not. (Except Black Jenney, which is why she will always be one of my favorite sister-queens.) But I do. And maybe some day, many years from now, some other nerdy science girl won’t be afraid of writing her own fantasies because I once wrote that siren hair follicles were hollow like a polar bear’s.
Thank you, Anne McCaffrey.
I keep the talisman you gave Miss Andre on my writing altar as a reminder to be brave.
And every year on April 1st, I remember just how much you both made my career possible.
Xox
Princess Alethea
✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨
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