DUNE 7 BLOG |
Tuesday, May 9, 2006 |
|
|
Los Angeles and PortlandThe beginning of May is the "sell in" for HUNTERS OF DUNE, the time when bookstores meet with Tor's sales reps to place their orders for the book (which will be released on August 22). The publisher sent Brian and me to Los Angeles in order to do a bit of up-front publicity. Brian departed on Wednesday for his 40+ hour Amtrak ride, while I flew in on Thursday evening. (Brian's train was supposed to arrive at 9 PM, and he actually got in after 2 AM - which is typical!) We stayed at the lovely Le Meridien hotel in Beverly Hills, which was rather more extravagant than our usual tastes! At 9 AM, I was on a conference call with a publicity firm setting up our TV satellite tour, scheduling August television interviews for the two of us. Because Brian had gotten in so late, he slept in and I did the call myself. For lunch, we met with a large group of bookstore representatives and talked with many store managers. Tor had printed up new excerpt booklets containing the Authors' Note and the first two chapters of HUNTERS, which we signed for all the stores. Leaving lunch, we had to drive across LA where we were filmed for "Book Look TV." This interview will also be webcast, and when it's available we will add the link here at Dunenovels.com. For dinner, we raced back to Beverly Hills (well, we crawled along in bumper-to-bumper traffic), just in time to meet with my long-time friend Steven L. Sears, the producer of the TV shows XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS and SHEENA. (Steve and I are now writing an original comic series and graphic novel, STALAG-X, for Dabel Brothers Comics.) Since it was Cinco de Mayo, all the Mexican restaurants were packed, and so we went out for sushi instead. For our next stop, we were off to Portland, Oregon, where we would meet with most of the other members of Frank Herbert's estate in order to talk over many items of Dune business. Brian got on the train again for his 40+ hour ride up the coast; I went to the airport. Upon my arrival in LA a few days earlier, I had accidentally left my jacket in one of the rental cars. I called the car rental's lost and found, but got only an answering machine. So, when I returned the car, I tried to find a real person at the lost and found. One kindly gentleman ushered me into the back to look through the lost items, but unfortunately my jacket wasn't there. Now, being without a jacket in sunny Los Angeles is no big deal, but it was going to be cold and rainy in Portland. Assuming I wouldn't see my jacket again, I left my contact information with the man and went to the airport, checked my luggage, went through security, got to the gate with about an hour before my plane's scheduled departure. Then my cell phone rang: Someone had just dropped off my jacket at the car rental counter. The kindly man volunteered to drive it over to meet me at the baggage claim area. I rushed out to meet him and he drove by, rolled down the window, and handed me my jacket -- above and beyond the call of duty! Since I got on a plane, while Brian took Amtrak, I arrived in Portland more than a day before he did. I was able to spend Saturday afternoon walking along the Willamette River and dictating two chapters in Seven Suns #6 and had dinner at one of Portland's fine microbreweries (Bridgeport, which has an excellent IPA). Sunday I also had most of the day off and drove out along the Columbia River Gorge to see half a dozen magnificent waterfalls and do some hiking. It was pouring rain most of the day (a typical Portland weekend!), but I didn't mind getting wet. Along the hike I wrote two more chapters in METAL SWARM, then got back to the hotel and edited quite a bit of SANDWORMS (up to seventh draft now). Brian was supposed to arrive at 3:40 in the afternoon and we had planned to have dinner with my uncle Mike (our dunenovels webmaster) and aunt Kathy. Brian's train was four hours late again (surprise!), but we managed to move our dinner plans, so we all got together at a great German restaurant (and microbrewery), Widmers. On Monday Brian and I, as well as Brian's wife Jan, met with his sister Penny and her husband Ron, their son Byron (who answers our Dune fan mail), and Brian's daughter Kim (who has begun helping him with a lot of the office work). We discussed current and future Dune projects and generally had a very productive business meeting. I'm writing this blog on the plane flight back to Denver -- and I just finished editing the last chapters in this draft of SANDWORMS. Next, Rebecca and Diane will read the draft and make their comments, which I'll incorporate before sending it back to Brian again. --KJA
|
|||
Home Page | Legends of Dune | Prelude
to Dune | Classic Dune Copyright 2007 The Herbert Limited Partnership |