--Michele Rosen

I learned a great deal about plotting from Frank Herbert's books. To me he was everything science fiction could be. My own work has been inspired by Frank Herbert. I had always wanted to write books like Dune because that's as much as I thought you could aspire to.

Looking at Frank Herbert's original notes from Dune, it's like a religious experience. You're looking at relics of things that were so important. We've got one page where he's writing down names and crossing them out until he came out with the name of Harkonnen. It's amazing in a historical sense but it's also amazing to see how many ideas he wrote down that he never got around to using.

This is something that I'm putting so much effort in - and Brian is too - because, let's face it, to have the audacity to write a book with 'Dune' on the cover, you have to deliver something good.

I only work in a universe that I already really love and enjoy. Dune is an order of magnitude more difficult to work in because I hold the books in so much awe.

Once I've got the universe firmly embedded in my mind, there's no real difference between writing in that and the world I live in, or a historical "real" place.

With an established world like the Dune books, I have so much to draw on already, I don't have to make it up. The flip side is that I have to be absolutely true to all the established information that's there. Especially with Star Wars or Dune, there are so many details and the fans are so voracious that you dare not slip up.

We discussed it and we realize that we're picking up the ball after it's been sitting there for 15 years. The Butlerian Jihad, while it would be fascinating to Dune fans, doesn't have any Dune in it--you wouldn't have all the ingredients that fans came to love.

What we decided was if we did an immediate prequel, all of these things would be very familiar to Dune fans and would go right to the core of everything fans loved about the original novel.

From the very first we said we weren't going to try to imitate Herbert's writing style. But we felt it was crucial that we were able to pick up the "look and feel" of the Dune books, and that's what we tried to match--with the complexity and the political intrigues and the detailed environment it was set in.

A lot of the ideas were original, but some were taken from the existing material. We knew some of the major points to go to but we didn't know the exact route to take.

It was like a treasure trove for us to find all those notes. We're drawing on scenes and notes and quotes that have never been published. Especially now that we have the outline for the last Dune novel he intended to write, he ties the last story together with the first one and ties up a lot of little loose threads.

We do have plans but they're not crystallized. We have plans and notes for probably 10 more books. What exact order we write those in or whether we even write them at all--that will be decided on a book by book basis. The Butlerian Jihad will probably be the next.

By doing this original prequel trilogy, we're hoping to reawaken interest in all of Frank Herbert's Dune novels. There are so many things we need to set up in the Butlerian Jihad timeframe--things that tie directly into Dune 7.

In true Frank Herbert fashion, we are looking at a genuine long term plan. Because all of this is about a giant saga, it's good for us to be thinking about all of this, so maybe we'll be planting seeds.

The readers will have to decide. We're aware that some of them have to be skeptical as to how we can put on such giant shoes, but between Brian and I we're sticking two feet into each one. I'm thrilled for the opportunity to write a book in my favorite science fiction universe. I hope to be able to play in the sandbox for a while longer.