DUNE 7 BLOG

Monday, March 13, 2006

Just a short one this time...

For a brief two-day meeting, I met Brian in (very rainy) San Francisco to discuss various items of DUNE business. Brian had taken a train down from Seattle, and I flew into the finally-finished San Francisco International Airport, where I was amazed at the efficiency of the new systems. I particularly liked the mass-transit line of BART, which went directly from the airport to downtown San Francsico. It sure beat renting a car and driving, or even taking a taxi. (And sitting on the BART train I had room and time to open my laptop to work on editing the last few chapters of CRYSTAL DOORS: OCEAN REALMS.)

Frank Herbert's grandson Byron Merritt also drove up from Monterey to meet us. Byron has been acting as our "Dune liaison" answering most of the fan mail that comes through the dunenovels website; he has also come to many of our book signings in the Bay Area.

We had great conversation over some good microbrew beer in a British pub VERY conveniently located right next door to our hotel, then we went to dinner at one of Brian's favorite seafood restaurants on the pier.

Then that evening Brian and I brainstormed our second "Dune 7" short story, which will be published before HUNTERS. We'd been letting the story idea simmer for quite a while as we worked on both big novels, and now we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and decided to do something short and creative again. This story will be published in an online magazine, Jim Baen's Universe, around August. Technically, it's tied to SANDWORMS -- about a group of scavengers who return to the blasted world of Rakis in search of treasure -- but we wanted it to come out this fall as well. Now we've got the outline done and a tentative title, "Treasure in the Sand."

Most important of all, Brian reached into his pocket and handed me a jump drive containing his fully edited Draft 5 of SANDWORMS. I plan to ship off the final version of HUNTERS by the end of this week, and then I can get started on the next book.

--KJA