General Q & A Session For The Authors

Cool. I really like your books of words!

—David Young

 

Why do I find myself thinking of a childhood favorite, Richard Scarry's The Best Word Book Ever? (For those unfamiliar with it, it's a large-format collection of 2-page spread illustrations in the inimitable Scarry style, with about a paragraph or so of text, and lots and lots of callouts.)

I actually, a few minutes ago, walked away from this week's From the Top radio broadcast, to look at the DSC titles in another room, out of earshot of my stereo system. I could have sworn that "Adjective Plural Noun" was a legitimate title pattern, but no, just two books. I stand corrected.

 

My working title for the 3rd Discovery novel was actually Danger Zone until quite late in the writing process...

 

Astronaut, or something in games design.

I wanted to be a career writer, but after I left school I didn’t know how to get that job (and no-one offered any advice) so I had to find my way to it on my own, which took a few years...

I have an office in my house that overlooks the garden, with a small workstation in one corner set up like the writerly equivalent of a jet fighter cockpit, and bookshelves everywhere else. But I wouldn’t mind a spot on some remote tropical beach with shade, bottomless mojitos and no deadlines...

I typically do a 9am-6pm day in front of the keyboard with an hour for lunch, 5 or 6 days a week.

Kirk (TOS era) and Janeway.

My first Star Trek tie-in was going to be titled Fires of Heaven, but because it was part of the Terok Nor trilogy, my editor Marco Palmieri wanted all three books to have a unified title format, so he asked me to change it to his choice, which was Day of the Vipers.

I’ve only once had a publisher totally overrule me on a title choice (not for a Star Trek tie-in) and that was because the marketing department didn’t think readers would understand what it was about. Then later, readers complained that the title didn’t accurately reflect the content of the book...

 

And, of course, with foreign translations, all bets are off when it comes to titles.

My Roswell novel, LOOSE ENDS, was published in France as THE ASSASSINS NEVER FORGET.

Years later, as a very private in-joke, I made a bestselling thriller titled THE ASSASSIN NEVER FORGET the McGuffin in my Leverage novel.

 

What's the fifth?

 

I don’t know. I intentionally left that one out because a fifth didn’t come readily to mind. :-) Probably one I haven’t read yet, though.

—David Young

 

Here's a question for all the authors: Have you ever been invited to join a book series or an anthology where you ultimately turned it down for one reason or another? I'm thinking either a "Thanks, but I don't really want to write about X" or something where the scheduling/deadline wasn't ideal.

And if you have turned an invite like that down, how tough was that decision? Did you regret it later on?

 

I’ve turned down invitations to write short stories for anthologies, and I’ve even declined to take on certain tie-in novels because I had no knowledge of the franchise but could already sense I wouldn’t like it. I don’t recall having regretted passing on any of those projects; my instincts have usually been pretty good on that front. The most common reason I cite for declining invitations is “already on a deadline for something else, sorry.”

 

I assume so you're not potentially burning any bridges?

 

Of course, but, honestly, this falls into the category of "good problems to have." If you have to turn down work because you're too booked up, or have better options, you can't really complain.

But, yes, I had to pass on at least one juicy movie novelization because it was on a crash schedule (as movie novelizations usually are) and I was too booked up to squeeze it in. Sometimes you can talk to your various editors and shift deadlines around, but that's not always possible.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, you simply have to choose between competing projects.

True story: the reason I only wrote one ROSWELL novel, after writing the first novel based on the OG tv series, was that John Ordover offered me a three-book deal to write THE Q CONTINUUM trilogy at the same time. I would've been happy to write more ROSWELL books, and had already submitted a few possible plotlines, but the STAR TREK deal was too good to pass up, for various reasons, and I couldn't write an entire Trek trilogy and more ROSWELL books at the same time, so I had to ditch ROSWELL for Q.

No regrets there.

Oh, one more: I was once approached to write a kid's picture book about skateboarding. What the heck? I have never skateboarded in my life so I was absolutely the wrong person for that job, which I quickly turned down.

To be fair, I had previously written a kid's picture book about Bigfoot for the same publisher, which was presumably why I was on their radar. "Hey, Greg did a good job with that Bigfoot book. Wonder if he'd be interested in the skateboarding gig?"

 

Because at several points in the last few years it’s been true. Right now my schedule is more open, which is why I’ve accepted the last few short-story anthology invitations I’ve received. (That, plus I found the anthologies' respective themes interesting.) Declining an invitation politely rarely results in a "burned bridge." Professionals decline invitations all the time; it’s usually not personal, and most of our colleagues and peers understand that.

 

As a long time high school librarian/media specialist, I have seen many cases over the years where I’d notice the same author as having written several nonfiction books in my school library collection that were all over the place, subject wise. Stuff like particular countries, diseases, social issues, technology, etc. I presume these authors get a lot of work because A) they are good researchers, B) adept at writing at the desired young audience reading level, and C) reliable (getting the work done on time).

Then, again, I just thought of the father of this phenomenon: good old Issac Asimov himself. When I was in school, you could find juvenile nonfiction books in just about every subject written by him (in addition to his science fiction novels, short story collections, and anthropologies he edited).

—David Young

 

On the flip side, I’d be interested in hearing about any cases where one of you had to turn down an offer due to it conflicting with another job but then something changing (the original job’s deadline getting pushed back, the second offer being delayed and later offered again, etc.) that allowed you to do said second offer after all (and it turned out wonderfully). I know I’ve heard a few of these situations mentioned before (and I hear of it happening with actors and directors quite a bit; finding out they’d had to turn a film down because of another one they were committed to but then one if the two’s shooting got delayed and they were able to do both).

—David Young

 

Don't mind the question at all. I may not have met encountered Bigfoot, but I've always been interested in the topic and already had a small library of reference books on the subject. (I actually attempted to write the Great American Bigfoot Novel some years ago, but it never got past the outline stage.)

As for skateboarding . . . well, I'm not exactly the athletic type and would probably end up in the emergency room if I attempted to get any firsthand experience. Plus, I knew absolutely nothing about the sport and would've had to research it from scratch, which, honestly, sounded both daunting and tedious.

Giant hairy ape-men? Yeah, that's right up my alley. Skateboarding (or most any sport)? Not so much.

(As it happens, I actually have a Bigfoot story on submission to a horror anthology at the moment.)

 

I live in an area Bigfoot hunters come to, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so you should come visit!

 

As with Greg and Dave, so too with me. I've turned down work for several reasons, either due to not having the time or not feeling I was right for the project. I've never regretted it -- life's too short, and there are often other opportunities....

 

I've often had to turn down work because of I don't have enough availability in my schedule. Sometimes I've been disappointed about it, but short of time travel or cloning myself there's no possible way I could have done the gig, so there's little point dwelling too long on something that just couldn't have happened.

And I have turned down work when I just plain didn't want to take on the project - either because it didn't stimulate my interest or because I didn't want to work with certain parties. I'm fortunate that I'm at a point in my career now where I can make those kind of choices.

 

I can remember turning down a couple of things. For instance, when Marco Palmieri approached me for something in Trek that would've involved a war story, which is just not something I'm interested in writing. I don't think I ever found out specifically what it was.