Penguin Group and Other Options

Now that the Frank Herbert Estate is out of the question I'm working on making contact with the folks at Penguin Group which is the company that owns Putnam Publishing.  I have a couple of opportunities to do this:  An acquaintance of mine that works for Pearson Plc (they own Penguin) is going to put me in touch with the person that managed IP rights for Dune.

The other possibility came from another app/book publisher that read this blog and offered to whip together a demo using their framework and the assets I've accumulated for Dune.  He apparently knows the folks that handle digital content at Penguin.  I have to take a look at his framework to see if it even comes close the kind of design In envisioned for Dune. At any rate I'm keeping my options open to either vector  of access.

I'm not as confident that I can land a deal with Penguin as I was with the Frank Herbert Estate. I'm starting to make alternative plans. Looking for a project that might be a good substitute. Two possibilities in my mind are The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling - its one of the first Steam-punk novels and a favorite of mine.   The other is The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson - a masterpiece of cyberpunk.  I actually know someone who works with Neal Stephenson and while its a tenuous connection it might lead me to the author who might want to work on this project.

In the mean time I'm going to start coding up my framework.  No sense in waiting for a deal to happen before I have the framework ready for its first book.  If I don't have a good title lined up by the time the framework is ready I'll do a public domain work instead.  Given my day job and limited time to do coding - not to mention the fact that I'm not the fastest coder in the world - I figure it will take me, by myself, until Christmas to finish the framework so it looks like it will be next year before I publish my first app novel under the Noble Beast imprint.