DUNE 7 BLOG

Friday, August 11, 2006

Acknowledgments

It's the page by the Dedication, a paragraph full of names that many people don't bother to read. While we're waiting for the release of HUNTERS, I wanted to give some extra time to all these helpful fans and dedicated readers who have really helped us out in the massive undertaking of "Dune 7." Some of these names might sound familiar, because they've been intimately involved in our previous Dune novels as well.

In addition to the various members of the extended Herbert family, who have all been extremely supportive and enthusiastic -- especially Brian's sister Penny and her husband Ron -- we would like to thank:

Pat LoBrutto is our editor at Tor Books, who also worked closely with us on the Prelude to Dune trilogy at Bantam. He has edited all of our Dune novels except for HOUSE CORRINO. Carolyn Caughey, our British editor at Hodder & Stoughton, has been with us on every one of the nine books we've done so far. (To read more about our relationship with these editors, see my January 28 blog, "Editorial Comments.")

Tom Doherty, to whom the book is also dedicated, is the publisher of Tor Books. (To read more about Tom, see the June 13 blog, "Dedication.")

Paul Stevens, also at Tor, has been our day-to-day point of contact, manager, assistant, keep-the-trains-running-on-time guy. He's the one we go to when we need extra copies of the book, last-minute errors corrected, of just about anything from the Tor offices.

Catherine Sidor has been my executive administrator at WordFire, Inc., for about ten years now, typing all of my mountains of microcassette tapes, answering fan mail as well as the phones, helping to set up travel, preparing the fan club newsletter, managing our mailing list (over 4000 names), and adding her comments to each manuscript, as well as proofreading the typeset galleys of each book.

Kim Herbert is Brian's assistant, helping him manage his own office and all the overwhelming details not only of his writing career but also all the work involved with the Frank Herbert estate.

Diane Jones, Rebecca's assistant, helps with all the business matters around WordFire, Inc., but she also is one of our test readers. I routinely give her one thick manuscript right after she's finished the previous one. She read HUNTERS, has already read SANDWORMS, and she's currently reading Seven Suns #6, METAL SWARM.

Louis Moesta, a retired English teacher, also serves as a test reader and proofreader. He's the only one on our staff who has read all fifteen DUNE books. He keeps our grammar correct, and finds subtle inconsistencies in time for us to fix them.

Byron Merritt (Brian's nephew) and Mike Anderson (my uncle) put in a great deal of work on the dunenovels.com website. Byron answers all of the extensive fan mail we receive online, and he also manages the Official Dune discussion board. Mike is our webmaster, responsible for keeping up with the flurry of blog entries and also for designing the pages, adding news items; he also runs the wordfire.com website.

Alex Paskie offered in-depth advice on Jewish philosophy and traditions. Here's how he describes himself: "I am 29 years old. I'm not a rabbi but I did study at rabbinical college for a time. I am orthodox, but wasn't always. Before hitting my 20th birthday I was starved for something spiritual in my life. And Dune (and other sci-fi) was that for me. It was funny because I didn't look to Judaism to fill the spiritual void -- but reading Dune forced me back because I kept encountering things I remembered learning from my Jewish education. I was a Dune fanatic, and the truth of the matter is that when I realized how much I didn't understand of Judaism, I decided to start my search there. I was so interested particularly in the mystical, of which Dune had, like reading about the Kwisatz Haderach - the Hebrew version being "Kvisat Haderech" and learning exactly where it came from. I studied for several years after that in Rabbinical college. These days I run the company I started, and still further my studies in Judaism. I never lost my taste in good books so I still keep on reading all types from all genres."

Dr. Attila Torkos worked very hard on fact-checking and consistency. He has also been our friend and adviser for many years and on many books; he lives in Hungary and is also the translator of our books for our Hungarian publisher. He has compiled and extremely helpful and detailed Timeline of the Dune universe. An abridged version is included in HUNTERS, and I intend to post the full detailed Timeline here on the website.

At the Trident Media Group, our agents are John Silbersack and Robert Gottlieb. More than twelve years ago, Dean Koontz recommended Robert to me and strongly encouraged him to take me on as a client. My career has done very well since then, and Brian quickly changed to the same agency. John Silbersack was, actually, my very first editor -- he bought my novel RESURRECTION, INC. for Signet Books, then moved to other publishing houses, where he later approached me to work with the X-FILES people. John later joined Trident, and has been my direct agent ever since. Claire Roberts, also at Trident, handles all of our international deals and foreign rights sales.

Richard Rubinstein, Mike Messina, and Emily Austin-Bruns at New Amsterdam Entertainment, are the people responsible for the two successful miniseries, "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune." We have worked closely with them, and they are all very dedicated Dune fans. John Harrison, the screenwriter and director of "Dune" and screenwriter for "Children of Dune," has also shown his enthusiasm and support for our new novels.

And as always, these books would not exist without the unending help and support from our wives, Janet Herbert and Rebecca Moesta Anderson. We could each write an entirely separate blog about all the things we couldn't do without them. They often support us on our book-signing tours. Rebecca is one of the toughest, most meticulous, and smartest editors I've ever worked with. She makes me labor over every page until it's right...an incredible amount of work, but it's worth it.

And, of course, none of this would have happened without the original genius of Frank Herbert -- which should go without saying.

-- KJA