Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert Page A

roof. On hot days, my parents and the Vances could be found there, cooling themselves in the shade. Sunsets on the lake were spectacular.
    Small fishing skiffs, some with butterfly nets extended, crossed the water from early morning to late evening. Just outside town, alongside the shore, rose a massive dirt mound that locals said concealed a mysterious ancient structure. They theorized this because during heavy rains little clay figurines and pieces of pottery washed down the hillside. Recently, archaeologists had been made aware of the mound, and an excavation was planned.
    Chapala was an idyllic spot in which to relax, almost too pleasant for the disciplines required of writing, too sleepy. Jack and my father would immerse themselves in their writing nonetheless.
    Our two-story adobe and white stucco house, which had been converted to a duplex, stood on a hillside a block above the shores of the lake. Whenever the men were writing, usually from mid-morning to late afternoon, they enforced strict silence throughout the premises. The house had a long outside corridor where I played with my toys. Especially a little army tank.
    I was in the habit of simulating war noises, and as I immersed myself in fantasy and made too much commotion Jack or Dad would bellow from one of the rooms, “ Silencio! ” (“Silence!”) Or “ Callate, niño! ” (“Shut up, boy!”) Dad was at his typewriter in one room clacking away, while Jack labored in another room, writing longhand passages that would subsequently be transcribed into typewritten form by Norma.
    In Mexico, Jack and Dad plotted several stories together, but for a variety of reasons never completed them. Jack did go on to write and sell a solo novel based upon an idea the men developed together. The men, while fast friends, were perhaps too individualistic to write in concert. They were, each of them, assertive and dominant. Alpha males. And at the time they had divergent writing styles. Jack’s imagery and skill with words were ahead of Frank Herbert’s choppier abilities, although Dad was fast developing in those realms and was also learning characterization and plotting. Of key importance, he was beginning to understand the importance of “getting inside a character’s head,” as he liked to say later. Once a writer got sufficiently inside a character’s head, my father discovered, the character behaved in a manner that was consistent with his personality. Motivations were no longer muddled, and his actions made sense to the reader. Plots fell into place.
    In Chapala, Frank Herbert was hard at work on Under Pressure , his submarine thriller. The unfolding novel described, with great psychological insight, a submarine crew in wartime, a plot constructed with building blocks that the author had learned about human motivation. Of equal interest, the story described a world of the future where oil supplies were limited. This was not easy to envision at the time, since petroleum products were plentiful and inexpensive. For the concept, Dad recalled that oil had been of strategic importance in World War II, and he extrapolated this to another war, under much more severe conditions.
    But the novel was progressing slowly, and to pay immediate bills, Dad worked primarily on short stories. They could be finished and mailed in a much shorter period of time, and if they sold, checks would appear.
    The kitchen of our house was permeated with diffused tropical light, making it a cheerful room. A wooden table sat by one window, and a large basket of fruit was always on the table. I made daily trips to the outdoor market stalls with Mom or our maid, Paulina. A fine cook, the maid regularly made a seafood stew that my parents and the Vances liked.
    There were flies everywhere, and, with the exception of Mom, we grew somewhat accustomed to them, even if they crawled across our plates as we were eating. We always examined our food carefully