"I do all of my writing by dictation when I go out hiking here in Colorado," says Anderson from his home in Monument. "I have a little digital recorder, and I've done the entire Colorado Trail. I've done all the fourteeners. I have gotten myself so trained to write by walking around. I kind of get into this creative zone when I'm out on the trail and dictating."
To date, Anderson has written fifteen official Dune novels in collaboration with Brian Herbert, the son of Dune author Frank Herbert, becoming a New York Times best-selling author along the way. Their 2012 book Sisterhood of Dune is the basis of Max's current hit series Dune: Prophecy, which stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams and takes place 10,000 years before the events of Denis Villeneuve's big-screen Dune duology. As one of the world's foremost experts on Dune, by any metric, Anderson was hired by Villeneuve to be a consultant on his films; Anderson is now a co-producer of Dune: Prophecy, whose first season is coming to a close on December 22.
Sisterhood of Dune was co-authored by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, son of Dune creator Frank Herbert.
Courtesy of Macmillan Publishers
Anderson and Moesta also founded the independent publishing house WordFire Press, and he organizes the annual Superstar Writing Seminars in Colorado Springs as well as teaches a master's program at Colorado Western University in Gunnison. His numerous Kickstarter campaigns to support his pet publishing projects have been hugely popular; his Patreon page delivers all kinds of exclusives to a few thousand of his closest fans.
But his crowning achievement — "so far," he's quick to clarify — is working on Dune.
"Dune has always been my favorite science fiction book of all time," Anderson says of the 1965 classic. "I think I've read it 25 or 26 times. I grew up as a fanboy. I mean, I'm still a fanboy at heart. I don't sit around with my friends and talk about the Broncos. We sit around and talk about Dune or Star Wars. We will argue about Star Trek for hours. It's really a part of who I am. Earlier this year, there was a huge billboard for Dune: Prophecy on Hollywood Boulevard, and it had my name on top of it. I didn't even know that it was a bucket-list item of mine to have a billboard on Hollywood Boulevard until I saw it."
Anderson is not a native Coloradan, but after moving to the Centennial State from San Francisco in 1997, he's put down strong roots — as evidenced by his Colorado Book Award, his induction into the Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame and his frequent appearances at Colorado sci-fi conventions like MileHiCon and COSine. Not to mention his Rockies-centric view of success.
"Anybody who has ever climbed a mountain knows the idea of a false summit," he says. "As you're hiking up, you see the top of the mountain, and you say, 'If I can just get to that peak, I'm going to have it made.' Then you get to the summit and you realize, 'Oh, crap, this is just a bump. The bigger summit is farther away.' That is what a writing career is like. You don't ever want to say, 'Okay, I've reached the top, and there's nothing more to climb.' I'm not the guy who gets to the summit of a fourteener and spends hours relaxing. I always want to push myself more. There are still other peaks.
"But I do have to say," he adds, "that the view from where I am right now is pretty good."
The Season 1 finale of Dune: Prophecy airs on Max at 7 p.m. MST on Sunday, December 22. For more info about Kevin J. Anderson, visit wordfire.com.
