Rebecca's Surprise Party

The 17th was Rebecca's birthday, her 49th. Naturally, she was expecting me to plan and pull off something unexpected for her impending 50th next year. So, why not make it a *real* surprise by hitting her with a big party for here 49th, one year early?

This was mainly the brainchild of our long-time friend Deb Ray, who is also the president of Anderzone, our international fan club. She lives in the Livermore area and helped me scheme to put together an extensive surprise party to be held at El Morocco, a fine Moroccan restaurant. We started talking about the possibility in February, and started really planning full-tilt once we got the Livermore Library invitation. A great many people were in on the secret, and nobody blew the surprise (not even our friends who showed up for the previous night's library talk).

Under the pretext that Deb, Rebecca, and I were going to the restaurant for a nice dinner, we entered the place in the midst of belly dancers, loud music -- and a crowd of about 30 friends waiting for Rebecca. She was totally surprised, surrounded by relatives, friends, fellow writers, TV people, and science fiction artists. She had a great time.

Next day we took a trip up to Marin County to visit our friend Steve Sansweet from Lucasfilm, whom we've known for more than ten years. Steve has what is undoubtedly the largest collection of STAR WARS memorabilia in the world, and his airplane-hangar-sized building is a veritable museum. He hosted us for the afternoon and evening, showing off all his treasures.

Working with Steve to organize and catalog the collection were several dedicated fans who were pleased to meet Rebecca and me, having read our many STAR WARS books. I was excited to learn, though, that the STAR WARS fans were also both huge DUNE fans (one of them only 12 years old).

Brian and I have long known that many of my STAR WARS readers cross over to read HOUSE ATREIDES and THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD. For some readers, Frank Herbert's original classic seems intimidating, but now many of them decided to start with our prequels, and we are introducing a whole new audience to Frank Herbert's grand universe. After reading the HOUSE books or the JIHAD books, they then jump into the original novels. Since the initial publication of our prequels, sales of Frank Herbert's classic novels have surged, increasing by more than three-and-a-half times.

Finally, on Saturday we flew back home to some semblance of normalcy. I managed to edit several more SANDWORMS chapters in the airport and on the plane. This week I plan to hole up and just get a lot of work done.

--KJA

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