Announcing STAR TREK: DTI and other CLB news

[Christopher]

I'm a Rani fan myself...

 

[kkozoriz1]

I'm assuming that Ilia's status has been changed from missing to lost in the line of duty then?

 

[Christopher]

Well, it's been over 100 years since the V'Ger incident...

 

[kkozoriz1]

Yes, but it's not like she just wandered away from a landing party. Merging with a huge machine lifeform is a little out of the ordinary. Besides, we never saw the body

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Eternal Love Hospice is on Delta, I take it (seeing as Deltans believe pure love is the form taken by sapient life when they're not in, well, the "life" stage). I assume Ilia Memorial Space Centre is, too? This would then be the first actual visit to the planet in Trek lit? That'll be interesting.

We all knew you were itching to flesh out the Deltans.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Pocket Books has apparently switched to an electronic process for copyediting, so instead of getting the marked-up pages shipped to me and sending my corrections by e-mail, I’ve instead been e-mailed the edited manuscript in .doc format. By using MS Word, something I normally don’t do, I’m able to “Track Changes” and see all the edits that have been made (with notations in the margin in red), with the option to accept or reject changes. Also, my own changes are marked in the margin in blue. It’s kinda neat, and I guess it’s more efficient. I went through the marked copyedits pretty quickly, but I still need to take the time to read through the whole thing more carefully.

Wish they did that with mine!

I got a physical printout with handrwritten copyedits, and had to do my edits by hand before mailing it back - which cost a fuck of a lot cos it was over 2kg)...

 

[Stevil2001]

^ But Maria doesn't live in Ealing any more (then again, I guess Luke doesn't either)...!

Dude... time travel!

I'm a Rani fan myself...

I like Rani, but I think the show's lost a certain level of heart since the end of the Sarah Jane/Maria relationship. Not to mention all my Luke/Maria shipping has nowhere to go! But this is a discussion for another forum.

 

[captcalhoun]

maybe Ealing's mentioned because Dulmer's a big Ealing comedy fan...

 

[Christopher]

Just to be clear on one thing... for my purposes, there's no such person as "Dulmer." I can understand why people assume it's spelled that way, because of the Scully/Mulder anagram thing, but officially, in the script and novelization to "Trials and Tribble-ations" as well as on Memory Alpha and Startrek.com, his name is actually spelled Dulmur. And that's how it's spelled in DTI:WTC, though I do allude to its common misspelling. (Not only do I use Dulmur because it's the official spelling, but because I wanted to avoid the X-Files in-joke element as completely as possible. If these guys are going to stand on their own as novel leads, they need to be more than an in-joke.)

Sorry to dwell on a spelling issue, but I'm in the midst of copyedits right now, so that's where my mind is focused.

 

[BrotherBenny]

In fact, DTI Headquarters is situated so that the Prime Meridian passes right through the middle of the director's desk. It's about a kilometer north of the Royal Observatory, just outside of Greenwich Park. I initially planned to put it in the Observatory itself, but then I realized a major tourist attraction wouldn't be the best place to put the offices of a high-security government agency.

I always like to see London get some love and glad Star Trek is not so US-centric anymore. Did you make any veiled or not-so-veiled references to non-Trek time travel stuff, such as Dr. Who? Did Torchwood become DTI?

And no, that would be the exact opposite of ironic, BrotherBenny. Irony is when something is the reverse of what would be expected or appropriate -- like, say, if the headquarters for the Department of War were located in Gandhi's birthplace. Greenwich is the most appropriate site possible for the DTI, and is therefore the least ironic site possible.

I sit corrected (since I'm not standing up).

 

[Christopher]

In fact, DTI Headquarters is situated so that the Prime Meridian passes right through the middle of the director's desk. It's about a kilometer north of the Royal Observatory, just outside of Greenwich Park.

Correction: about half a kilometer north. A kilometer north would pretty much put it in the Thames.

I always like to see London get some love and glad Star Trek is not so US-centric anymore. Did you make any veiled or not-so-veiled references to non-Trek time travel stuff, such as Dr. Who? Did Torchwood become DTI?

I had mixed feelings about the in-jokes here. On the one hand, I wanted to keep them subtle, but on the other hand, there were some I couldn't resist. Let's just say there are nods to a lot of prior works of time travel fiction in prose, film, and television, some more overt than others.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And I know what Lucsly & Dulmur's first names are going to be, but I'm not telling.

Do they match the names they're given in the very recently released The Needs of the Many?

I hope not, if only because I hope that what eventually happened to Dulmur in that novel does not actually happen in the Treklit timeline...then again, we are talking about multiple timelines here, so I guess anything's possible.

 

[Christopher]

To confirm what I said when that question was originally asked, no, I'm definitely not using the first names or characterizations they were given in The Needs of the Many. Like I said above, I wanted to avoid X-Files in-jokes.

 

[MichaelS]

So their boss won't be called Kreinns, then?

 

[Christopher]

AD Kreinns does make a cameo appearance, since I consider "Gods, Fate, and Fractals" to be more or less in continuity with DTI:WTC, but it's a minor role.

 

[captcalhoun]

does the hapless Stew from Road to Edos appear? or Admiral Gulliver from Cold Wars?

 

[BrotherBenny]

I so cannot wait for this book.

 

[JD]

Me too. I love time travel stories, and I've enjoyed Christopher's handling of similar concepts in past novels, so this is pretty much guaranteed awesomeness in my book.

 

[William Leisner]

AD Kreinns does make a cameo appearance, since I consider "Gods, Fate, and Fractals" to be more or less in continuity with DTI:WTC, but it's a minor role.

Sweet.

Now, the big question is, will D&L be sporting Bill the Cat and "I'm With Stupid" t-shirts during their new adventures?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Did we ever settle on a Who song for this?