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Welcome Karnak back to the Marvel Universe in style.

I first learned about Dan Berry due to my insatiable hunger for comics podcasts. Make It Then Tell Everybody consists of intelligent and insightful conversations with comic creators you may or may not be familiar with, each a great lesson in art, storytelling and the process of making sequential art. From Make It Then Tell Everybody, I branched out to Berry’s comics. I was impressed by the stories that felt iconic and the watercolors that showed the benefits of creating art by hand in the digital age.

Read my conversation with Dan Berry about the man’s art, podcast, Patreon and much more.

What prompted Make It Then Tell Everybody?

In 2012 a British artist asked me to host some panel discussions at a festival. I said yes and we did two panels discussions and they went really well. Someone said, “Oh, you should podcast these!” I took his advice and in the weeks following decided to carry on.

Has it had a noticeable effect on your career?

Oh, yeah. Way more people know who I am [laughs].

What do you think of the Patreon model. Do you find it viable?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s been essential to what I’m doing. I talked about doing a Kickstarter on the podcast, which I guess is a really good model for a book, but for these enduring projects I need that slightly slower burning funding model.

I love the way you have different tiers offering the same thing. I found that really clever.

[Laughs] Well I’m basically giving it away for free. No one really gets anything. It’s really about this idea of altruism. It’s people’s own good will that I’m spending here.

What are your general thoughts on digital art, both in terms of your own work and the work of others?

What do you mean by digital art?

Anything done on a computer. Something done on a Cintiq, for example.

Oh, I find it great. It’s absolutely great. I don’t have any problems with digital art. My background is nearly entirely digital I only came to working with ink on paper much later on. I like working traditionally because I feel I can do it faster.

I think this is a psychological thing for me rather than anything to do with the technology but I find when I’m working digitally and have the infinite safety net of the undo button I’m going to keep using it over and over again. I think my style has developed not from avoiding my mistakes but embracing them and making them part of the style. I have a very loose what I hope is a spontaneous and expressive style and I can’t get that same level of spontaneity [digitally] because I know there’s a safety net there. Whereas with traditional media forces you but also embrace them.

I don’t think there’s any artist I can think of who would lose more from working digitally than you. Your work is so natural. Do you think you could achieve anywhere near the same effect on a computer? Especially the watercolors?

Oh not the watercolors. I’ve tried a bunch of different watercolor brushes for Photoshop and it’s not the same. At all. I haven’t found anything that vaguely approximates what you do with watercolor. There’s an element of chaos that you can’t really control and I really like that. You don’t get that chaos from a computer.

You don’t sell your comics digitally, do you?

I do a couple of PDF downloads and I think there’s stuff on ComiXology.

Oh, you do. I didn’t see any when I looked.

It was with a British publisher named Great Beast. My book Carry Me was with them and they had it on ComiXology and they recently folded shop so I think it might have gone down now.

Are you planning on putting it back up?

Yeah. I’m trying to figure out what to do with that at the moment because it’s reaching the end of its print run. It sold really well and the digital stuff seemed to pick up pretty well. I had a lot of excellent response from the ComiXology stuff. I might reissue it under my own name I might collect a bunch of things as an anthology I haven’t really decided yet.

How long is it?

24 pages, I think?

You said you’re going to work on a longer project in the near future?

Yes, I am.

Is that an adjustment, after working on so many shorter ones?

Not really. It all feels pretty much the same at this point. My schedule doesn’t change depending on how long the project is because I don’t really take breaks between projects. So I’m just basically always working so I don’t see any difference.

You don’t get impatient?

No. I used to. I used to want it to be finished and it to be done but I think as I get older patience is one of the things I’ve managed to develop. I think patience and being able to sit down for 4 hours at a time and do one thing.

I have one final question, the one everybody hates to be asked on Make it Then Tell Everybody: where do you get your ideas from?

All over the place [laughs]. Basically I like to fill my head up with as much stuff as possible. I like to listen to nonfiction and fiction books, audiobooks in the car, I’ll read articles, I’ll talk to people I’ll try to experience as much stuff in my head because I know that the more stuff I have in my head the more ideas I’m likely to have and once I’ve had an idea I have to capture it. If I don’t capture it dribbles out my nose while I sleep and its gone forever. So it’s not so much having ideas or where they come from I think it’s taking the beginning of an idea and turning it into something that’s the difficult part. Having ideas is relatively straightforward relatively easy I don’t have any problems with that it’s finding the time to do something with it or actually doing something with it.

Follow Dan on Twitter and Tumblr and read his comics, listen to his podcast and consume anything else he puts up for consumption.

Ben Foster has signed on to star in the Inferno film adaptation. Foster’s character, a villainous scientist named Bertrand Zobrist, has an obsession with Dante Alighieri’s famous poem.

This project, based on Dan Brown’s 2013 novel, marks the return of Tom Hanks as the symbologist Robert Langdon. Ron Howard, the director behind both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, will also come back to take the helm.

Here’s more from The Hollywood Reporter: “Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, and Irrfan Khan also are in the cast. The story sees Langdon drawn into a conspiracy to unleash a deadly plague centered on Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ the 14th century epic poem about the nine circles of hell.” Click here to download a free eBook of The Divine Comedy.

Barnes & Noble asked 100 authors to sign 5,000 copies of their latest books. Some of the participants include The Goldfinch author Donna Tartt, Inferno novelist Dan Brown, Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy writer E. L. James, Humans of New York blogger Brandon Stanton, and children’s book creator Jeff Kinney.

These 500,000 autographed books will be made available at Barnes & Noble’s 650+ brick-and-mortar locations. The data from the previous two holiday seasons show that the retailer’s sales figures have been in decline for both the digital store and physical shops.

Here’s more from The New York Times: “Drawing customers into its physical stores has become an urgent priority for Barnes & Noble. The chain has been battered in recent years by competition from Amazon and by a sluggish book market. It has closed more than 20 stores since summer 2013 and will spin off its money-losing Nook division into a separate company next year…Some authors said they hoped the new campaign would help the struggling chain.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown will present this year’s Penguin Annual Lecture. His talk will focus on “codes, science, and religion.”

Brown (pictured, via) will give his speech for both the Penguin Random House and Penguin Random House India teams. The Times of India reports that “this is the first time that the lecture is being organised in two cities.”

Brown will visit New York City on November 10th and Mumbai on November 12th. According to The Hindu: “The seven previous lectures have been delivered by journalist and writer Thomas Friedman in 2007, diplomat and writer Chris Patten in 2008, Nobel Prize—winning economist Amartya Sen in 2009, historian Ramachandra Guha in 2010, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in 2011, former President A P J Abdul Kalam in 2012 and megastar Amitabh Bachchan last year.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sony Pictures and Imagine Entertainment are teaming up to adapt Inferno by Dan Brown. According to USA Today, this novel was the bestselling book of 2013.

The movie studios will be skipping over the third installment of this popular fiction series, The Lost Symbol. Actor Tom Hanks will return to play Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, filmmaker Ron Howard will serve as the director, and screenwriter David Koepp will pen the script.

Here’s more from Deadline: “In Inferno, Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital with amnesia. He teams up with Sienna Brooks, the doctor he hopes will help him recover his memories and prevent a madman from releasing a global plague connected to Dante’s Inferno.” Which actress would you cast to play Sienna Brooks?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn; The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown; L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy and The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet are among Amazon’s list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime – the Mystery & Thriller Edition.

The list was put together by Amazon Books’ editorial team. Follow this link to explore their recommendations. You can also check out Amazon’s list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime list here.

“There are many different kinds of books that fall under the mystery/thriller umbrella – from police procedurals to murder mysteries to spy thrillers,” explained Sara Nelson, editorial director of Amazon.com in a statement.  ”When we were compiling our list of 100 Mysteries & Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime, we wanted to be sure to include books from all of those sub-categories. The team had plenty of lively arguments, several passionate filibusters, and a number of voting sessions before we came up with the final list.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Goodreads has opened up the voting for its fifth annual Goodreads Choice Awards. The awards include twenty different categories from fiction and poetry to humor and fantasy. Authors Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Wally Lamb have been nominated for Fiction. Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling have both been nominated in the Mystery category.

Here is more about how the books are chosen from the Goodreads blog:

The Goodreads Choice Awards are the only major book awards decided by readers, and we find our nominees from books that our members read and love throughout the year. There’s no judging panel or industry experts. We analyzed statistics from the 250 million books added, rated, and reviewed on the site in 2013 to nominate 15 books in each category. Of course, with hundreds of thousands of books published in 2013, no nominee list could cover the amazing breadth of books reviewed on Goodreads so we also accept write-in votes during the Opening Round to ensure that you can vote for exactly the book you want.

Readers will be able to vote in three rounds of voting. The opening round lasts through November 9. The highest voted titles will make it to the Semifinals which last from November 11 – 16. Readers can vote on the final choices November 18 – 25.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week.

They included secrets from Dan Brown‘s upcoming book, books that made us cry, a publishing industry flowchart (embedded above).

1. Books That Made Us Cry

2.  How Many Copies Make a Literary Bestseller?

3. Using Your Kindle as a Print Bookmark

4. Publishing Industry Flowchart

5. Free Sites to Promote Your Book

6. What Writers Need To Know About Tumblr

7. Neil Gaiman Shares ‘Secret Freelancer Knowledge’

8. Cracking Dan Brown’s Inferno Code

9. Successful Query Letters for Literary Agents

10. Amazon Opens Literary Imprint Called ‘Little A’

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Until March 24, you can download a free digital copy of The Da Vinci Code that includes the prologue and first chapter of Dan Brown‘s upcoming Inferno. While exploring the excerpt, we found a few clues that will help readers prepare for Inferno‘s May 14th release.

The short sample shows Brown’s hero Robert Langdon dreaming about “a writhing pair of legs, which protruded upside down from the earth, apparently belonging to some poor soul who had been buried headfirst to his waist.”

This is clearly a reference to Inferno, Dante Alighieri‘s 14th century epic poem that inspired the new book. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can download a free copy of the Inferno complete with annotations. Read the relevant section of the poem below…

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Da Vinci Code, Doubleday is giving away digital copies of Dan Brown‘s runaway bestseller until March 24.

The book will include the prologue and first chapter of Inferno, Brown’s upcoming novel. Follow these links to download: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, Sony Reader, Apple iBookstore and Kobo. Brown also revealed his only U.S. appearance to support the book:

Doubleday also announces today that Mr. Brown will speak at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center on May 15 at 7:30 pm. The talk will be his only U.S. appearance, and Doubleday is providing a live stream to bookstores and libraries across the country. To date, 150 outlets have signed on to share the event with their communities. Tickets go on-sale today through the Lincoln Center Box office and [at this link].

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This weekend, why not take a blind date with a free eBook?

For years, libraries around the country have offered patrons a “blind date with a book.” They wrapped a book in brown paper to hide its true identity, offering a coy description of its contents. Like any good blind date, you have to give the mystery book a try.

We’ve adapted the concept for our digital reading audience, creating blind date descriptions for five free and classic digital books below. Over at AppNewser, you can take a blind date with a free app.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Megabestselling author Dan Brown will return with a new novel on May 14th. Inferno will revolve around Dante Alighieri‘s epic poem, Inferno. You can download a free illustrated eBook copy of Inferno.

Like The Lost Symbol and The Da Vinci Code, the book will feature the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group will print four million copies initially.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What would Gertrude Stein write if she started drinking and texting? In a series of drawings, The Paris Review‘s Jessica Gaynor imagined what famous artists would drunk text.

Here is an imaginary drunk text from Stein: “I am wasted or have been drinking since 3 or have wasted since this drinking 3 one wasted since drinking. Srsly, I’m messed up. Can you come get me?”

Follow this link to check out her whole series, which includes the imagine drunk texts of William Wordsworth, John Cheever and Dan Brown.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield

The Da Vinci Code Model

Around Christmastime, a number of years ago, I was browsing at a local Borders bookstore (now, sadly, extinct), looking for, among other things, thrillers by the mega-bestselling author, Dan Brown.

A client of mine wanted to construct his thriller-in-progress in the “Brownsian” manner, using densely applied historical research. Largely because — as he readily admitted — he was mesmerized by the fact that The Da Vinci Code was then enjoying headline-making sales. (It eventually sold 81 million copies worldwide, more than any other book in publishing history).

It was a special-edition Da Vinci Code, filled with photographs, illustrations, and pages of background material — all designed to lure readers into the dense forest of factual content the author had woven throughout his fictional world. Hmmm, I thought, interesting.

:: Nonfiction Can Promote Fiction?

Moments later, I asked myself this question: If “nonfiction” (in the form of historical research) could be used to make fiction far more substantive and, as a result, far more appealing . . . might not nonfiction benefit from the same approach?

How would that work, though? Nonfiction, after all, is already factual. So there’s not the same substance-adding benefit that novels acquire by marrying fact and fiction.

After several seconds spent mentally flailing around, this question appeared unsolvable, at that moment, so I turned it over to my subconscious — hoping that part of my mind would have more luck (as it almost always did).

:: Can Nonfiction Borrow from Business?

Several hours later, I was back in my office doing some online research, when I came across the words “white paper” three times in the space of ten minutes. Was my subconscious suggesting . . . ? And if it was, what would a white paper for a nonfiction book look like? My creative mind refused to comment. It was time for my planning mind to take over.

Picking up a pen (I had long ago realized that a pen in the hand is worth bushels of words on the page – words yielded up more easily than with a keyboard) these brief notes appeared:

• Premise: White papers for nonfiction “expertise” books = novel idea.
• Question: But what would a white paper for a nonfiction book look like – what would it focus on?
• Answer: It would focus on a book-specific problem and solution; in other words, the book’s c

By: Hannah Moskowitz

This post has nothing to do with writing and absolutely everything to do with being a writer.

The stereotype of a writer--the middle-aged man pounding feverishly at a typewriter, cigarette in his mouth, sending hard-copy manuscripts to his agent and protesting the change of every word--has yet to catch up with the reality of what being a writer entails today.

We are not locked in our attics alone. We are not even the romantic writers of the '20s, drinking coffee and discussing literature. We are a legion of overworked, underwashed normals, pounding away at our laptops and shooing the kids to the next room.

And more importantly, we are not alone.

If you are reading this blog, you have obviously already met at least one other writer (hello there.) Chances are, I'm not the only one. Agent, editor, and writer blogs, facebook, forums like Verla Kay and Absolute Write, and God, above all Twitter, mean that, at the very least, most writers are at least a friend of a friend of yours. The term 'networking' is so appropriate here, because, in actuality, we--writers, publishing professionals, book bloggers--are a net. A web of interconnected people.

We know the same people. The truth is, this world feels very big sometimes, and God knows everyone is talking about writing a novel, but when it comes down to it--the people who are really out there, querying, editing, submitting, representing, accepting, rejecting, publishing, copyediting, waiting...well, the truth is, there aren't that many of us after all.

Which is why the act of being a professional writer has come to mean much more than it used to. Fifty years ago, all most writers had to do was avoid getting arrested and not respond to bad reviews.

You have a much bigger job to undertake. And it's stressful, and it's scary, but it can also be one of the most rewarding parts of this job. Somedays, my writing is absolutely shitty, and the house is a mess, and I'm crying because I can't find my socks, but I have 557 blog followers and I said something funny on Twitter today, so at least this day isn't totally for the birds.

You may think that I am the worst possible person ever to talk about how to be a professional. I'm loud and I'm obnoxious and I had to edit about ten cuss words out of this post so I didn't offend Nathan's sensibilities.

Yep. That's me.
But I'm hoping all that will make me easier to listen to, because when people think 'professional,' they a lot of the time think boring, sanitized, safe. And that's not who you have to
be. I'm living proof over here. And I knew from the start that I was taking a big risk, but I hoped that people would find me interesting and remember me.

It's worked pretty well so far. And that, kittens, is the real reason you want to get out there and put on your professional face. So that people will remember you.

Now that I'm done babbling, here are some guidelines. How to be a successful professional writer, by yours truly. And these are not big, life-changing rules. These are just tricks. Tricky little tricks.

--GET ON TWITTER. I don't care what your objections are. I objected too. But it is hands-down the best way to connect with people you would never have the balls to approach any other way. You can follow someone, which causes them no pain or trouble whatsoever, and you can talk to them in a completely neutral, undemanding way.

--READ ABOUT BOOKS. What do Hunger Games, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, and a hell of a lot of other books have in common? Answer: I haven't read them.

I'm not proud. But I know I don't have nearly enough time to read as much as I should, so I make a point of reading *about* books I wish I had time to read. Know enough about popular books to be able to fake your way through a conversation. I can discuss Twilight with the best of 'em.

--

MTV unveils 'MTV Crashes' (A global music event series that kicks off next month with Sean 'Diddy' Combs in Glasgow. Also ABC Family launches 'Chatterbox' iPad app to facilitate virtual fan viewing parties. ) (MediaWeek UK) (MediaWeek) - Forever 21... Read the rest of this post

Play Dan Brown Libs! Just fill in the blanks to write your own bestselling novel.

A handsome, brilliant, superhuman man named ______ happens to be doing something in the famous city of ________ when the local Secret Service-level police force named _______ drops by to accuse him of the awful murder in the book's introduction of a brilliant person named _______.

The protagonist eventually joins forces with a beautiful, sexy woman named ___________. Somehow, they end up being wanted by every police force in the entire country of _______.
During the inevitable vehicle chase, there's lots of time to come to the brilliant realization that a secret society called _______ is involved. The society members include every famous person that ever existed.

Many, many pages pass. The protagonist performs countless feats that are physically impossible, no matter how many laps a day they swim in the Harvard pool. Endless information about symbolism, secret societies and the city of ______ is recited... all of which ends up having very little to do with the plot. The bad guys go to a ridiculous amount of expense and effort to keep the _______ safe, which ends up being a relatively unimportant object.

The villain is not the person the reader thought it was going to be, but is instead ________. Someone named ________ who was supposed to be dead suddenly resurfaces at exactly the right moment. The handsome protagonist and sexy woman end up exonerated, in a hotel room, having lots of.... room service.

The end.

The book sells millions of copies.

Tom Hanks and a much younger woman star in the movie.

If you want to write a book by your favorite children's author, try this post.

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The release of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol will once again raise interest in secret societies, and in particular the Freemasons. Mark Booth, in his provocative bestseller The Secret History of the World, offers an entire chapter on "The Age of Freemasonry." Booth's alternative take on history is relentless, charging through time and space and thought in interdisciplinary fashion; embracing cognitive science, religion, psychology, historiography, and philosophy, a new timeline is drawn, and a huge swath of our cultural heritage that has for long been hidden is restored. From Greek and Egyptian mythology to Freemasons, from Charlemagne to Don Quixote, from George Washington to Hitler-The Secret History of the World shows without a doubt that history as we know it needs a revolutionary rethink, and he has 3,000 years of hidden wisdom to back it up.

Frank Close, OBE is Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College. He was formerly vice president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (now the British Science Association), Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. His most recent book examines one of the oddest discoveries in physics - antimatter.

In the post below, Frank Close reveals the fallacies concerning antimatter in the Dan Brown novel (and now major cinema release) Angels and Demons. He has previously written for OUPblog on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Many people have never heard of CERN. Of those that have, most know it as the birthplace of the World Wide Web; fewer knew its main purpose, which is as the European Centre for experiments in particle physics. However, with the appearance of Angels and Demons CERN is about to become famous as a laboratory in Geneva that makes antimatter. These two statements about CERN are correct; much else in Dan Brown’s novel, which inspired the movie and has led to much of the popular received wisdom about antimatter, is not.

The movie is of course fiction, but the book on which it is based teases readers with a preface headlined “FACT”. This includes “Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation… is highly unstable and ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything… a single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb”. CERN is credited as having created “the first particles of antimatter” and the curtain metaphorically rises to the question whether this “highly volatile substance will save the world, or… be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made”.

These “facts” are at best misleading and even wrong, but many, including some in the US military, believe them to be true.

Antiparticles have been made for 80 years; a few atoms of antihydrogen have been made at CERN during the last decade; antimatter, in the sense of anti-atoms organised into amounts large enough to see, let alone contain, is still in the realms of fantasy and likely to remain so.

In Angels and Demons the experimental production of antimatter being equated with The Creation is so central to the plot that a scientist tells the Pope the “good news”, even though it is decades old. Whatever led to our universe, it was not akin to the creation of matter at CERN, in either the fictional or the real world. It is not “something from nothing… practically proof that Genesis is a scientific possibility”. This is at best cod theology and non-science.

The Big Bang is the creation of all energy, all matter, and all of the known universe, together with its space and time. We cannot recreate that singular event, but we can examine what happened afterwards, within what became our present universe.

Energy, lots of it, is what turned into matter and antimatter. Energy is not nothing; it is measurable and when you use some the power company will charge you for it. When you create antimatter together with its matter counterpart, you have to put in the same amount of energy as would be released were they to annihilate one another; you do not get matter from nothing. Now reverse the process, such that antimatter meets matter and is turned back into radiant energy. That certainly is not nothing, as Angels and Demons recognises since the resulting blast is what is going to destroy the Vatican.

It is at this point that some in the US military seem to have adopted this fictional work as its practical guide to antimatter, and to have ignored its many contradictions. The preface of Angels and Demons described antimatter as the ideal source of energy which “creates no pollution or radiation and a droplet could power New York for a day”. Antimatter may not emit radiation so long as it stays away from matter, but in that case it offers nothing to bomb makers or power companies. In order to exploit this “volatile” substance, you need to annihilate it with matter, at which it releases its trapped energy as radiation such as gamma rays.

The statement that there are “No byproducts, no radiation, no pollution” is ironic given that it occurs within a few paragraphs of a warning to beware of the gamma rays. The US Air Force were enthused so much that in promoting their interest in antimatter for weapons they announced “No Nuclear Residue”. The media trumpeted that “a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military’s dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called `clean’ superbomb” San Francisco Chronicle 4 October 2004, uncanny examples of fiction, written in 2000, presented as if fact in 2004.

As a major milestone in antimatter science CERN is indeed marvellous, but trifling compared with what would be needed to make antimatter in industrial quantities. Even were it possible, the belief that antimatter technology could “save the planet” is specious. As we first have to make the antimatter ourselves, we would waste more energy in making it than we could ever get back, so antimatter is not a panacea for “saving the planet”. Thankfully, neither will it become “the most deadly weapon”.

From Shelf Awareness:

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s long-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, will be published September 15 by Knopf Doubleday. A first printing of five million copies is planned for the book. The New York Times noted that “fans and the publisher have been waiting a long time for Mr. Brown to finish the new book. It was originally scheduled for a 2005 delivery. The Lost Symbol will again feature Robert Langdon, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code.

We’ve been waiting quite a long time for this book and I fear that with such high expectations combined with such a long wait (see: when is Dan Brown’s new book coming out? from Jan. 2008)  this book is a prime candidate for a let-down. I love the langdon series and am very much looking forward to it’s release. It’s hard to imagine how Langdon’s exploits can match the last two books without him turning into a Bondesque charicature. While Dan Brown may not have the prettiest prose he sure can deliver a story.