Trip to Livermore, CA

Rebecca and I lived for many years in Livermore in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we both worked as technical editors and writers for a large research center, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Eventually, we became secure enough in our fiction-writing careers to quit entirely and move away to Colorado. (For those who don't know, my wife is also a best-selling writer, with about thirty books published.)

We've been gone for more than eight years, but the area still holds many friends and fond memories. So, when the large new Livermore Public Library offered us a speaking engagement and a book-signing, we were happy to come for a visit. We spent several days in our old stomping grounds, seeing familiar places, meeting friends, and eating in favorite restaurants. (I insisted on at least three hours of writing and editing each morning; I get awfully grumpy if I don't manage to make some progress every day.)

The new Livermore library is one of the most spacious and well-designed libraries I've ever seen, with a welcoming interior, several large reading rooms, even a coffee shop and cafe. Better still, the outside is beautifully landscaped with murals and marble benches. The benches are designed to look like bookshelves, the seats propped up by classics of literature. We were delighted to see that Frank Herbert's DUNE is one of the main supports.

Our library talk was well attended, with about 45 people in the audience.

We handed out free posters from A FOREST OF STARS (the second novel in my "Seven Suns" series), as well as ROAD TO DUNE excerpt booklets. Our talk, "How to be an overnight success in twenty years or less," chronicles the long road to becoming a bestselling writer, and it proved very popular. Afterward, I answered many questions about DUNE and the two in-progress volumes of "Dune 7" and then we did a book signing in the library's lobby.

Afterward, I took Rebecca back to our room where she relaxed in a hot bath while I went to the local Pleasanton microbrewery to have a beer and also to complete the last details of my devious plans for a surprise birthday party for Rebecca. More in the next blog entry.

--KJA

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