DUNE 7 BLOG

Saturday, February 4, 2006

Moving Right Along...

Since the flag is now down on the mailbox at the end of my driveway, I assume the postal carrier has picked up the outgoing package for Brian -- the computer files for the now-completed fifth edit of SANDWORMS OF DUNE.

Oddly, SANDWORMS seems to be in even better shape than HUNTERS, and I did very little major rewriting on this draft. Primarily, I was tweaking connections, strengthening plot threads and characters, and tightening the prose. I managed to cut about 50 pages from this draft, just by scrapping redundancies and making the descriptions and dialog crisper.

Brian shipped me the sixth draft of HUNTERS last Thursday and I should receive it Monday. Monday I also have a meeting with my own test readers who have gone over the previous draft of HUNTERS to make their general comments and suggest any areas for improvement. If all goes according to schedule, I will then do a thorough seventh edit before giving the almost-final manuscript to my wife Rebecca (who worked as a professional copy-editor before she became a bestselling author). She goes over every line with a fine-toothed comb (actually, a purple pen) to iron out any wrinkles in our prose, as she has done on every DUNE novel since HOUSE ATREIDES and all of my other novels. After I incorporate all her changes, I'll give it one last read-through, and then it goes off to the publisher for production.

Our "drop-dead date" is April 1, and we should easily have the book delivered by then for the on-time release of HUNTERS in October.

In the meantime, I just received the 550-page typeset galleys of the US edition of The Saga of Seven Suns #5, OF FIRE AND NIGHT, which I have to proofread in between editing chapters of HUNTERS. Last month, we received the typeset galleys of the *British* edition of the book, which were thoroughly proofed by Rebecca's father Louis and my assistant Catherine. Now this time, it's my turn. Because the two publishers typeset the books independently, both versions have to be carefully proofread. For me, that's an opportunity to refresh my memory on the epic story and get up to speed for writing #6 -- which I'll have to start immediately upon delivering HUNTERS and SANDWORMS.

--KJA