Sirinita's Dragon

A Tale of Ethshar

"Sirinita's Dragon" is the story of a young girl whose beloved pet is getting too large to keep around the house. It first appeared in The Ultimate Dragon, an anthology edited by Byron Preiss, John Betancourt, and Keith R.A. DeCandido, published by Dell, October 1995, ISBN 0-440-50630-1. It was written specifically for the anthology, and was accompanied by a line illustration by Lars Hokanson and Frances Cichetti.

The story is part of the Ethshar series, which consists of eleven novels and ten shorter works as of January 2012. It was included in the February 2006 issue of the webzine Son and Foe, and has been reprinted as a chapbook, in a numbered edition of 200 copies, with illustrations by Kiri Evans. It's scheduled to be included in the upcoming collection Tales of Ethshar.

And I've put the entire story online, where you can read it for free.

Origins:

Back in the first published Ethshar story, The Misenchanted Sword, I established two things: That Ethsharitic dragons are large and dangerous, and that wealthy Ethsharites keep baby dragons as pets. Obviously, I needed to reconcile these two facts at some point.

Then John Betancourt called and invited me to write a story for The Ultimate Dragon.

Actually, I wrote a completely different, unrelated, non-Ethshar story at first, but nobody was very impressed with it -- it was very short, for one thing, and John had hoped for something longer, and something more like my usual work, which that first story wasn't.

My usual work is fantasy, particularly Ethshar. So I wrote "Sirinita's Dragon," and John bought it, and there we are. Very simple history on this one.

Publishing History:

"Sirinita's Dragon" first appeared in The Ultimate Dragon, an anthology edited by Byron Preiss, John Betancourt, and Keith R.A. DeCandido, published by Dell, October 1995, ISBN 0-440-50630-1. It was written specifically for the anthology, and was accompanied by a line illustration by Lars Hokanson and Frances Cichetti.
The Ultimate Dragon has been reissued in paperback by I Books, May 1, 2003, with ISBN: 0-743-45868-0.
This edition is also available in e-book form from Fictionwise.
The story was included in the February 2006 issue of the webzine Son and Foe
"Sirinita's Dragon" was reprinted as a chapbook in January 2006, in a numbered edition of 200 copies, with illustrations by Kiri Evans.
"Sirinita's Dragon" is scheduled for inclusion in the collection Tales of Ethshar some time in 2012.
The complete text is online.

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