DUNE BLOG

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Ad Astra in Toronto

This past weekend Rebecca and I were guests of honor at the Ad Astra Science Fiction Convention in Toronto, where we met a great many fans, gave numerous talks, and signed a lot of books.

We arrived Thursday afternoon, my birthday, and waited at the airport to meet the other guests, author Chris Golden (whom I've known for more than a decade) and comic writer/artist Howard Tayler. After checking into the hotel, we all went out for a nice steak dinner and talked shop. Later that evening we attended a party held by the convention staff -- the only opportunity for the behind-the-scenes people to meet the guests.

On Friday, we had most of the day to ourselves before the opening ceremonies that evening. We had plans to have lunch at the rotating restaurant in the CN tower, but both Chris and I had book deadlines, so we begged off and just did editing. I was nearly finished with my last main edit of PAUL OF DUNE and I was anxious to complete the work over the weekend.

We met one of our dedicated Canadian fans for dinner at a Mongolian grill, then attended the opening ceremonies, after which Rebecca and I gave a panel on the CRYSTAL DOORS books and Young Adult fiction in general. Following that, I did a heavily attended reading of PAUL OF DUNE -- the first time I had ever read a chapter of the new book for an audience, and it was very well received.

Saturday morning I got up early to spend a few hours editing PAUL, and I managed to finish the last work, and e-mailed the manuscript off to our editor for his final read, fifteen minutes before our first scheduled time on stage. Rebecca and I gave 7 panels/speeches that day, including a two-hour workshop on "Things I Wish Some Pro Had Told Me When I Was Just Starting Out" and my guest-of-honor speech. We gave another panel on Star Wars fiction, did an autographing, attended the guest-of-honor dinner, then gave another panel on writing media tie-in fiction. Sunday, I gave a full hour talk on the DUNE novels, signed more books, and then we were off to the airport to go home.

On the flight home, I was already starting work on the first big TERRA INCOGNITA novel. No time off!

-- KJA

PS - Publishers Weekly has just published their year-end summary for 2007, and SANDWORMS OF DUNE was the best-selling science fiction hardcover of the year.