A day off -- supposedly. At least Tor hasn't scheduled any manic work for us, but we've brought it on ourselves. We do get to sleep in for a few extra hours, and then Kevin does laundry in the sink while Rebecca goes to the exercise room to work out; Brian is also there. Kevin spends a few more hours editing HORIZON STORMS, and then it's off to lunch with Richard Rubinstein from New Amsterdam Entertainment, the producer of the DUNE and CHILDREN OF DUNE TV miniseries, and Steve Sheppard, the entertainment lawyer for the works of Frank Herbert. We have a nice lunch and conversation in a French café, Un, Deux, Trois. The two miniseries have been very successful, both in audience numbers and in fan reaction. We all hope there is more DUNE to come.

When Brian goes off to meet with the lawyer about a handful of Frank Herbert matters, Kevin, Jan, and Rebecca get some hours off. Kevin and Rebecca have dinner plans with Jaime Levine, Kevin's "Seven Suns" editor at Warner Books, to talk about the series and HORIZON STORMS. The laundry still isn't dry over the tub, hanging all around the shower bars and towel rack, but it has to be done soon; we have to pack and leave again by 6:45 the next morning for Connecticut.

Brian and Jan go to an excellent restaurant, Hell's Kitchen. As Brian and Jan return to the hotel, they see police taking down barricades that had been up earlier, for the filming of "Taxi NYC," a Twentieth Century Fox production.

Back at the hotel, a fire alarm goes off, and people evacuate to the lobby and street. Soon afterward, a very apologetic employee rushes around to assure everyone that the building is safe, that it was only a candle that fell over in the bar and set off the alarm. A few minutes later, however, the alarm goes off again. "Nothing to worry about," the nervous man assures everyone. "The alarm is just too sensitive." Everything turns out to be fine.

As a behind-the-scenes comment, Kevin's uncle Mike Anderson is running the web page, making sure the log gets posted "as daily as possible," depending on when Kevin and Brian can get it written and uploaded. Uncle Mike is a long-standing science fiction fan who now lives in Portland, Oregon. When Kevin was growing up in Wisconsin, he used to go across the street to his grandfather's house, where Mike's room was empty because he was away at college. Mike always had a fascinating science fiction paperback collection with great garish covers. Kevin remembers in particular something called BEYOND THE BLACK ENIGMA by Bart Somers (not sure if the author is correct), which he tried to read when he was eight years old. Many years later, he found a copy of the old book and bought it (sadly, the story wasn't exactly worth the wait). Now, Mike is managing and updating both the wordfire.com and dunenovels.com pages (and they would be updated more often, if Kevin could find the time to send him more new material!)

B & K

Monday, September 22, 2003

A day of grouches.

Early in the morning, we checked out of our hotel in New London and crammed ourselves and our luggage into one taxi -- which has not always been possible. At the train station, we got into the wrong waiting area (there were no signs), and had to scramble down a ramp at the last minute to board, with our huge, heavy bags full of promotional material. An assistant conductor hurt his arm lifting one of Kevin’s bags, which we have named “the purple stone.” This very large man started swearing and complaining that the bag weighed “a hundred pounds,” when it really only weighed ninety or ninety-five pounds.

The train car was what the Amtrak people called “a leaker,” which earned its name when we traveled through a constant downpour. The grouchy assistant conductor got into an argument with an old man and with a younger business traveler, and for several minutes it kept escalating. Fortunately, the participants separated, but kept muttering.

In New York city, the traffic was horrible, since President Bush was appearing at the United Nations, and there were also some big conventions in town. This made our limousine drivers (two separate trips) very surly and aggressive. As Brian sat in the front seat looking through the windshield, it looked like a video game with pedestrians dodging and fleeing our drivers. We complained to the drivers, and this only made them worse. Fortunately, a jaywalking blonde with the cup of coffee made it to the curb, so did the people in the crosswalk. It takes us two hours to go from the train station to the hotel, which is only a mile or so away.

We had lunch at the Tor offices where we signed books for the employees and chatted with all the people who have been helping to promote and publish the new DUNE novels. For four years in a row on our DUNE tours, we have had very successful signings at a specialty store in San Diego, Mysterious Galaxy. Since we were on the east coast this year, “MG” arranged to have all their 144 copies waiting on the table, which Brian and Kevin autographed for shipping directly to San Diego. Then, in a different building, Brian and Kevin met briefly with their agents to talk about future DUNE projects and their other books, by which time it was too late to go to the hotel (which we’ve never seen), so we went directly to the book signing.

It was a day filled with business meetings, culminated with a great dinner at an Indian restaurant (Tamarind), hosted by our publisher, Tom Doherty. Unfortunately, we’re now running on about four days in a row with four hours of sleep per night. We don’t get to our rooms until 11:30 PM, and we have to wake up at 6 AM to go to Rhode Island the next day. . . .

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

No train this morning, no obligations for interviews, nothing on the schedule until 3:00 in the afternoon -- which means that we can finally get a few extra hours of rest!

At the hotel, we sign two extra copies of THE MACHINE CRUSADE for the hotel library, at their request. Like a number of hotels around the country, they like to keep signed copies of books by visiting authors. We also go to two bookstores within walking distance and sign copies of the books that are on hand. At one of them, our paperback of THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD is in the Number 14 slot on their bestseller list.

Our media escort is a terrific fellow named Jim who is filling in for his very busy wife. Jim wears the elegant bow tie of Boston gentry and drives a Mercedes, but he is completely unpretentious. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of American history and has produced a number of important documentaries. As he takes us around Boston showing off many landmarks and then drives us north to our signing in Milford, New Hampshire, he points out where Henry David Thoreau walked, where great revolutionary battles were fought, and he quotes Robert Frost and Shakespeare at the drop of a hat. He is interested in doing a documentary on the life of Frank Herbert, so Brian gives him a copy of DREAMER OF DUNE.

The signing goes extremely well, with standing room only. For the first time in days, the well-rested authors are operating on all cylinders, bouncing ideas and stories back and forth. From the front row, a young man named Nico (age 12) asks a series of incisive questions that cause the authors to reach deep for answers.

Our dinner is at a country inn called Mile Away, in a very old, charming building. (An adjacent building dates back to 1746.) We are joined by Colleen and Mitch Mitchell, friends of Brian and Jan who now live in Kennebunkport, Maine. The dinner is excellent, and the atmosphere is enhanced by news (received that afternoon) telling us that THE MACHINE CRUSADE is debuting at #7 on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list and #9 on Barnes & Noble. Additionally, we are #35 on the USA Today list, which includes paperbacks, non-fiction, children's books, and other works that are not direct comparisons; our publicist at Tor tells us that we are really the #6 fiction hardcover on that list.

As the familiar song goes, "some days are diamonds and some days are stones." This is definitely a diamond day. And we get to have another full night of sleep!

Friday, September 26, 2003

So the train sits five miles outside of the Cleveland station for two hours, biding its time. We have crawled out of our bunks at 3:00 AM, and now we wait, half dozing, until the train finally gets into the station at 5:30 (instead of the 3:30 scheduled arrival time). It's pouring rain when we get off the train, hauling our luggage and splashing through puddles. The sign over the open station, barely visible in the downpour, is WELCOME TO CLEVELAND. We get to our hotel, check in, and crash, sleeping for most of the morning. It's like sleeping in a split shift, half the night on the train, the other half in the hotel.

Later, awake and refreshed again, we go outside to explore for the few hours we have off. Now it's sunny, and Cleveland is a very pleasant surprise. This is a beautiful city on Lake Erie, with great architecture, fountains, statues. Brian and Jan marvel at the impressive churches everywhere and how well the city is laid out. Kevin goes for a walk to explore (searching in vain for a Starbucks, or even an open coffee shop), and then goes back to the room for a few hours of reading and responding to e-mail, and editing HORIZON STORMS.

Since Brian and Jan have heard that Cleveland is the rock 'n roll capital of the universe, they go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, down by the lake. They spend an enjoyable time admiring the guitars, record jackets, and clothing of the stars, and even posing for pictures in front of giant guitars outside. They also contact close friends by telephone, Glen and Marilyn Peters, who were in the Caribbean when the "Brian and Kevin Show" rolled through New York state, and were unable to attend. The Peters are a delightful couple that the Herberts met while going around the world a couple of years ago aboard the Queen Elizabeth II.

Kevin receives e-mail comments from his Marvel editor about the first STAR-JAMMERS script, which he delivered the day before setting out on tour. He works to rearrange some of the panels and captions, and is quite pleased to see the sample drawings and designs submitted by the artist. The hotel room, however, does not have high-speed internet access, so downloading the pictures takes a while over the phone line. One drawing in particular -- of a space luxury yacht that will be attacked by space pirates -- perfectly matches Kevin's vision. This is going to be a fun series; the first issue will be in stores in February.

That night we do a book signing at a Borders in Cleveland Heights. The crowd is enthusiastic and so is the bookstore staff. Several of the DUNE fans have some great jokes: One wanted to be a Guild navigator, but was afraid he wouldn't qualify for anything better than a Guild flight attendant; another said he would try to fold space but ended up doing nothing more than wrinkling it!

At the signing, Brian personalizes books for the local fans that "Dune rocks in Cleveland." His wife Jan is our official photographer and also helps to process the piles of books and other articles that cross the table in front of the authors. Brian quips that he and Kevin are the "Dunamic Duo," which elicits a good natured groan from the audience. (Groaning at puns is an American cultural phenomenon; in other countries, such as in the United Kingdom, people simply laugh).

One father brings his teenage son Jason to the signing; Jason wants to be a writer and asks for our advice. Both Brian and Kevin give the young man suggestions, including Frank Herbert's technique of beginning work on a new project immediately after sending a story out in search of a publisher -- that way the writer is not worrying so much about selling the old project, since the new project fills his mind with hope. DREAMER OF DUNE also includes a lot of advice to writers from Frank Herbert. Jason, beaming, receives his signed copy of DREAMER, as well as THE MACHINE CRUSADE , along with posters and other memorabilia. We wish him well in his writing career.

Afterward, Kevin finally gets a chance to pick up two new CDs he's been waiting for -- new releases by Meat Loaf and A Perfect Circle (it's doubtful that anyone else in the world bought THOSE two on the same day . . . but there's nothing wrong with eclectic tastes!).

Our friends Geoff Landis and Mary Turzillo, fellow writers, come to the signing and we go out to dinner afterward. Geoff has just won the short story Hugo Award this year (and has also previously received other major awards), and Kevin has known Mary for almost twenty years. We all go to the Great Lakes Brewery restaurant and, being such a huge fan of microbrews, Kevin is in hog heaven.

The tour is over half over, and we feel like we're getting our second wind. Next stop, Columbus, OH.