Starting April 14, 2025, successive chapters of The Half Life of Dragons will be published every Monday until we reach the final chapter. That will probably happen about the time that summer circles around to fall.

Now if you ever need to catch up, you can do so right here any time. I will update it regularly.

~ Sonja

The Half Life of Dragons

Chapter One: The Cemetery Walkers ~ It’s early March in Carding, Vermont which means it’s time for the annual town meeting. David Tarkiainen, retired history teacher and now the chairman of the cemetery committee, asks for and receives money to update the town’s cemetery records. The plan is for a small group to walk each graveyard, checking the names against the paperwork. They uncover a fake grave in the last cemetery on their list.

Chapter Two: The Vigil Volunteer — Even though their time in Carding, Vermont was brief, the four members of Calliope—a rock band with a rather occult reputation–had a big impact on the town. More than one set of parents stormed into the farmhouse where Calliope and its entourage lived, seeking their errant teenaged children. Rumors and stories about those teens have swirled through the band’s legend ever since. And with the onset of social media, there’s always someone trying to chase them down.

Chapter Three: The Comfortable Silence That Falls Between Old Friends–It’s still pretty cold in Vermont in March. So when David Tarkiainen leaves the town library after an afternoon spent with the microfiche machine, he’s pretty grateful to sit for a spell in Lee Tennyson’s warm truck. While there, Lee informs David that his research into Calliope’s life in Carding is making some of the residents uncomfortable. The band, especially its lead singer Timmen Eldritch, were not well-liked. And their still-fanatical fans are not welcome in town.

Chapter Four: White Boots–-Spring in Vermont is always a difficult birth. The weather can veer widely in a single day from sleet to snow to sun and back again. So what shoes should a visitor wear? This is quite a dilemma for Jaini Haskell, a podcaster who’s returned to Carding for a program on Calliope for her Mysteries of New England program. Jaini once knew the band. Though it’s doubtful any of its members remember her.

Chapter Five: At the Auction House–We’re headed off across the state of Vermont to visit its largest city, Burlington. It’s the home of Allison Owen, now commonly known as Al, who’s in her fourth year of sobriety, thanks to a therapy group, and her mentor and friend, Dexter Little. It’s cold, it’s March, and on the way to work a traffic jam makes the friends decide to leave the bus to walk the rest of the way to where they work, a popular cafe known as The Brick. On the way, Al ducks into an auction house to find out when they’re having their next sale. She also gets an unwelcome surprise.

Chapter Six: Search and Research–It’s been months since retired history teacher David Tarkiainen decided to write a book about the mythical rock band Calliope and its wizard-like lead singer, Timmen Eldritch. Now David’s always thought of himself as a fastidious researcher, keeping careful notes as well as maintaining an organizational structure that allows him to lay his hands on any bit of information that he wants any time he wants. But something has truly gone awry. David’s office is a total jumble, and his wife Della figures he needs a helping hand–or a big wastebasket.

Chapter Seven: The Seed Exchange–Life can often feel incremental in March in Vermont. Everyone notices the longer spans of time with the sun shining above the horizon. But the weather clings to winter temperatures, and you never know whether the wetness planned for the day will be rain or ice or some dreadful combination of the two called “wintry mix.” So Agnes Findley, one of Carding’s inveterate gardeners, decides to add a bit of spring dreams to her life by sorting seeds for the planting yet-to-come. But then she gets interruped.

Chapter Eight: Steely Dawn–The mystical rock band Calliope lived in Carding, Vermont for less than a year, but the disruption and chaos they wreaked in town has never been forgotten by the folks who live there. This year marks the seventh anniversary of the band’s lead singer, Timmen Eldritch, and Calliope’s followers expect him to be declared officially deceased. Pearl McGregor was once part of the band’s inner circle, and she’s always resented the way she was treated by Carding-ites. So she’s moving back to town for a little bit of revenge. But maybe she’s the target.

Chapter Nine: Hurry Up and Wait–Someone has broken into the Frost Free Library to trash the second-floor research room where David Tarkiainen has been working on his biography of the ill-fated rock band Calliope. After a phone call from the head librarian, friends Edie, Ruth and Aggie hurry over to help. But the scene is not quite what it appears to be. Nothing is damaged, just taken from its shelf and laid on the research room floor. Why?

Chapter Ten: Lemmings–The trickle of Calliope culties has grown to a torrent. Devoted fans are driving down the main street of Carding the wrong way, they’re shoplifting bottles of Carding Cream Ale in the Coop, and the residents just want them to all go away. The shoplifting is a particular concern to the town’s chief of police, Charlet Davenport, has cracked down on the nonsense. The town jail cells are getting a workout.

Chapter Eleven: Two Bags Full–The Carding police have certainly got their hands full trying to maintain some semblance of order among the Calliope culties trying to take over the town. Jennifer Osawa has just one of them in to spend time in a jail cell. Then Jaini Haskell, the podcaster in white boots, pushes her way into the station. Faye Bennett is just outside when Jaini is evicted, and she ends up having a bit of conversation with a woman holding two bags of groceries. Curiouser and curiouser.

Chapter Twelve: The Legacy–Faye Bennett and Suzanna Owen have been friends ever since Suzanna’s mother, Allison, unceremoniously left her daughter in Carding six years ago. It didn’t take long for Suzanna to find her real family with her Uncle Ted, his wife Paula, and her grandfather Robert. But there are still unhealed wounds in the past. And one big question: Who was Suzanna’s father? She is determined to find out.

Chapter Thirteen: Water, Water, Everywhere–Having buried their Mom next to their Dad and sister, Matt and Josh Bentsen have now set their sights on emptying the family home in Carding. It’s a tougher slog than they imagined, given the shadows and memories they carry. But a bit of help arrives in the shape of a contingent of family friends who know all too well how difficult it is to sort, organize and cull the accumulation of lives well lived. The project had just started humming along when a long held secret turns the day in a very different direction.

Chapter Fourteen: Junk Journal–The Bentsen brothers, Matt and Josh, knew that their sister Ashley held a closely guarded secret about the time she spent with the rock band, Calliope. Now they’re discovering that their recently deceased mother, Barbara, guarded her daughter’s knowledge as well. Why else would you hide a journal in a car’s upholstery? Curiouser and curiouser.

Chapter Fifteen: Mud, Water and Ice–The storm of controversy surrounding the former rock band known as Calliope, which has enveloped Carding, becomes more puzzling by the hour. Andy Cooper and Matt Bentsen have joined Amos Hardy in a trek to the farmhouse where the band lived when the last Calliope album (The Half Life of Dragons) was recorded. For years, folks have assumed that the house had been abandoned. But the truth is far stranger. Someone is using it to perpetuate a Calliope-based scam.

Chapter Sixteen: Union and Reunion—There’s a lot of folks on edge in Carding today. Faye Bennett and her best friend Suzanna Owen are leaving shortly for Black Mountain in Maine where they will compete in regional ski events. But the real anxiety lies in the fact that Suzanna hopes to find the one person who can tell her the truth about her father.
In the meantime, Suzanna’s mother, Allison, is taking the long journey home (after 20 years) to visit with her father Robert. Her best friend Dex Little is driving her.

Chapter Seventeen: An Old Story with a New Ending–For the first time in nearly 20 years, Allison Owen is walking through the front door of the house where she grew up in Carding. She left for California years before believing she was the cause of the skiing accident that killed her mother, Anna, and her life has been challenging ever since. Now with the support of her friend Dexter Little, she is trying to reconcile with her family.
At the same time, over in the Carding Academy of Traditional Arts, Agnes Findley and David Tarkiainen are sorting through the Calliope archives they found in the Karmann Ghia once owned by the band’s lead singer, Timmen Eldritch. What they find has the potential to change everything people think they know about the band.
Ah yes, the plot has thickened.

Chapter Eighteen: The Power of Words Unspoken–We’re bouncing back and forth between the Calliope crescendo happening in Carding and the journey that Suzanna Owen is taking to discover the truth about her father. Everything seems so frenzied to everyone involved but the truth (on a lot of fronts) is making itself felt.

Chapter Nineteen: Healing Without Borders–For twenty years, Allison Owen has believed that she was the indirect cause of her mother Anna’s death. Everyone who knew Anna agreed that plunging into a wintry night to search for Allison when the ski slopes were covered with ice was not normal behavior. So the question has lingered all this time.
But now Allison, who is reuniting with her father, is about to learn the truth about her mother’s death. And it will be accompanied by a few tears of sadness and relief.

Chapter Twenty: A Great Big Envelope of Questions and Answers–It may take a while but truth has a way of revealing itself, a fact that will be in evidence to Suzanna Owen when she finally meets one of the members of the band called Calliope. Nicholas Kelvey, one of the former members of Calliope, has been the custodian of the facts behind Suzanna’s paternity for a long time, and he is both pleased and relieved to tell the young woman the story about her father and mother.

Chapter Twenty One: A Café Confab–Both Suzanna Owen and her best friend Faye Bennet did Carding proud at the regional ski competitions at Black Mountain in Maine so the town is buzzing with celebratory vibes.
And of course, the gossip lines are buzzing too with the true story about Suzanna’s parents as well as the more sobering tale of Anna Owen’s death.
But there will be time in the future to muse over those tales. For now, the Carding-ites gathered in the Crow Town Bakery are there to cheer their hometown athletes.