Sterno’s Den | LexFA: The Lexington SF & Fantasy Association

So, how did a nice dragon like me end up with a bunch like this? Well, somebody’s got to keep them in touch with reality…

Actually, I was first drawn back around 1986. Sue Baugh was Dictator then, and she asked Karen Craig to come up with a design for LexFA club t-shirts. She captured my face pretty well, but she said my body wouldn’t fit, and I wouldn’t hold still long enough anyway.

They had a contest to name me, and “Sterno” was the only idea that got more than two votes. (I’m surprised this bunch could agree that well!) There were rumors later of ballot-box stuffing, but that wasn’t the case. The case was actually mock-alligator, and I think it was just jealous because my hide looked better than hers.

Dictator Cync Brantley wanted to put me on another set of t-shirts, so she asked R’ykandar Korra’ti to touch up a multi-generation photocopy of Karen’s portrait. She caught me in a little better light and made a few changes while she was at it. Karen’s initials were removed from the new version at her request, and Dara’s original went to the printers. Oops…

That version never made it back from the shirt shop, so Dara went back to an earlier working sketch and the shirts to re-create my third generation portrait. Cync made lots of photocopies, and started pasting them into her Ministry of Propaganda’s flyers.

When Cync passed the Ministry to Rickey and Tracy Hite, Janis Neville scanned my portrait in for their Amiga. Rickey did a couple of touch-ups to the digitized version to restore what the scanner had missed. I stayed in their Amiga a couple of years, then Rickey moved me over to an IBM.

Freon the Lady Dragon

By the way, have you met my partner, Freon? Rickey designed her to keep an eye on the flyers as they go through the mail. Don’t let the rumors fool you, she’s not my girlfriend, or sister, or anything – we just work together. Freon got her name by vote at the January ’99 meeting. Guess I’m not the only one that thinks of her as the “Ice Queen.”..

You can have copies of us if you’d like, but keep it to yourself, okay? I’d rather not be chased by some Lizzie who’s seen “Fatal Attraction” too many times!