A Dragon By Any Other Name and Other Stories

By Fran LaPlaca

The answers to the questions everyone is asking: Should you skip dragon-killing class for a Star Trek convention? What really happened in the house of the three bears? What makes a wizard a wizard? Includes five short stories: A Dragon By Any Other Name, Where Do Wizards Come From?, The House at the End of the World, Goldi Freaking Who? and Please Press Star.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fran LaPlaca
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476274607

Fran LaPlaca

Fran LaPlaca is the author of the Keeper of the Way series, including Blade of Lightning and Keeper of Fire. Non-series novels include The Aduro and To Serve the High King. Short stories have appeared in the DAW anthologies Better Off Undead and Something Magic This Way Comes, and also in the original Warrior and Wisewoman and the Realms of Wonder anthology, Fantastic Companions.When not writing, she enjoys reading manga, wishing she could draw, and trying to find ways to disguise onions and mushrooms so that her children will eat them unknowingly. (Edited to add: The onions and mushrooms thing isn't working out so well.)You can find more information and a complete list of titles available at http://www.franlaplaca.com, as well as a really nice picture of a llama.

Book preview

A DRAGON BY ANY OTHER NAME

and other stories

by

Fran LaPlaca

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Fran LaPlaca

All Rights Reserved

STORIES:

A Dragon By Any Other Name

Where Do Wizards Come From?

The House at the End of the World

Goldi Freaking Who?

*Please Press Star*

Other Works by Fran LaPlaca

A Dragon By Any Other Name

~~~~

[That man] is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time. Lyndon Baines Johnson, U.S. President."

~~~~

The Imperial Dragon was, by all accounts, an altogether noble, articulate, intelligent, well-mannered dragon.

George stared at the dragon in front of him. A ruder, dirtier, more uncouth beast George had never met. Not that he had met many. The actual number of dragons he’d met, were he to include this dreadful example, would be, well, it would be one.

This one.

This is not what I signed up for, George told himself with a sigh. What woman is going to be impressed if I bring this head back?

Certainly not Nikita.

Nikita was not the easiest woman in the world to impress. In fact, George had long ago decided that there was no woman harder to please. Yet please her he must. From the moment he’d first seen her, the first time his eyes had met hers, he'd been captured, heart and soul.

However, not even one ounce of Nikita’s soul belonged to George. Not one strand of her shocking pink hair, not one feather of her tie-dyed cloak, not one inch of her oiled, gleaming skin had ever come any closer than the edge of the stage she danced upon.

He had gone home after seeing her that first night, delirious in his newfound love, and written page after page of lyric poetry dedicated to her exquisite form. (He had sent them to her, after making copies for the various literary magazines, but she had never responded. Neither had the literary magazines.)

He prodded the dragon with his still shiny, brand-new, dragon killer sword, but the dragon merely farted, rolled over, and belched.

George moved off to think. And, incidentally, to breathe.

There was nothing about dragon burps in Dragon Killing 101. Or 102, or Dragons Through the Ages, or How To Care For Your Weapon, or for that matter, even in Dragon Killing In The Modern Era. The final written exam, which George had taken only yesterday, had most definitely not asked ‘What do you do when your Imperial Dragon farts?’

The pictures in the books, the illustrations that had ranged from St. George the Dragon Slayer (no relation) to Pete’s dragon, did not, under any stretch of the imagination, show a dragon that looked like this one.

It looked like an overgrown bulldog with the emphasis on ugly.

And its voice. George winced as it grated