The Joy of Friendship, Flying Lizards, & Pop

“Nil ego contulerim iucundo sanus amico.”

While I am of sound mind, I shall prefer nothing to the joy of friendship. -- Horace, Satires I.v.44

I think that quote from Horace will appear in the front of my new novel. I’m amused that the Latin version is only six words, while the English translation takes fifteen words. We have a wordy danged language, don’t we?

“The Joy of Friendship”: Some 18,000 words into the manuscript of my new novel, the tale has turned into a story of discovery and friendship between two females living in 1840 on the Texas frontier. Never mind that one is a 15-year-old teenager whose mother died giving birth to her, and whose dad spoils her—as much as a teenage girl might be spoiled in a pioneer home with more daily chores than minutes in the day. Never mind that the other friend is a 135-year-old mutated giant flying female horny toad who can only converse through telepathy, projected in Latin, and whose primary activity is finding enough ‘cibum’—that’s Latin for meat.

Also never mind that I’m an old grey-beard man, half a century and a whole gender beyond the two characters, be she pioneer-human or horny toad-dragon. Never mind, I didn’t raise daughters. But I did grow up with a smart-ass saucy sister and I married a sassy gal with an occasional sailor’s vocabulary, so I think I’m muddling along pretty well with the two character’s growing friendship.

I posted a couple of real life horny toad images in a December blog post, and I stare at those photos for inspiration on keeping the giant horny toad likable and credible. Dragons in the stories I’ve read tend to male, and either evil, greedy, and witty, as personified in Tolkein’s Smaug; or male and not evil, but still greedy and witty as personified in Naomi Novik’s Temerarie.

Leine, the name of my horny-toad dragon, is coming along as not male, for sure, but still with a greedy streak in regards to cibum, and an evolving wit. She starts slow on her pithiness—not to be confused with slow-witted—because for 130 years she’s been without anyone who can communicate with her in Latin, her only language. You know about Latin, it’s the dead language of the Romans and giant flying horny-toads.

A Different Dragon Entirely is unfolding scene by scene into something I didn’t quite expect, but which I’m immensely enjoying writing. I confess that I didn’t set out to write a chick-lit sort of story about a weird saucer-shaped lonesome dragon and a smart-ass head-strong teenage girl. I suspect that storyline has been well covered in other fantasy dragon tales. Nonetheless, that’s what is tumbling out of my head onto the computer screen, and I like it. I’m betting that seasoned readers of dragon literature will quickly lose an expected reluctance to accept a winged horny toad in the wilderness of 1840 Texas Hill Country as a bonafide fantasy dragon. We’ll see.

A friend posted an image of a real-life flying lizard from Australia. Here’s another photo of the breed. If it were a Texas horny toad, nature would have stolen my thunder, but as interesting as this little gal is, she is still lizard-size, not croc-size, or like my flying Leine—house size.

Finally, I’ve been away from my blog keyboard for a few weeks, what with the holidays, and this year, helping out my 97-year-old father who has been hospitalized with pneumonia in both lungs. Pop is a tough old coot who beat the odds and the pneumonia and is home now. Even if he is now wearing an oxygen tube full-time, he is at home and not in the damned hospital full of sick people and constant irritations. Here’s a photo I took of him a couple of days ago reading the first chapter in my Texas Ranger novel, A Different Country Entirely.

Pop is not my prime reader, the mythical perfect reader for whom I write, but like any son, his approval still means a lot to me, even if I’m old enough to have my own grown sons and grandchildren. Pop finished the opening chapter, which I worried might not be to his taste. It is a graphic and violent scene of an Indian depredation on the Guadalupe River, the same river by which we vacationed for several summers in the 1960’s when I was a teenager. We swam, fished, and canoed in the crystal clear water, loving it. In my book, things don't go so well for the vacationers.

Anyway, after finishing the chapter, Pop marked his place and closed the book. He looked up, and nodded his approval to me. That was a nod I’ll take to the bank any day. He then commented that he was glad we didn’t have to worry about Apaches when we swam in the river back on those vacation trips. Then he closed his eyes and took another nap.