DUNE 7 BLOG

Monday, February 20, 2006

New Author Photos

It's about time, I suppose. Brian and I have been using the same old author photo on every DUNE book since HOUSE ATREIDES, and fans have begun to mention at signings that the picture no longer looks like us.

The photo that has graced the dust jackets of seven DUNE novels was taken by Brian's wife Jan. In 1997, Brian and Jan had come to visit me and my wife Rebecca in our home in Colorado, taking Amtrak. After a few days here, we all drove down to Taos, New Mexico, where we attended the annual Nebula Awards banquet and conference. En route, we thought it appropriate to spend the afternoon in Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park -- the largest group of sand dunes in the US. Obviously relevant to DUNE.

While we hiked up on the great mounds of sand, Jan took several photographs of Brian and me. The wind was blowing sand in our faces and the sun was in our eyes; nevertheless, it seemed the "right" author photo for DUNE novels.

But that was nine years ago, so we finally decided to choose a newer picture. After digging through our files, we submitted two possibilities to our publishers.

The first one, with the two of us working on our laptops, was taken aboard the Seattle ferry on the very first day of our BATTLE OF CORRIN tour in 2004. (It's not staged -- that's how we were really working.) The second photo is from the end of the CORRIN tour, after our signing in Amarillo, TX, when we had an afternoon to visit the spectacular Palo Duro Canyon.

We still don't know which one the publishers will choose.

--KJA