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looked at houses for rent, we discovered another culture shock. Houses and the lands surrounding them were much smaller in Dublin than back on Long Island. While the rents were incredibly cheap by American standards, the rooms were pretty small; the kitchens were like closets.
    We ended up settling on a semi-detached house in upscale Mount Merrion on 14 North Avenue.
     Settling in, Anne finished
Dragonquest
and sent it off to Ballantine to be
     published in 1971. She also finished two gothics —
The Mark of Merlin
,
     reusing a plot she’d set up in her Freshman college year, and
Ring of Fear
.
    Anne’s mother arrived when the family had set up in 14 North Avenue. She had wanted to retire
     from her real estate job, and Anne’s re-settling in Ireland had given her an added impetus.
     She was in her seventies, and found the weather a bit colder than she would have liked. But
     “Bami” — as we kids called her — was a welcome addition to the household.

    14 North Avenue
    Another welcome addition was our orange marmalade cat — the first family pet in
     Ireland. We named him Isaac Asimov — and then realized that he had to be neutered,
     allowing Anne to later joke in the family that she had had Isaac Asimov fixed. The real
     Isaac was informed of the cat’s name and approved — but we never informed him of the
     “snippery” (of which he probably wouldn’t have approved).

    Isaac Cat
    Â 
    B ack at the
Royal Marine Hotel
in the evenings Anne would
     venture out to the local pubs, leaving the kids asleep or under the friendly eyes of the
     hotel staff. At the Eagle House just up the street from the Hotel, Anne met Michael ‘Mick’
     O’Shea. “You sound like a Yank,” Mick said when she had gone up to the bar to order. “What
     part do you hail from?”
    Mick introduced Anne to a wild group — some Irish, some English. There was Dominic and his girlfriend, Mick’s girlfriend Ann, and Bernard Shattuck, a soft-spoken Englishman who was a first mate on a trawler working for his captaincy. Mick himself — a six foot red-haired, red-bearded giant — particularly in Ireland — claimed to have been in the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force, both. Mick ran a car repair shop and helped Anne find an old black Morris four door sedan.
    Equipped with a car, Anne and the kids would go roving on the weekends. She found a local
     stables, Dudgeon’s, and found that she could indulge herself and the children in riding
     lessons. Anne’s first instructor was a young American, ‘Mare’ Laben. Mare had come over to
     study horsemanship at Dudgeon’s. They became good friends and, much later, when Mare needed
     a place to stay, Anne invited her to stay with us.
    Â 
Anne had given David Gerrold an open invitation
    A nne had given David Gerrold an open invitation to come stay with them if he ever decided to investigate Ireland. David gladly accepted and arrived before Christmas. Unexpectedly, Anne’s mother took a dislike to David. Her dislike was vicious, juvenile, and utterly unnatural. However, there was no way to overcome it. To spare Anne any distress, David decided to move out and rent an apartment.
    Mick O’shea came to the rescue — he knew an apartment that was open two houses down from his.
    The next day David phoned Anne, “Lessa is my landlord.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œ
Lessa
is my landlord,” David repeated. “You have to meet her.”
    At five foot nothing, and ninety pounds sopping wet, the brown-eyed, black-haired Jan Regan had all the feistiness, self-determination, and strength of Lessa of Pern. There being no dragons available, Jan had contented herself with exercising race horses. More than twenty years later, Jan is still a close friend of the family.
    Â 
Anne had not quite recovered
    A nne had not quite recovered from the shock of her mother’s