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wasn’t saying, but it was those long conversations that provided the emotional lifeline back toward sanity. Anne was going through her own stuff too, having recently divorced her husband, and was now working her way through her own emotional upheavals of relocating to Ireland with two of her three children in tow. So for a while, we may have been two of the walking wounded, holding each other up. Eventually, Anne invited me to join her and her family in Dublin—it would be good for me, and it would be good for her to have another friend to talk to, someone who understood writing. Thus began my migration, first to New York for six months (where I finished two novels) and from there to Ireland with a bit of change in my pocket.
    Anne picked me up at the airport, and it was like coming home to family. On the way back to her digs, she said, “Let’s pick up some takeout from the Chinese restaurant.” We walked into a fairly nondescript building, and one of the most beautiful Chinese women I’d ever seen in my life smiled at us and said, in perfect brogue, “Top of the evenin’ to yeh! May I take yer arder?” It was the single most perfect moment of culture shock in my entire life.
    I should also say this about Chinese food in Ireland—if they can’t get the right ingredients, they substitute. Usually a potato. ’Nuff said about that. I leave the rest to your imagination. (That may have changed since 1970, though.)
    A couple of days after I moved into the McCaffrey manse, one of Anne’s local friends—Michael O’Shea—offered to take me and Anne’s eldest son, Alec, out drinking. Michael O’Shea outweighed me by at least fifty or sixty pounds, but I kept up with him all day long, drink for drink. Michael’s plan had been to “take the piss out of the American.” It didn’t work. Knowing a smidge of biology, I also put away two or three glasses of water for every glass of whiskey. So when we got back to Anne’s, I went upstairs to type a letter. Still pretty buzzed, I had to slow down to sixty words a minute. Apparently, my being able to sit and type, despite putting away so much whiskey, was enough to impress him that I was a force unto myself. (And yes, I admit, the hangover the next day was pretty horrendous. I haven’t done any real drinking since then.)
    I stayed with the McCaffrey clan for only a couple of weeks before finding a flat of my own in Dún Laoghaire (pronounced dun laary ), a small village nearby where James Joyce had lived. It’s the site of James Joyce Tower. There’s also a statue of the man. I suppose that should have been inspiring, but James Joyce was not known for his science fiction.
    Shortly after settling in, I called Anne to inform her, “You have to come and meet my landlady. She’s Lessa.” Indeed, this feisty, no-nonsense, wiry little woman could have beamed in directly from Pern. (Actually, she was from England.) Jan was Lessa in looks and personality and that quality that western writers would call “gumption.” Anne met Jan and was immediately taken with her. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. Being in the same room with them was joyous. Standing between them was dangerous.
    Ireland was the rest I needed, but it wasn’t conducive to my writing. I’d finished two novels in New York City, but had made no real progress on anything while parked in Dún Laoghaire. About the time I realized I was seeking out Dublin’s permanent floating John Wayne film festival, I knew my time in Ireland was ending.
    I went back to New York, wrote another book and a half, returned to Los Angeles, and began the process of learning how to be a real writer—one who rolls with the punches and keeps on writing. But those days of sanctuary that Anne McCaffrey provided were the lifeline, the much-needed opportunity to discover the emotional resilience that passes for