Nimble Books LLC » The Solomon Key and Beyond

release date for THE SOLOMON KEY is set (but secret)

wfz-admin — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:36:29 +0000

Finally, some real news about THE SOLOMON KEY. According to the publisher, quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal, the release date has been set — but it is a secret. Which is progress! There was no release date at all before. There’s no new news about the content of the book (or any confirmation of the title), but the thrust still seems to be that the book will be set in Washington, D.C. and focus on those wacky Freemason Founding Fathers.

I brought out my SOLOMON KEY pre-book/meta-book in 2005 (!)

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and I have to say it has stood the test of time quite well. It has already made a pretty healthy profit, and among my forty titles in print ranks sixth in lifetime revenue per month.

The content is still sound because book is far less speculative than most efforts in the pre-book genre. I cover Brown’s entire oeuvre, and I include a detailed analysis of Dan Brown’s work habits and narrative strategies, but I didn’t think it wise to go on speculative excursions into the occult and Freemasonry before seeing the published books. I stick closely to what Brown and his publishers have actually said about the book. Judge for yourself if you like my approach: take a look at the Table of Contents in Search Inside the Book mode.

I’ve gotten better at covers since I published this book, but I’m reasonably satisfied with the dominant cover image: Kryptos in the CIA courtyard is still a pretty darned cool piece of Washington architecture, and it’s neat to look at and learn about. I would probably use a different font for the title type. Although the cover colors look clunky, they are keyed off the colors used in THE DA VINCI CODE, so I don’t think there was a principled basis for a better choice.

I will update this book when THE SOLOMON KEY finally comes out, but I am not sure exactly what mechanism I will use — I may update this edition, or I may issue a separate thinner paperback. Either way, I will provide a PDF softcopy to previous purchasers, as stated in the book. (Simply send me proof of purchase using the email address in the book).

I will update this post as publication nears. Until then, enjoy the anticipation!

Cordially,

Fred Zimmerman
Publisher, Nimble Books LLC

Ruminations on THE SOLOMON KEY

wfz-admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:52:26 +0000

A tv producer wrote to me asking my thoughts about what would be in THE SOLOMON KEY. As a starting point, she presented a good list of the “usual suspects” ranging from Masonry to the esoteric history of the U.S. capitol. This is how I responded to her:

think all of the things you list below are fairly probable to be in the book, but my guess is that you are too heavy on the past and too light on the future-connected elements. People don’t usually see it this way, but strictly, speaking, all of Brown’s books belong in the science fiction genre, because they all assume the existence of future technology and are set in the future. Even in “Da Vinci Code”, if I remember correctly, Langdon takes a supersonic plane that does not now exist (not Concorde) to reach France promptly, and the time setting appears to be 2015 or so. ANGELS & DEMONS, of course, has a huge plot strand with CERN and antimatter explosives that do not (fortunately) exist.

Add to that the facts that Brown has probably not been asleep the last six years, while the world has been convulsed in war, and that he has strong commercial instincts, and I feel sure there will be an important element of the plot that is tied to current or near-future events. How can you write a book set in Washington now without some reference to Iraq (Babylon), intelligence, and the Middle East? Brown’s clever, so I expect him to find a new angle on those things.

The obvious bit of “secret architecture” to bet on is the CIA building and the mysterious Kryptos sculpture in it (which–very cool!–makes an explicit reference to the opening of the tomb of King Tut). I provide a VERY concise summary of that controversy in my book, but, believe me, I suppressed a lot of detail in the interests of fairness to the ordinary reader. There is an online community of hundreds of people, including former intelligence officers, who are obsessed with the very high-grade cryptographic challenge. I would start with the person named “Elonka” who has a website about Kryptos — you should be able to find her by Google, let me know if you have trouble. Also the sculptor of Kryptos is alive, very adept at keeping his secret, and I would be surprised if he is not willing to be interviewed by the BBC.

Hope this helps, and feel free to write anytime. When THE SOLOMON KEY comes out, I will be doing a chapter-by-chapter response. In the current book, I play it safe and seek to avoid offending Brown fans, but my thinking has evolved, and in the next book I will be a lot more frank when I think Brown is talking through his hat. Great plotter, clever guy, lots of terrific ideas, but no reason to give him a free pass, either!

Updated: Why Publish With Nimble Books?

wfz-admin — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:40:44 +0000

Why Publish With Nimble Books?

Nimble Books LLC is an innovative publisher of timely material on topics ranging from Harry Potter and Dan Brown to politics, business, science, and medicine. We use electronic publishing technology to reach markets that are moving too fast for the large publishing conglomerates to address. Because our marketing strategy is tightly focused on the Internet, we look for titles that respond well to keyword searching in on-line markets, or on-line promotion via blogging.

Some of our recent projects include:

GLOBALISTAN: HOW THE GLOBALIZED WORLD IS DISSOLVING INTO LIQUID WAR by Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.
MISQUOTES IN MISQUOTING JESUS by Dillon Burroughs
UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS
THE SOLOMON KEY AND BEYOND

We publish twelve titles per year and we are selective. We are looking for books that are substantially ahead of the curve in that they address emerging trends that are readily connected with large, literate on-line communities.

We offer booksellers a short discount and fulfill orders via the Ingram distribution catalog using print-on-demand from Lightning Source. Your book will be available in most on-line booksellers including Amazon.com; the Amazon.com stores in the UK, France, Germany, and Japan; Barnesandnoble.com; Powell’s; and dozens of on-line resellers. Customers can special order the book in bookstores via Ingram, the market-leading distributor in the U.S.

By offering a short discount and focusing on-line, we are taking a more lucrative slice of a smaller pie as compared to a traditional offset publisher which ships returnable books to bricks-and-mortar booksellers at a 55% discount. The downside for you is that we do not pay advances; the upside is that we pay a publishers compensation fee that works out like a higher-than-usual royalty of 15% or more of list price per book.

We are true partners throughout the publication, distribution, and marketing of the book. It’s not a case of give us the manuscript and we’ll give you the check – it’s now that the manuscript is ready, let’s go make some money together!

Here is an example of how the numbers work for a 200-page book selling for $19.94.

Retail price: $19.94
Short discount -25%
Wholesale price 14.96
Printing cost: $3.50
Gross publisher compensation: $11.46
Net author compensation is 30% of gross publisher comp, or $3.44

Thus, your per-copy compensation is equivalent to a traditional royalty of 17.23%, which is well above most market rates. There is also a more subtle advantage in that we never discount our wholesale price of $14.96. Many publishers calculate royalties on the basis of final retail price, not list retail price, so if a book is remaindered and sold to booksellers with a suggested remaindered price of $4.99, you are only getting royalties on the $4.99, not on the $19.94.

Our experience is that about 80% of our online sales come through Amazon.com, which means that you can use your expected Amazon sales rank as a rough indicator of your revenue opportunity. It’s important to note that Amazon’s algorithms diminish the visibility of short-discount books in some of Amazon’s inside-the-store marketing programs, such as “Buy X, Get Y,” and “Also Bought …” This means that your book’s sales will depend primarily on how many readers come to Amazon looking for your specific book or a book that is very close to your specific topic.

The key thing to know about Amazon sales ranks is that the relationship between sales rank and unit sales on Amazon is an inverse logarithmic function, so a book that is ranked #1 sells about 30 times more than a book that is ranked #1000. The following table presents an estimate of the correlation between 30-day average Amazon sales rank (as measured by Titlez.com) and the net monthly author compensation for a $19.94/200 page book. Needless to say, this table is strictly an illustration and should in no way be considered binding.

30 day avg sales rank of … should result in projected net author compensation per month of about …

1000 => $1968
10,000 => $379
30,000 => $173
100,000 => $73

This model is based on Nimble Books sales data plus four different academic studies from 2001 to 2005 whose estimates of the relationship between Amazon unit sales and sales ranks all found r, or degrees of correlation, of .8 or higher; for details and citations, see this article on the Nimble Books website. The primary financial risks in this model are that any increase in printing costs or increase in the short discount rate would adversely affect both publisher and author net compensation. It’

What We Will Need From You

We prefer that manuscripts be provided in Microsoft Word format.

We will ask you to review chapters as they are copy-edited and formatted for production.

We may also ask you for the name of experts in your field who may be willing to review the manuscript for technical accuracy.

As the publication date approaches, we will help you set up a blog or website specifically devoted to your book. We expect you, as the domain expert for your topic, to take the lead on getting the word out about it to knowledgeable reviewers.

As a way of stimulating reader interaction and gathering positive reviews, we offer readers free PDF updates for each book. We ask authors to offer at least one chapter update per year.

How We Pay

We get paid by our distributor, Lightning Source, 120 days after the end of each month in which your books are shipped. Accordingly, we pay you each month on a five-month delay from when your books sell. Thus, if we sell ten of your books in January 2006, we will pay your royalty in June 2006. In July 2006, you will receive February’s royalties, and so on. We prefer to pay via electronic means such as Paypal but will issue paper cheques if necessary.

About Nimble Books

Our trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines “nimble” as follows:

1: quick and light in motion: AGILE *nimble fingers*

2 a: marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness *a nimble mind* b: RESPONSIVE, SENSITIVE *a nimble listener*

And traces the etymology to the 14th Century:

Middle English nimel, from Old English numol holding much, from niman to take; akin to Old High German neman to take, Greek nemein to distribute, manage, nomos pasture, nomos usage, custom, law

The etymology is reminiscent of the old Biblical adage, “to whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). Nimble Books seeks to honor that Christian principle by combining the spirit of nimbleness with the Biblical concept of abundance: we deliver what you need to know when you need to know it.

Now on to THE SOLOMON KEY!

wfz-admin — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:46:16 +0000

The secret’s out: `Da Vinci’ mania fading – Yahoo! News

NEW YORK – It couldn’t last forever, right? Simmered by three years of lawsuits, religious debates and conspiracy theories, brought to a boil in May by the Hollywood movie, the craze for all things “Da Vinci Code” is finally fading, publishers and booksellers agree.
“I would definitely say it’s slowing down,” Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley says. “Once everybody got past the movie, the whole thing peaked.”

No more “Da Vinci” spinoffs. Yay!

I saw this coming two years ago when I published THE SOLOMON KEY AND BEYOND.

Technorati Tags: dan brown, solomon, da vinci code

The Da Vinci Code Movie Photos – Da Vinci Code Photos, Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou

wfz-admin — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:35:17 +0000

The Da Vinci Code Movie Photos – Da Vinci Code Photos, Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou
Gallery of photos from the Columbia Pictures movie “The Da Vinci Code” featuring photos of Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Paul Bettany, Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina and Jean Reno. (Photos © Columbia Pictures)

Da Vinci Code Movie Disappointing

wfz-admin — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:04:46 +0000

Defamer, the L.A. Gossip Rag: First Rumblings Of A ‘Da Vinci Code’ Disappointment
Based on the first reviews trickling in from an eve-of-premiere press screening of The Da Vinci Code at Cannes, this might be a good time for the Imagine assistants to make a busy-work project of re-alphabetizing the office take-out menu binder in anticipation of a possible office-lockdown lunch of shame once their bosses return to LA from their promotional rail tour on the Blasphemy Express. An early Da Vinci Code panning round-up (links in Defamer article):

· “The feeling moved quickly from one of great anticipation to one of, shockingly, great boredom…instead of the film building to a white knuckle conclusion, it was the audience fidgeting as Da Vinci passed the two-hour mark and unveiled the first of its half-dozen endings…by the time the big climactic moment of the film finally arrived, the audience burst out laughing, as if this were yet another classic bit of Tom Hanks comedy. As the credits rolled, not a single bit of applause was heard.” [FilmStew]

· “[R]eaction from Cannes critics ranged from mild endorsement of its potboiler suspense to groans of ridicule over its heavy melodrama. ‘It’s a movie about whether the greatest story ever told is true or not, and it’s not the greatest movie ever screened, is it?’ said Baz Bamigboye, a film columnist for London’s Daily Mail. ‘As a thriller, well,’ he continued, shrugging.” [AP]

· “‘Nothing really works. It’s not suspenseful. It’s not romantic. It’s certainly not fun,’ said Stephen Schaefer of the Boston Herald. ‘It seems like you’re in there forever. And you’re conscious of how hard everybody’s working to try to make sense of something that basically perhaps is unfilmable.’ [Reuters]

· “[D]irector Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have conspired to drain any sense of fun out of the melodrama, leaving expectant audiences with an oppressively talky film that isn’t exactly dull but comes as close to it as one could imagine with such provocative material; result is perhaps the best thing the project’s critics could have hoped for.” [Variety]

Uh-oh.

This reader knows not the journey he has begun

wfz-admin — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:37:20 +0000

This reader knows not the journey he has begun
Reading The Da Vinci Code, “Harry Potter for adults” comes to mind. There’s a sense that writer Dan Brown and Potter author J. K. Rowling attended the same creative writing course.

“Tell the story using the simplest words you can,” their instructor might have advised. “You’re not writing poetry here. People aren’t looking for colour or rhythm or even a bon mot now and then; just tell the damn story.”

Ouch.

The game of Clue is quickly solved: It was the albino in the museum with the revolver.
But wait. Show me a mystery in which a murderous albino works for himself, and I’ll show you a flawed mystery.

Zing! Good one.

Heckuva job, Brownie!

wfz-admin — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:42:49 +0000

courant.com | ‘DaVinci’ A Godsend To Book Industry

Heckuva job, Brownie!

Dan Brown’s novel “The DaVinci Code” – which suggests Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the Catholic Church suppressed that history (and women in general) and the Renaissance genius’s paintings hide clues to the whole story – is a publishing phenomenon. The author may be a false prophet, but his profits are for real, and Friday will mark the book’s second coming, so to speak: the film version starring Tom Hanks.

The release of The Da Vinci Code movie is stirring the creative juices of the world’s reporters. Good one, Brownie!

Loony Solomon Key book

wfz-admin — Tue, 16 May 2006 15:25:50 +0000

PRESS RELEASE Move Over “Da Vinci Code”
Move Over “Da Vinci Code”
“The Key To Solomon’s Key” Ignites Historical Bombshell of ‘Biblical’ Proportions

MIDDLEFIELD, MA — (MARKET WIRE) — 05/16/2006 — Readers looking for an even more striking revelation will find it in a controversial new book that hits bookstores next week. “The Key To Solomon’s Key, Secrets of Magic and Masonry,” by Lon DuQuette, brings subjects of mystery and intrigue, Freemasonry, Knights Templar and King Solomon, to an astounding conclusion. DuQuette, a celebrated occult author and Mason, reveals for the first time an intricately woven connection between King Solomon’s legend and the Templar/Masonic legacy.

Loon alert.

Not that I shouldn’t take a glance or two in the mirror…

Da Vinci Code Trailer

wfz-admin — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:11:23 +0000

URL to the Da Vinci Code trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/da_vinci_code/

After The Da Vinci Code: Dan Brown’s New Novel is The Solomon Key

wfz-admin — Fri, 12 May 2006 14:32:49 +0000

Updated May 2006 with 60 pages of new material!

The Da Vinci Code Illustrated Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman; Forewords by Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer; Afterword by John Calley

wfz-admin — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:21:43 +0000

Doubleday Books | The Da Vinci Code Illustrated Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman; Forewords by Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer; Afterword by John Calley
The Da Vinci Code Illustrated Screenplay goes behind the scenes of one of the most highly anticipated movies of all time, created by Academy Award–winning filmmakers Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Akiva Goldsman. Offering unprecedented access to the tightly guarded “closed set,” and a view of the filmmaking process that has never been seen publicly, screenwriter Goldsman provides a backstage look at the incredible journey to bring Dan Brown’s record-setting novel to the big screen. Goldsman’s richly rendered screenplay is included here in its entirety. It offers a fascinating new way to experience the story …

Rescuing Da Vinci masterpieces during WW2

wfz-admin — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:08:02 +0000

Rescuing Da Vinci

Published by Laurel Publishing, LLC., Rescuing Da Vinci is the first comprehensive photographic telling of the amazing and largely “untold” story of Hitler and the Nazi theft of Europe’s greatest art and America and her Allies’ recovery of it. The book is 320 pages in length and contains more than 460 photographs including 60 in color. It is the first time this group of photographs has been assembled in a single book. These photographs, rarely published and with clarity not seen before, illustrate masterpieces being handled in unimaginable ways.

This sounds great! I want to get a look at it.

Da Vinci Code Movie Poster

wfz-admin — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:09:50 +0000

Why Publish with Nimble Books?

wfz-admin — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:11:24 +0000

Some of our recent projects include:

RED ZONE BLUES by Pepe Escobar

THE JESUS FAMILY CONTROVERSY by Dillon Burroughs

GLOBALISTAN: HOW THE GLOBALIZED WORLD IS DISSOLVING INTO LIQUID WAR by Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.

MISQUOTES IN MISQUOTING JESUS by Dillon Burroughs

UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS

THE SOLOMON KEY AND BEYOND

Distribution

We fulfill orders via Ingram using print-on-demand from Lightning Source. Your book will be available in most on-line booksellers including Amazon.com; the Amazon.com stores in the UK, France, Germany, and Japan; Barnesandnoble.com; Powell’s; and dozens of on-line resellers. Customers can special order the book in bookstores via Ingram, the market-leading distributor in the U.S. We also ship direct to prepaid purchasers and provide a quantity discount.

Online Sales

Our business model

We normally sell books to retailers at a “short discount” of approximately 25% and do not allow returns. This makes our books considerably more profitable per copy than traditional offset books which are sold at a 55% discount with the additional cost of returns. However, there is no guarantee that we will always be able to sell books on these terms, so our book contracts are written to allow us to set the discount, return terms, and price at our sole discretion.

We pay authors 30% of net publisher compensation for the first 5,000 units sold, 35% for the next 5,000, and 40% for more than 10,000 units sold. Net publisher compensation is defined as (list price * wholesale discount) – printing cost. For a 25% discounted book, 30% of net publisher compensation usually works out to about a 17% royalty, considerably better than market rates.

The following table presents an estimate of the correlation between 30-day average Amazon sales rank (as measured by Titlez.com) and the net monthly author compensation for a $19.94/200 page book. Needless to say, this table is strictly an illustration and should in no way be considered binding.

30 day avg sales rank of … should result in projected net author compensation per month of about …

1000 => $1968
10,000 => $379
30,000 => $173
100,000 => $73

Pros and Cons

The total theoretical revenue oportunity is less in our model than if you publish with a publisher that uses a traditional model (55%, returnable) for the simple reason that we are primarily addressing the online portion of the market, which is about 10% the size of the total market. However, if a book is successful enough, we do reserve the right to go to a second edition with the traditional model. Of course, the maximum potential for rights sales, etc. is just the same in our model as in the traditional model.

In our model, both author and publisher assume less risk.

By publishing your work promptly, you reduce the risk that your work will go unsold.
The success of your book is not constrained by the “six-week window” in which traditionally published books must “sink or swim” on the chain bookshelves. Your book will always be in print.
You evade the trap of “midlist misery”, which traps many worthy authors in a vicious circle of lukewarm chain sales, half-hearted marketing, and difficulty selling new works.

Both author and publisher can take creative aim at niche, hypothetical, or “bleeding-edge” markets.

Both author and publisher can challenge the “big boys” by focusing online, where creative individuals can readily use successful blogs and websites to establish a category-leading presence.

You have better visibility into sales: we provide monthly statements.

You have an additional revenue stream: we pay every month.

What We Will Need From You

We prefer that manuscripts be provided in Microsoft Word format.

We will ask you to review chapters as they are copy-edited and formatted for production.

We may also ask you for the name of experts in your field who may be willing to review the manuscript for technical accuracy.

As a way of stimulating reader interaction and gathering positive reviews, we offer readers free PDF updates for each book. We ask authors to offer at least one chapter update per year.

Marketing

Please review the Nimble Books Marketing Playbook, which has grown long enough it needs its own page.

How We Pay

We get paid by our distributor, Lightning Source, 120 days after the end of each month in which your books are shipped. Accordingly, we pay you each month on a five-month delay from when your books sell. Thus, if we sell ten of your books in January 2006, we will pay your royalty in May 2006. In June 2006, you will receive February ’s royalties, and so on. We prefer to pay via electronic means such as Paypal but will issue paper cheques if necessary.

About Nimble Books

Our trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines “nimble” as follows:

1: quick and light in motion: AGILE *nimble fingers*

2 a: marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness *a nimble mind* b: RESPONSIVE, SENSITIVE *a nimble listener*

And traces the etymology to the 14th Century:

Middle English nimel, from Old English numol holding much, from niman to take; akin to Old High German neman to take, Greek nemein to distribute, manage, nomos pasture, nomos usage, custom, law

Dan Brown speaks in New Hampshire

wfz-admin — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 14:34:08 +0000

Portsmouth Herald Local News: Dan Brown speaks: Best-selling Rye Beach author enthralls Music Hall audience
Dan Brown speaks: Best-selling Rye Beach author enthralls Music Hall audience

Good description of his 2 hour speech to a local audience.

Dan Brown talks to The Book Standard! Now, how about me?

wfz-admin — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:13:29 +0000

Just Re-Read ‘The Da Vinci Code’: Dan Brown’s Follow-Up Novel Delayed a Year
It’s official: Dan Brown’s millions of fans around the world will have to wait for the mega-seller’s much-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. The author’s publishers said today that Brown’s next novel will not arrive in stores until at least 2007, more than a year later than originally planned.

Brown himself, in an e-mail sent to The Book Standard, says: “My books are time-consuming to research and complicated to construct. I am taking the time necessary to ensure that this new book is every bit as entertaining as The Da Vinci Code.”

Ok, key question, Dan: why single out The Book Standard? Why not Publishers Weekly, or the New York Times? Is Random House buying VNU? Indeed, why not give the little guy a break and write me or Greg Taylor at The Daily Grail?

Seriously, kudos to The Book Standard for this excellent bit of reporting, one of the first bits of actual news on the Dan Brown front in quite a while.

Reuters on THE SOLOMON KEY AND BEYOND

wfz-admin — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:37:59 +0000

Entertainment News Article | Reuters.co.uk
LONDON (Reuters) – Dan Brown’s follow-up novel to his global bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” won’t be ready by the end of the year as originally expected, his publisher said on Friday.

“We don’t know when it’s coming, but it’s out of the schedule for this year,” said Larry Finlay, managing director for Transworld Publishers in London, a division of Bertelsmann-owned Random House.

“At one point we were hoping for it around October or November, but now it’s looking like 2007,” he told Reuters, confirming a report in the Bookseller trade publication.

The book, whose title and plot are as secretly guarded as the religious sects Brown writes about, remains unfinished, with Brown having been embroiled in a high-profile plagiarism lawsuit and the publicity surrounding an upcoming film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code” starring Tom Hanks.

Neither Brown nor his agent in New York could immediately be reached to comment on reasons for the new book’s delay.

The working title on the novel had been “The Solomon Key” though it was reportedly dropped.

Speculative books such as “Secrets of the Widow’s Son” and “The Solomon Key and Beyond” [Nimble Books] , as well as fan Web sites, have been trying to crack the plot, which Brown himself has hinted will deal with the ancient society of Masons.

Dan Brown fans, looks like 2007 or later…

From THE DA VINCI CODE to Dan Brown’s next novel, THE SOLOMON KEY

wfz-admin — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:28:14 +0000

Official Google Blog: Can you crack the code?
Almost a decade later, that dream has come true: a small group of us at Google, in cooperation with Sony Pictures, have managed to create 12,358 original puzzles for The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google.

That’s right, 12,358 (I’d make a joke about Fibonacci numbers, but that would be too obvious), all designed to honor both a fanatical puzzler’s sheer love of a mental challenge and the labyrinthine spirit of The Da Vinci Code itself. They’ll be released over the next 24 days, in the form of six different challenges at four difficulty levels, with enough variety that I think everyone will be able to find something they like and play it over and over — although if you’re in the U.S., you’ll want to try to complete all 24 and make it to the Final Challenge, where I hear there’s a pretty nice prize package awaiting the winner.

It will be interesting to see whether there are any jewels hidden in here pertaining to Dan Brown’s next novel, THE SOLOMON KEY.

Dan Brown to start building fence around his property – Boston.com

wfz-admin — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:02:02 +0000

Dan Brown to start building fence around his property – Boston.com
RYE, N.H. –For author Dan Brown, the price of fame includes having to put a fence up around his home in Rye.
“Dan didn’t want to do this; he’s a quiet person,” his attorney, William Beckett, said of “The Da Vinci Code” author at a selectmen’s meeting last week. “He wants to live like everybody else. But for the safety of his family, he feels he needs to build this fence.”

After taking a look at the property, the Rye Board of Selectmen approved Brown’s request to build.

In the front yard, the fence will have a 2-foot-high stone base supporting 4 feet of wrought-iron fence. As it winds around back, the fence will become all wrought iron. The fence will be 6 feet high all the way around.

Rye not?