A BOY AND HIS DRAGON.

Byline: - Bob Strauss

The story of ``Eragon'' is more fantastic than the story of how it came to be. But only a little.

When home-schooled Christopher Paolini earned his high-school diploma at the age of 15, he wasn't ready to head to college. With not much else to do in rural Paradise Valley, Mont., he set to writing a fantasy novel about a magical world where the young hero, Eragon, makes a lifelong bond with the sentient dragon Saphira.

That took about two years. When Christopher's parents read his effort, they figured he had something, and spent the next year preparing the manuscript for self-publication. Once they had books to hawk, Christopher contacted school and local librarians throughout the West and arranged to make presentations that would encourage kids to read, write and otherwise follow their creative impulses.

And, of course, sell copies of ``Eragon'' to them. Which, if the Paolini family enterprise (which included Chris' younger sister, Angela) failed to do, would mean they'd have to sell their Paradise home, move to a city and get real jobs.

``We bet the farm, so to speak,'' Paolini, now 23, said during a phone interview from London, where he was attending the world premiere of the ``Eragon'' movie. ``It makes a great story after the fact. But when you're living through it, it's pretty nerve-racking.''

The self-published version did well enough regionally, though, to catch the eye of the stepson of acclaimed Florida author Carl Hiaasen when the family vacationed in Montana. He loved it and passed it on to Hiaasen, who brought it to the attention of his editor at Knopf.

The publisher bought the rights on the Paolinis' terms. Since Knopf's Books for Young Readers imprint released its edition of ``Eragon'' in August 2003, the book has spent 164 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. The second novel in Paolini's planned ``Inheritance'' trilogy, ``Eldest,'' came out two years later to the biggest single-week sale in sister publisher Random House Children's Books' history.

Asked what makes his story so popular, the unfailingly polite and precise-speaking Paolini suggests that ``the relationship between my main hero Eragon and the dragon Saphira, who's sort of a combination of a best friend/mother/defender- and-protector/sardonic commentator, appeals a great deal to readers. I know it appeals a great deal to me.''

Now that he's seen Saphira brought to cinematic life, Paolini admits that the digital version doesn't quite match that of the dragon he's had in his head. But he's perfectly fine with that.

``The thing to remember is that, whatever I think Saphira looks like is most likely different from what a reader is going to think Saphira looks like,'' he reasonably reckons. ``And that's going to differ from reader to reader. So I knew from the very start, going into this adaptation, that by its very nature you will be producing a version of a story interpreted through other people's imaginations.''

Paolini is now applying his imagination to writing the concluding book of the ``Inheritance'' trilogy -- back at the Montana homestead.

``With everything that's been going on, moving out of the house is sort of the last thing on my mind,'' he says. ``Perhaps once Book Three is done. But right now, between traveling and writing, I don't think I want to be messing things up any more than I have to.''

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