DUNE 7 BLOG

Thursday, August 24, 2006

More Signings

Two more signings on the tour -- at lunchtime, we drove to Burbank and did a signing at the fine specialty bookstore, Dark Delicacies. Del and Sue have been good friends and supporters for many years, and signings really help small independent bookstores like Dark Delicacies.

Brian was feeling a little worn out, especially after the hour-long drive through nasty traffic from Anaheim to Burbank. He ate a protein bar and napped in the car in the shade, while I went over for a quick lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. When we went into Dark Delicacies, we were pleased to see a great crowd waiting for us, even though it was 1:00 in the afternoon on a Thursday. An extra special surprise, John Harrison -- the director and scriptwriter of FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE miniseries and scriptwriter for CHILDREN OF DUNE -- came to the signing and spent a lot of time talking with us.

Afterward, we figured we did not have enough time to drive back to Anaheim and the hotel, then drive back up to Westwood for our 7:00 signing at Borders. So, we went to the Borders early, where the manager was gracious enough to set up a quiet back room for us, so Brian could work on SANDWORMS and I could work on METAL SWARM -- this was one of our first chances for a couple of hours of work in the past week!

Brian and I have now done seven book-signing tours for our DUNE novels. We love to meet the fans, and the crowds certainly enjoy seeing us, getting their books signed and their questions answered. This time, a great percentage of our fans say they've been reading the website. Brian and I also enjoy the chance just to hang out and talk about our books, day after day.

On the other hand, though, it's certainly exhausting, and nearly impossible to get much writing done when we're traveling from city to city, moving from one hotel room to another, meeting friends, fellow authors, and bookstore managers. For the past eight years, we have written and delivered a new DUNE book every single year, without delay (in addition to our other books). When we go on tour, however, that eats up a whole month of time when we could be writing. (On one of my other novels, the publisher put me on a killer of a tour, 27 cities in 28 days. On that tour, I set the Guinness World Record for largest booksigning in history...but the tour sure wiped me out!)

We try to balance our need to write and edit our novels (so you all can get your annual DUNE fix), with the need to be seen in public, autograph books for the fans, and help sell the novels.

At our current signings, we've been running into a lot of people who have tracked down some of the signed and numbered copies, which we randomly distributed. Bookstores are saying that fans are coming in to search through the stacks. So, they're out on the shelves, if you can find them. Just as a reminder, here's what the different colors mean:

26 copies are lettered from A to Z, signed in red ink with a personalized message.

74 copies are signed in purple ink, with a personalized message.

2900 copies are signed in green ink.

7000 copies are signed in blue ink.

We hope to see you at the World SF Convention in Anaheim (Friday), Half Moon Bay (Saturday) or Sacramento (Sunday). Then I'm off to DragonCon in Atlanta.

Keep reading!

-- KJA