Just For Silly’s Sake—The Dragon Diaries (updated) at SF Novelists

Kelly McCullough April 11th 2010

Just For Silly’s Sake—The Dragon Diaries (updated)

This is how my brain amuses itself when I’m too sick to read* or do anything else that takes real focus. Dragon diaries in twitter size chunks:

Hatched today. A nice man was waiting for me with harness and food. He wanted to be my friend. I said yes. Then I ated him.

Alternatively. I am a pretty gold dragon. I hatched today. Girl was waiting. Told her my name was Henth. Then I ated her.

I went to the barn. There were many animals. I ated them. Except the cat. I only tasted the cat. I did not ated it. Good cat.

After I finished ating the barn animals I brought the cat in to sleep on my pillow. We will dream of fishies and ated them.

Met a knight today. He tried to poke me with sharp stick. I didn’t let him. I did not ated him. How do you shuck a knight?

Got note from great aunt Kayath about knights. Came with churchkey. Opened knight and ated him. Prefer fresh to tinned meat.

Am going looking for a princess. Have heard they make great ateding. Will bring cat for company.

No princess yet I did find several walruses. I ated them, but they weren’t very good. Cat says we should find fishes.

Made cat sack from walrus. Cat didn’t seem very appreciative. Saw, gnomes? Yes, gnomes—a six pack. Ated them. Gnom gnom gnom.

Saw a knight on a horse but couldn’t catch it. Hungry. Tasted cat again this morning just in case. Still not going to ated it

Found large pile of oily black rock. Ated it. Belched fire for six hours. Bad heartburn. Yet, have strange craving for more.

I don’t get what the big deal is about dragons and gold. I mean sure its all…sparkly. But that doesn’t…really sparkly. Spar—

Sparkly! Sparkly! Sparkly!

Sparkly! Sparkly! Sparkly! What’s that kitty? I said that already? Really? Sorry…deep breaths. In, out, in, out…sparkly?

Cat points out that there is no gold here. Sigh. Maybe later. In the meantime, ated mime. Worse heartburn than black rock.

Not sure about ateding mimes. Too much gas later—silent but deadly. On the other claw, it’s one box they’ll never get out of.

Found princess and have set her out front as knight-bait. No more mime-indigestion. Thinking of collecting shields. Sparkly.

Princess is working. Have landed first knight and ated him. I was hungry so just roasted. Will think about a glaze next time.

Mellow day, slow-roasted knight with garlic at joints. Cat says it’s my best effort yet. Ated a couple of goblins too.

Found 5 gold coins in knight’s saddlebags and put them on pillow. Sparkly! Sparkly! Sparkly! Going to bed now.

Stayed in bed today. Cat says it was so I could look at SPARKLY gold on pillow. I say I’z just tired. Oh, and I ated a troll.

Troll left me feeling a need to clean out the digestive system. Ate more black rock. Flaming troll belches…yech. Still, fire!

Having trouble sleeping because my back was very itchy. Asked cat to scratch it and shed some skin. Turns out I have wings!

Updated:

So far wings do not equal flying. Wings equal falling less fast. On the upside, landed on a gryphon and ated it. Most yummy!

Still not flying. I hope these wings aren’t just decorative. I like being pretty as much as the next dragon, but want to fly! How else am I going to ated more gryphons? Or hippogryphs? Oh, and I want to try Roc too. Cat says birdies are ated heaven.

Cat says that dragons don’t really fly with their wings, they fly with their minds. Confused. How do you flap your mind?

Updated: Dragon Diaries 2 and DD 3

That’s all so far but they’ve been well enough received that I imagine I will continue posting them on twitter and facebook, and who knows, they may become a chapbook at some point.

*I spent the last part of March flat on my back with a nuclear grade stomach virus that put me in the emergency room early on. There was morphine and intravenous fluids and anti-emetics and all kinds of fun. I was too sick to even read for about twelve days. However, I wasn’t too sick for boredom. That meant that I spent a good bit of time staring at the ceiling in dire need of entertainment. To fill the void my brain started scripting out the very silly little bits of dragon diary here.

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There are 23 comments. Get the RSS feed for comments on this entry.

1. Deb Salisbury on Apr 11th, 2010 at 11:33 am

LOL! Love your dragon diary.
2. Kimberly Frost on Apr 11th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Love it! Would never wish a stomach virus on anyone…unless it means they’ll write something that entertains me. In hopes of more dragon diaries, I’m sending you a nice raw chicken for you and the kitties to snack on. What’s that? Salmonella? *blushes furiously* Dragon diaries, funny. Want more. Got carried away…

JK about the raw chicks. Be well, friend!

Kimber
3. Kelly McCullough on Apr 11th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

Thanks, Deb.

Kimber, heh, I’ll make sure to thoroughly cook any mystery chicken that shows up in my mailbox. Glad you’re finding them fun.
4. KS Augustin on Apr 11th, 2010 at 7:34 pm

Oh that’s gorgeous, Kelly. Following you right NOW! lol
5. Lianne on Apr 11th, 2010 at 9:03 pm

Ah, now that’s why I love my MP3 player now. When I’m too sick to read (like the three days I spent in the hospital on morphine with a gallbladder attack last year), I can listen to other people read me stories.
6. Kelly McCullough on Apr 11th, 2010 at 9:19 pm

KS Augustin, cool, glad you like them.

Lianne, the problem was that I didn’t have enough attention span for real stories. Eyes and hands were working fine, so physically I could have read—I actually tried for a little while but I couldn’t process properly because my brain was breaking time up into unrelated twenty second chunks and I simply couldn’t follow a linear narrative. Eventually I got enough brain back to watch movies that I knew well, and I could probably have listened to audio books then, but that was several days after the dragon diaries point in the process.
7. margaret y. on Apr 11th, 2010 at 9:37 pm

The mime was my favorite part.
8. Barry Holmes on Apr 11th, 2010 at 9:39 pm

Can’t breathe… laughing… too… hard…
9. Kelly McCullough on Apr 11th, 2010 at 10:21 pm

Margaret, yeah, there’s something about mimes that makes them a really tempting target for humor.

Barry, thanks! that’s exactly the kind of response I hope for with this sort of thing.
10. Adele on Apr 12th, 2010 at 2:45 am

Totally completely wonderful.
11. Nobody on Apr 12th, 2010 at 9:17 am

oh, i LOVE it! LOL!
12. heteromeles on Apr 12th, 2010 at 3:52 pm

Poor mime. He didn’t even taste funny.
13. Kelly McCullough on Apr 12th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

Adele, thank you.

Nobody, likewise.

heteromeles, that was lovely. *sustained applause*
14. CC on Apr 12th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

I think everyone (authors, that is) does stuff like this when they can’t do anything else. Although they probably aren’t as funny af the dragon story.
have you ever thought about naming the dragon or the cat? Maybe Sparkly would work. Just an arrant thought, this made my day by the way. Thanks.
15. Kelly McCullough on Apr 13th, 2010 at 10:32 am

CC, I think you’re right, and I’d go further in that I suspect that pretty much everyone does this at least when they’re young. It’s just that writers don’t grow out of it/lose the whimsey as they get older. I suspect that cat will develop a name at some point. I’m less sure about dragon because of the POV of the diaries, but a lot depends on how far I end up carrying this forward.
16. Missy S on Apr 15th, 2010 at 7:25 pm

I would buy this. And read it many many times… this is wondiferous!!
17. Kelly McCullough on Apr 16th, 2010 at 9:54 am

Missy, cool, glad you enjoyed it. They seem to have developed a life of their own and are continuing on.
18. aesmael on Feb 6th, 2011 at 11:33 am

Attempting to follow the links to other Dragon Diaries compilations gives this error:
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/novel/public_html/index.php:2) in /home/novel/public_html/wordpress/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 890
19. Kelly McCullough on Feb 11th, 2011 at 3:44 pm

aesmael Thanks! Fixed now.

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Kelly McCullough

Kelly McCullough's first novel in the WebMage series, WebMage, was released by Ace in 2006 to considerable critical praise. Cybermancy, and CodeSpell followed in '07 and '08. His 4th, MythOS, is slated for late May '09 with SpellCrash to follow in '10. His short fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Weird Tales, Writers of the Future, and Tales of the Unanticipated. His illustrated collection, The Chronicles of the Wandering Star, is part of a National Science Foundation-funded middle school science curriculum, Interactions in Physical Science. Visit site.