I always treated my TOS novels as part of the overall continuity, and I think Dayton's tend to be too, and you and I have coordinated on occasion to keep details straight between our TOS novels. But it's always been more optional there than in the 24th-century stuff, and there have been a fair number of standalone ones.
I've noticed the Andorian naming convention is becoming standard across all novels, regardless if they're Litverse or not. It's been kept in all the Disco and Picard novels, and was even used in Shadows Have Offended. Of course, now it's even been used on Lower Decks, meaning it's now canon, so I guess all novels to feature Andorians will have to stick to it now.
Not really, since there are other Andorian naming patterns in canonical Trek alongside this one, and it's silly to expect an entire species to have only one language and naming system. I mean, the character you're thinking of is named Jennifer, for Pete's sake.
Hmm. The only other canonical Andorians I can recall off the top of my head are Shras, Thelev (who was really a disguised Orion), Thelin (from YY/a), and Shran (semi-regular on ENT).
I'll be interested to see what they do after some of these new shows have finished. For instance, it looks like Picard is running three seasons. After it's over, will we still see Picard tie-in novels? Somehow it seems unlikely. Or even Discovery? As several people have mentioned, the shows are so tightly serialized that there's not a lot of room for novels. And presumably there will be new shows to take the place of the retired shows, and we'll need tie-ins for those to go along with (I assume) the usual TOS, TNG, etc. books.
Shran's full name was established as Thy'lek Shran in screen text in "In a Mirror, Darkly Part II." And numerous other Andorians in ENT were given names, none of which followed the novelverse pattern or excluded the possibility of alternate naming schemes. So were seasons 6-7 of DS9 and season 3 of ENT, but we still got plenty of novels set after the series, once the limitations of serial plotting no longer held them back.
I would love to see what happened to DS9 characters in the Picard timeline. I'm hoping Bashir and Ezri stayed together
To be sure, I'll also definitely make an effort to avoid contradicting any other Trek books touching on the same topics, especially if those other books are still fairly recent. But I never want to assume that every reader has read every previous novel, so I try to keep references to previous books (including my own) to a minimum. Ideally, you should only require a basic familiarity with the original tv series to enjoy a TOS book on occasion. Heck, even when writing my third Khan book, TO REIGN IN HELL, I deliberately avoided referencing my own EUGENICS WARS books too much, not mentioning Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln at all. I wanted very much for that particular novel to be accessible to folks who might only know Khan from THE WRATH OF KHAN and possibly "Space Seed" as well. I always try to keep one eye on what I think of the "airport reader," who may picking up a STAR TREK book on impulse for a long flight, just because they have fond memories of having watched the original TV or movies at some point.
Well, sure, I try to make each book stand on its own, while also working as part of a larger continuity. They're not incompatible goals. The ideal is to make a book work for both audiences -- those who only read the one book will get a complete story, but those who've read the others will get the bonus of recognizing the connections and Easter eggs. After all, the whole reason they're called Easter eggs is that they're hidden. Like the Easter eggs on DVD menus -- you can still get a full experience of watching the movie and the bonus features without knowing about the Easter egg, but if you discover it, you get a little extra reward for catching onto the trick. For me, it's mainly about worldbuilding, creating a sense of a larger, coherent shared reality. So it's not about specific plot or character beats as much as about a common background, recurring species and planets, that sort of thing. For instance, if you read The Face of the Unknown on its own, then Sulu's interaction with the Betelgeusians just works as part of that story, but veteran readers will get to see how it's backstory for the Betelgeusian crewmembers in my post-TMP novels, the secret origin for the exchange program that led to them enlisting in Starfleet. It's a bonus realization on top of the story.
Not really interested in tie in novels unless they’re about Lorca. Wouldn’t mind an entirely new Star Trek novel series like New Frontier to fill in the void.
I think it is very unlikely we get a New Frontier style spinoff type series any time soon. Just not enough room on the publishing schedule these days.
AFAIK, some of the older Pocket novels that go out of print, but still have demand, were able to be ordered in a print-on-demand trade-style paperback (ie. these are the ones that have very wide gutters). My local book shop has sometimes put them aside for me, thinking it was a new title I didn't have. I remember this happened with some of the "Vanguard" titles.
Whilst there will be great novels going forward, I’m going to miss the original characters created for the Litverse.
No, it is the character's real name. Granted, it was given to her by accident during the first season, in that Tawny Newsome used the name without realizing Mariner was addressing an Andorian in the scene, but in the second season the writers went ahead and confirmed the character's name really is Jennifer sh'Reyan. Lower Decks has quite a few aliens with human names, like Taylor the Kzinti. Not to mention Linus the Saurian on Disco.
It's about time, though we should see some names in the other direction too, like a human named Surak Johnson. It frustrates me how stereotyped and culturally monolithic Trek species are, when the Federation is supposed to be a multicultural melting pot. Where are the immigrants? Where are the Bolians raised in human culture and the Tellarites raised in Andorian culture? Where are the fusion cuisines and syncretic cultural, religious, and musical innovations? Why do only biological Vulcans follow Surakism? Shouldn't there be converts and aspirants from other species?
Although it will be a different 'timeline version' of them I would not be surprised to see familiar Litverse characters appear in future books similar to Christine Vale's appearance in a Picard novel. As we will always have characters unique to novels, I don't see any reason why some previous ones couldn't be reintroduced provided it served the story. I'm sure we will also get other little Litverse Easter Eggs from time to time too... I started reading Trek novels in the 90's and got to experience the old loose 80's continuity as well as the number of stand alone books released. Work and life prevented me from keeping up with the Litverse but am making an effort to catch up now. I'm sure I'll read a number of newer novels in between. I think its great that the novel line has endured and I think that is in part due to its ability to always adapt based on what is happening with Trek in general. Long may in continue!