I'm not going that worry I'm not going to tell you the whole forty five minutes. They have allotted may or may but. I'm I'm going to do twenty or twenty five or so minutes and then they'll be. Time for Q. and A or conversation or loud objections or anything. I want to do. I think of the it is here assembled I think maybe only K. It was there and I see if I did a reading from this in March here remember. But this is a couple of excerpts from the dragon man's braai which is a novel and this going to be in the Dragon Boat latest Jack and garnered as well and college is coming out this fall is a hardcover from Berkeley there. I was in a previous volume they did titled Wizards which must have done really whale thanks to Neo game and Orson Scott Card and Garth and other people being in it. It's not for my sake I'm sure but it must have done well because it's now and knowledge ever bit and then I get royalty checks for just as if I were a real author or something. And so when they were putting together having a Wizards book when they're painting either a dragon but they asked me if I have something I'd like to send them and I thought Well probably no one else is going to write an Appalachian Dragon story. So I sit and they add in hopes. Of snagging a silent at work and because of the anthology as I follow up to the previous anthology I decided to continue the story of my protagonist from the first and so this is my first sequel as it were but other than that. That I don't think you need to know much else I've cut out most of the saying this and this. To spare you because this is sort of like a lot of my stories a musical which is say Ed since I'm not musical. All right. This is the from the beginning of the story. My name is pearling Sunday though I was always Col Pearl and this is the story of how awful it all fired drag a man down a hole that another girl went down before me and how one of us came up again. The story also has a mission raining and kidnappers and angry mob and a car chase with one car and a shootout and of course a few guys just switch I seem to attract and it happened to me and around me and inspired me in the bridge in your mountains where you stand on a ridge and see the next three real clear and the next three and a little less clear. And so on. Bacary after age with the last one. Only a faint blue notion of a line and because it's the farthest want to weigh and distance and also the farthest want to weigh in time. It's the law past of the mountains that you trying to scrounge away off there. This story happened several ridges back when the mountain folks were hearing stories from the cities of white lions for brain dead and padlocked I was in jail time for drinking beer and were glad of their rifles and Turkey gobblers their gold pieces hidden in shirt mattresses their homemade whiskies that played different things on that. From hill to hill and spring to spring. One fall afternoon I sat in a bottle patch on the slope of cove mountain a cheese and crackers from the store and could tell of a. I spread my hand in Jack across the rocks because I needed the sun. Warmongers in the breeze to stir my hair. Since no one else was alive to bother and marveled at the Magic on display all around this many ads and go old as there are sorrows and joys and every last leaf a trim Linda burst into flame if you looked at it. So I kept my eyes moving. I sat in that ball for a spell watching aholic wheel over here and a chipmunk Skeeter from rock to rock a black belt of smoke rise on the other side of the trees. No homestead puts out smoke like that. Puffs were too strong and regular is if squeezed from a bellows and the plane was movin slow to the east. I knew it must be a locomotive headed a lot in the end and it be a track but something didn't set right about that notion. And I plucked into the grass blade Well I figured why not on the first problem was all to hear the train rumble in and climb in a line but I heard no sound at all to go with that move and the second problem was even bigger. I had crossed the end be a mile or so back on the way up the hill. Lie behind me. Not in front. So there was nothing for it but to ease up off my smooth rock and take up my hat and jacket sakit sidle through the trees to where I could make out through a low or a bush where that smoke was coming from it was a man walking along the ridge smoking a pipe. Only the pipe was the size of a man and the man was a giant. Is eyebrow stuck out from his craggy face like twig rolls of barbed wire and they can't catch it on the Oakley and so that Miles and leaves and bits of bark patter down to a show there is in the tops of his robot sized brogue a and. He hummed a team unity while. And as I watched him I held my breath. Because anyone who ran across an old fire dragon man in the hills even in those days knew she had seen something not long for this world something that deserved to pass and. The giant stopped to one last drag on his pipe then knocked it down a boulder. Enough don't tie up with each whack to make it a Ash Pearl my hide in light. And then he pulled from his coat pocket what looked like a saddle bag from which he painted a haystack of tobacco that he put into the bowl of his pipe and then he hacked in Colvert and brought up a little fire ball about the size of a frolic in care which played across the bow and set it alight. He pants legs and sat on the ground with the thought like Donna my deep in the mine and I say I am too because you sit and had rippled the mountain side and not made plum off my feet. I was sprawled beneath the law rubbing my backside when the drag of man began to saying. Look who is a purty bird she Warbles a she brings a good time. No law as it was in the purtiest saying and voice. It sounded like a man trying to saying around a mouthful of parables without spitting them out or swallowing. But he sure knew a lot of verses to that old song which some changed around and others entirely new to me. And it was a starring a look across the valley as I had and I wondered how many leaf changes there were in a drag a man's life some side to drag a man remember when there were no leaves in the mountains either. He sang in a sighing and as always was a food for a song I write I'd lost track of the time. The air turned trail as the sun got lower. And just as it grazed the next ridge top. The dragon man turned his head and looked right into my eyes purty wizard who's up if she doesn't fly off she's watchin me stay. The older magic makers get the better they are at spotting other magic makers and of course a dragon man is older than just about anybody short of a rock. So I'm out of the expected discovery if I sat still long and. I squared my shoulders pushed through the laurel and walked down the hill. Well my grandfather asked say it because that's how one politely addresses the oldest beings weather related or not. Don't you grandfather may miss cute as a bug said the dragon man. Your ire is there why stand on someone is weak. It is may come warm you say off little one U.K. sit in my lap. Now cause I'm spoken for. I wanna say it anyway. I asked and I absented like myself on the grass beside him but my he did put out the war. It was like getting neighborly with the steamboat boiler you write even introduce yourself proper I say that's true. Mr nose out of joint said the dragon mayor. He took a long drawn this pie inside and left the smoker all out of his right nostrils to be lost in the evening sky. My name he finally say it is pock collar pie and when I asked. I my name. I mean only what I've got the past century or two in the language that you know my name is Pearly and Sunday and it's the only name I've ever had. You learn there is in time counterparts and you're just a slip of a thing. Yeah. I couldn't disagree in the complicated ways. Wizards' I was physically about nineteen. But the code drugstore calendar mathematic so subtracting birth year from present year yielded a number that was pushing sixty while in my own mind. I was some types twelve and sometimes older than with those love depending on my mood. A wizard's adolescence last a long time which is one reason I do not recommend the Live to anyone who has a choice in the matter I had none myself. Counterpart snuffed out. Anyway they have a long conversation which I believe about all sorts of things get acquainted and. They get interrupted. Katar PA snuffed out his pipe and sprung into a crouch his silhouetted against the dark blue sky. He caught his hand and peered down slow. I looked to and saw a distant swaying in light lantern three lanterns Meehan's voices come in this way hotter PI sniffed what's twice for all the world like a Friday dear. And then he whispered I got to go pretty map early but come down below buzzards rock one evenin We'll have you to supper. He turned and without another word disappeared. Now for a dragon man to move from his man shape into his flying shape takes only about Islam is better in a base the counter pocket not stay put. Even that long he had done something else. Like some other creatures in the hills and all the oldest ones the dragon man are sidewinders they can turn them sail sideways to the world and slip out of side. Unless you know what. To look for and look quick what I looked for and saw was the dragon man Shabda just a thing in strip crawling along the ground like a black snake and add a side in an instant as if it had poet through a crack in the earth. Well per lane files a man with the posse. If that's the right. Urged the gang of locals. Is heading up the hill. They've been looking for a missing girl. Not her lane and currently is at the moment in a man disguise anyway so they think she's just a guy on the Hill but they're looking the leader of the posse is looking for his missing daughter. And who they believe has been carried out by the sheriff. Because the sheriff another element rattling around in this story is that this goes on against the backdrop of all the forced sterilizations in Appalachia in the 1930's. When the eugenics folks were in charge of the state hospitals and so on and folks who are believed and feel that. Like from the evidence of their dirt yards and and and home made dresses. Would be just sort of lied to and carried off to hospitals and operated on so they could not reproduce and. And breed their infirmities in the society but currently and with. Mr Harrell. Winds up in the shootout with the police and those last hours of actual assignment all of which I was because I have a reputation of. But but where I'm go in is that eventually. Per lane pushed into together. Figures I doubt that. Allie Harrell is not actually in the state hospital is not actually in the clutches of the sheriff. But as has been carried off down the line by collar pine and is set up housekeeping with the Dragon man she's not exactly in any hurry to be rescue al her aunt goes down below to accept the dinner invitation and finds out that she's not the only person invited and I'll get to the dinner party here. So y'all are all invited. When we all sat down. We were eleven but Al I wouldn't tell me who the twelfth place was for the setting at my left hand. Never you mind she said. The first supper again asked to Iraq other than maybe one of the ghosts of four of the eight miners work in the Green who had bad when a lamp ignited a methane pocket in the sand for nineteen eighteen. Exactly whose lay up it had been and was still a subject of. Art may said the youngest and smallest of them who was only fifteen I tell him if they hit a pocket gas can. Hole up in any way or said the skinny one not just the ceiling and you're the one that has to be first to pokies food Hey I didn't ever cranky say Poor things. Allie murmured into my ear. They're always grateful for the invite. But once they get here. All they talk about is work. I'll show up all of you the one with the broadest shoulders told the others. I was the foreman morning. Whatever happens down the hall on my watch is my fault and that's all there is to the others. I'll top it wants about this. Even the hunt. Gary and his English was not so good. Disputing the foreman's modesty or his arrogance in claiming to own their meeting. Well disaster. You could tell they were miners because even with their helmets off at the table. They never exchanged direct looks for fear of their alliance with blind somebody. Yet for all their chatter they still managed to put away the food in the ghostly way I had got used to in the haunted house where I was partly raised the food just vanished from the POLITES in front of them bit by bit. You couldn't see and happen. And with each helping the ghosts got less transparent but never so solid that you could raid the Northwest hardware calendar through them. Now ghosts I was familiar and easy with but the four in upset the other end of the table were more of a problem. It wasn't just that they were all naked or that their fans were smooth and hairless a store bought dolls or that their noses in chains nearly or that they talked so fast and so high that you could not understand what they say any more than you could understand it created. It was mostly there an ancient faces without expression their deep set eyes with no pupils and of course their table manners nearly as bad as collar pious and he ate beef stew with a shovel out of a bottle the size of a cauldron. Because they live so long dragging me in tight their sweet time doing most things but eating is an exception even when the Mayo is past the point of struggle between Goltz and slurps counterpart carried on his masterfully non-committal side of the conversation. Well I declare. Right. That's something. How about land. Given the miners bickering and clackety clack alley and I had plenty of chance to talk to each other. I asked her how she lie living down here. It's ever so nice and I said it is a counterpart just the sweetest. At that moment the sweetest thing was retrieving a whole carat from where it landed behind his ear. He played this green ribbon in my hair and he says one day you'll tell me fine so high I can see the whole New River Valley. During this speech shoot it looked at me but studied a jar of Chalte Chalte pickle like inhaled her future. I took it from her hand and said it I am I only say I hate to say this but aren't you. Stretching it a bit this housewife business trying to make all this out to be normal. Honey you have been carried off to a hole in the ground by I should creature of me and your poor pa has looked for you these past three months don't you want to say she side of course sidelight that she said well why don't you. Why why don't you come back up stairs with me. I'm afraid. Afraid of what honey frighted the collar Pike won't let you go. No he's told me many a time I'm free to go point ever. I'm afraid I'd never be able to come back. I mean look at this place here. You're right it is not the cabin and the flowers and all but. It's sort of impossible like that he's created a whole little Worrell around me and without me. What would happen. I'm afraid it would be a lot like you know from a dream that I would never have again and maybe your hear me either. You understand. I believe I did I said though I've never heard tell of search in all my life alley hair you're in love with that old drug of my name. Yes she said yes I am. Lord have mercy. Yes and that's when. Racket started but. One after another each a little closer each sending off its own why even echoes in the cavern outside. On the mountain weight of thought a thunderstorm and we were down the mountain by the milk inside or sloshed from the modes and the tie of all hot to life from a half inch at a time. We fire and in our ass the youngest miner the foreman looked through his pocket watch and said no we are not on you suppose. Asked the skinny miner. That's coldest said the fourth miner the ups seemed frozen their eyes set deeper than usual one am finally said to understandable words in a row. Hail. At the next thing you know UPS both in for directions each trying to wriggle headfirst into a tiny chain between logs and seating for shiny red but school East flatter and flatter little chicken legs dangling until fall but they will go the miners simply vanish does the form and it. Thank you kindly for the vandals miss I only see when finally the last but not away. And I barely could hear from happy for a thing in frightened Saionji's like a nasty of baby ma Yes the window box flowers were screaming. Hello the house called a familiar voice. I go higher that alley knowing now why she had kept her mouth shut about that twelfth place it table as that last a whited Rouse of the underworld strode through the door. He to store all the Devil's son in law wore a red jacket and white flared. Hanson high shiny boots like a Charlottesville swale riding high on it's not the usual attire for a black man in those days I surely hope the day and in the day and lasts of stone for a working man for friends I'm a weak Straus a no no don't get up. Keep your state same Joe or you're male he had it there. None of us had made the slightest her you shot and pucker your mouth so he say. And as a straddle the bench next to me. Someone might come along and kissed it. I said something that I am now ashamed of and will not repeat such colorful language wastrel say it. You've been hanging out on keel about. Speaking of language. Here's a piece of advice Pearl when you're this close to my in-laws Ryoma lowered have mercy is not the thing to say to speak at length of the road. Petey wheat straw is to invite trouble but I had known him for years since I was younger than Allie Harrell in just learning the ways of a wizard he had taken an interest in May Not entirely on his father in law's behalf and had been my first companion in roaming the country which had of course ended badly and I hated him mostly. But as I watched him put away and listen to him lie about what he had been doing and who he had been doing it. I reflected that he was about the only time I had left in my younger days since the Chattanooga dime museum had closed and the widow Winchester he died in her California mansion had gone to tourist. And that made me regret even more that he was a scoundrel and irreparable impossible to live with P.T. I said Peter. He corrected me. P.D. I said what's that ring on your face or. It's new in it. Well that's. The latest innovation we're working out at the old concern. He said a wishing arraying the idea is anyone who puts it on. Yes three immediate wishes granted no questions I asked. What's the catch. I asked. Well the problem so far and with the technology. Peters is the problem is what you might call user error. Most people think that wishing is a conscious act. When the average person wishes without ceasing every moment of her life whether she realizes it or not even if she slides the raying I wonder finger in a swivel of worry about what she'll wish for for. The rain knows that she wishes the morning tween Jenner would go away and the baby next door would stop whitening and the dishes would waft themselves and by the time the ring passes the second girl it's a metal all power going to those three accomplishments to so trivial as to pass without notice. Too bad about the baby. If you pass the cider. Can I say that re Mr point strong alley and buy certainly an alley What would you wish for the chain already got I asked Cotter pie. I'd wish my father was here to see how we live and see me happy and I'd wish the sheriff was here too so I could give him a piece of my mind and the third wish away off. She laughed the block of May and a little blue spot or worn out front would be nice but the rain on the older. Everyone looked at me. Used to sad you had any of those things and I asked. I might wind up with who knows what like the silly people Mr wheat straw on top. I think you know your own mind better than most stockholder I think you should go here. But he said but what I said kicking a Shand under the table as hard as I could not like he said we had seen just a little gas attack pay it no mind the drag a man looked worried but said nothing. While Alice said she held up the raying turned it from side to side peered through it like a people. The wizard out of no here goes. Alley Carol slipped down the rain. As far as having. The conversational art had any. One asked for him. Joe Berlinger has accused me of doing that but as I always with my stories it's far too long to read. It would take a couple of hours. And. Those who are intrigued. Trying to remember it like. Just send you a classic story now that I've been much tempted to you know it's the kind of revitalize it has you know with and a lot of things I think that and it's hard to day them that are actually scary. Kelly playing the specialist had and starred in animals I think are just terrific stone animals maybe even more adventurous because there is just the fact of the holiday it's not even who's doing the whole thing. It's just. Everything is counted the gradual awareness that everything is hounded the tightest responded. Everything is wrong. So it fascinates me but I haven't tackled it. Yet I think that if you're real. I think we're still with you on this great story. The Fall. We're pretty sure that's him. I read that and Oliver is like a story goes in the last and. I forget who all else is going to be in this anthology I know John Yellin is in it. Ted Williams I think now may know Vic's and I'm blanking on everybody else but it'll be like the Wizards anthology people will look at the back and I was. Wow Look at all these great people. Here's this Duncan. He's not a bestseller list was a list was in with a this you know I don't I'm not sure I don't know I think to some extent that I asked a different group of people just Gardner Tell me I wasn't in the initial people he had solicited because he was thinking. In terms of who writes about dragons and then he and it occurred to him that well. Some of these other people might write about him he might have asked years and she may not have thought of. Geoff for Topps about the sort of tyranny of the same anthology of people. Where you what you become now you know as a short fiction writer and you've been in a few of them there are always three or four or five books coming out that ashy to write this or that and if you keep writing bad and you forget what you were going to write well there was a new and you. Yes or. There's one here about. Yeah yeah yeah pollution. Well that you know yeah. OK here is one of the there is the whole cycle of Jack tales told in Appalachia where Jack goes off from home and has adventures and. And and most of which are derived from European influences and I forgotten the man's name of a folklorist it Chapel Hill that a collection of the Jack Taylor years ago still in print. I forgot his name is a rich. Richard something. I'm blanking out remember when the sessions. But one of those stories is actually about Jack in the old fart dragon man. And it is and in that story. Jack and his brothers are clearing out a patch of land. Up on the Hill. A an old fart dragon man I just described here keeps coming along because he has a shape changer. Comes along and keeps running them off and eating their vehicles and Jack finally makes gets him to stop and pursues him down the hole into the mountain where he finds that the. Dragon man has three pretty girls held hostage down there three sisters of course. And and each one he risky as each morning turn and each one winds up with one of the brothers as she comes out of the ole and so forth and he winds up beheading the dragon man. Now there's not much left of that in my version. Except here. You know my Jack character is a female. And there is only the one girl down below but she doesn't want to get risky. The dragon man does not get beheaded. I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that maybe maybe so although I don't think you know terrible ominous portent is developing. OK so. So it's there's not. There's not a lot of it but I did remember that one story and I haven't read any other stories about that sort of Southern Appalachian sort of he had to lie mountain giant creature version of a dragon and the big transformations are largely off screen as it were in the story. Yes but you know they. Now you know if you live. L. and L. In fact they will get all that every. So with you know there's there's I got interested in this when I read Jack forwards novel The Girl in the glass which I reckon me and everybody on the edge. You're a warrior. But it's sort of a. Nine hundred thirty sort of supernatural murder mystery thing. It's well worth reading. But the villains of the piece turn out to be in the modern eugenics movement and in the back he has a rather extensive afterward retards about all the sources and. Books on this and so on. There are a lot of websites devoted to this stuff. And there is one book I'm blanking on the title I'm blanking on everything. This morning I was up to like but there's a there's one book in particular where a guy is his guy looking for the people that were involved in this the survivors and so forth and written sort of exposé forget the publisher I forget the author of everything but I should transcribe some of that and get it up on the blog or something when the story comes out because other people will have this question too but I don't believe if I if I I think it was it was a I mean we're not talking about millions mean may not even we're talking about thousands of people but there were many dozens perhaps hundreds of cases there were laws on the books in several states they were more or less implemented depending on who was in charge of the state hospital at the time who the sheriffs were in the different places a lot of sheriffs light use it is just sort of cart blocks to rounding people up and breaking out massive bootleggers or or indigenous or whatever you know anybody they felt was no account or causing trouble you know. So but there was. If it never became a I mean the more I look into it the I'm surprised it happened at all. It doesn't seem to be like an epidemic but there was a lot of it was I guess it was like comparable to. The roughly contemporary. Tenets say to lobotomize Pete. PL You know I like Tennessee Williams a sister and all that sort of was around about that same time a lot of sort of loose cannon medical treatments and experimentations and folks that couldn't protest yes or. Were minors were Johns through your. You know your story and I was thinking who's going to be underground and is going to come to this dinner party they all had to be underground. So I thought well miners of course but they would probably be just miners because I was listening to leave on hand on my album which has his cover of Steve Earle's the mountain about the ghost in the mountains the miners have closed or whatever the line is. So I thought miner is a speedy trial of course two figures in the earlier story as well. But simultaneously there was a big conference on mining coal mining at our university and can tell you about the Sanger who is from the coconut tree came and did a concert which was great and then she was on the panel and she was talking about Isle her relatives her coal miners growing up and how even outside the mine they would look at each other because they were so used to not blinding each other and what and when she went she said they asked suddenly pictured them sitting around the dinner table not looking at each other and so that's what I went looking for a mine disaster roundabouts the area where the story was set that I could attribute it to that it is. Yes there are parts I did read it becomes clearer by play. Asteroid. The dragon's teeth which is a. Hiking spawn at a prominence in the area figures and of course. He's thinking. Under his belt is likely. Yes that's true. He says it's just you know it's just he's eating a mouse. I'm just like man I think you're right. What you're saying is not is Bill meaning that I do I do. I just music gets more and more important to me they older I get and I just put aside things in my heart and listen to them over and over like that and in particular I've got a thing that leave on a OHMSS voice if I can sing like anybody I would Bob saying Look Like leave on him who had lost his voice to cancer and got it back through. Sheer willpower apparently and sounds just as. Croaky as. I read a great interview with John Prine who's another of my favorite singer songwriters a few years ago that his own throat surgery and the doctor said we need to do this but he said I have to warn D.H. said he said there's a chance you could lose your voice and your singing voice and cry and so the doc if you heard very much. Still if it's let's upper right. I was it was lost. You know there was there and they stopped the developments and said that's how I see the exact like my favorite people are my favorite saviors or off your criteria or not traditional voice I mean I will I revere the Sinatras and the Billie Holiday but I can't emphasize here that style though I can't leave on hail or John Pryor or Steve Earle or Bob Dylan. Of course correction. Record. Probably still say around three. So you know if you own time. Place and Ariel things he's always done and really is very very he laughed so hard he fell off the couch. If you listen to this. I mean you know I mean you're something. I've lived I love playing on my ipod things that were recorded in the one nine hundred twenty S. with all his this and us and the folks who just showed up out of the woods the white Jimmy Rogers and the Carter family on the same day. Right the way Ralph payor set up his temporary studio in Bristol just to say he would show up and they walked in the door. You know and and people we will still have great music for me for this largesse humanity has a right now. But in the United States people are not just going to walk out of the woods like that the way they did in that magic time. Even by the time. Doc Watson came along he was fully informed about record albums and music on the radio and so forth but. So I did I just so value that stuff and it just informs all the stuff like that that Clarence actually recording of the Kick a bird was in my head when I was writing this which is why I put that encounter by my often for the previous story. And I don't remember the woman's night but of my favorite version of The Devil's nine questions which was the thematic art as I should for the first Pearl story. Was one of these mountain ladies saying acapella an old lady singing the song from her childhood that she remembered the great thing is more and more of it is getting archived on line you know yes wax cylinder record yes and then just like we were talking about yesterday the stuff that you what's would have had to write for permission to go to the archive at Chapel Hill or somewhere to listen to is now you can acquire and you're in your living room. Well thank you for.