A question for Treklit authors

[Mr Silver]

I guess you probably get this a lot but I'm intrigued as to how each of you who reply will answer. Which novel (can be trek and/or non-trek, original, etc) do you feel is your incumbent masterpiece?

What makes you most satisfied with the novel(s) you have chosen to answer with?

Cheers!

 

[Lonemagpie]

I guess you probably get this a lot but I'm intrigued as to how each of you who reply will answer. Which novel (can be trek and/or non-trek, original, etc) do you feel is your incumbent masterpiece?

What makes you most satisfied with the novel(s) you have chosen to answer with?

Cheers!

"The next one". Always.

Partly because that's what motivates a lot of writers, and in my case perhaps because the book of mine that I'm most satisfied with is Beautiful Monsters - a nonfiction one!

Having said that, probably Sanctuary

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, that's a hard one. It's like asking people to choose between their children. Still, if a gun was held to my head . . .

Star Trek-wise, I'm happy with how To Reign in Hell turned out. That was a pretty grim story, but I think it works.

Overall? Well, there you're getting into apples and oranges. It's hard to compare the Alias books to the CSI books to the Underworld books to the comic book novelizations to Warehouse 13 to Zorro and so on. Although I am proud of "52" just because I think I did a pretty good job of boiling down an insanely complicated comic book miniseries into a standalone novel that (in theory) could be read by people who hadn't read all the comic book tie-ins.

I also have a soft spot for my Houdini novelization, which almost nobody on Earth has read--except my father who thought it was my best book!

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Star Trek-wise, I'm happy with how To Reign in Hell turned out. That was a pretty grim story, but I think it works.

For what it's worth, I (yes, I, a random reader of Trek novels!) consider To Reign In Hell your finest Trek lit. I don't actually like The Wrath of Khan, but TRIH helped me see the great appeal of the character, where before he'd left me cold. I found your Khan striking and complicated - more so than the screen Khan (heresy, I know...). So for raising a beloved character out of the personal "meh" so he was truly on my radar, I'd call To Reign In Hell your best work, at least relative to my position as a fan.

 

[TerraUnam]

DTI: Watching the Clock was Chris Bennett's finest outing. It was also Destiny-good.

Destiny is a fantastic trilogy but if you look at each book individually they have a few flaws. Each book has to tell its own story and the trilogy story and there is a price for that. But Destiny was written as a trilogy.

DTI was Destiny-good in one book, which is an incredible level of achievement.

Typhon Pact: Paths of Disharmony was Dayton Ward's first solo outing but it was great and certainly makes him worthy of a comeback IMO.

 

[JD]

Actually it wasn't even close to his first solo outing. He's also written "Reflections", "Almost, but Not Quite", "The Aliens Are Coming!" (in SNW I, II, and II respectively), In the Name of Honor (a TOS novel), "Loose Ends" (a short story in No Limits), Open Secrets ( the 4th Vanguard novel, although Kevin Dilmore did work on the story with him) and "Almost Tomorrow, a story in Vanguard Declassified).

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I'm shy of words like "masterpiece." I'm happy if I feel I expressed 80-90% of of what I set out to do in any piece of fiction I write. The way it is in my head is always perfect and stellar. When it filters down to the written word in the real world it always loses something.

I've only written the one Trek novel thus far and have one non-Trek urban fantasy novel out as an ebook.

I don't know how the others work but, to me, there's no difference between writing a Trek novel and writing something that doesn't involve a pre-existing universe.

I'm working on two more non-trek novels now and I expect I'll both love them and have many problems with them once they're done and on the market.

I'd love to take a quick pass at Sword of Damocles to tweak a sentence or paragraph here and there.

 

[Lonemagpie]

I don't know how the others work but, to me, there's no difference between writing a Trek novel and writing something that doesn't involve a pre-existing universe.

The only difference, really, is that someone else has to agree you've got the world/characters right.

Having said that, if you're the sort of writer who "casts" their books, then it's probably easier to write for existing characters, because there's already a tone and a voice, even if there wasn't a screen plart played by an actor. OTOH if you're the sort who simply runs with the characters to see how they develop, there's more of a difference, because you have to keep them reined in to the characterization that's been established.

 

[KRAD]

I think the Trek book of mine that's strongest is The Art of the Impossible. I'm just completely happy with how that book turned out, and I'm still amazed that I managed to get 100,000 words out of a 30-second conversation between Bashir and Garak in "The Way of the Warrior" that tied into so much of Cardassian and Klingon history.

For that matter, I'm still amazed that I wrote a 100,000 word novel that didn't actually have a protagonist....

 

[BrotherBenny]

I really enjoyed that particular book. Looking forward to more Trek from you at some point, and good luck with your original stuff.