Three if you count GOTHAM.
Novelverse In The Wake Of On-Screen Changes - How Do Authors Feel?
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Three if you count GOTHAM.
More like seven if you count Batman-peripheral works. Birds of Prey, Nolan, Gotham, DCEU, Titans, and now Pennyworth and Batwoman (who already made her debut in last year's Arrowverse crossover).
Well, arguably eight. NBC's Powerless was sort of Batman-peripheral, because Alan Tudyk's character was Bruce Wayne's cousin (loosely based on an actual character who appeared in a 1962 Batman issue).
Pennyworth is apparently a Gotham prequel, so strike one off?
Oh, I thought they were different continuities, since the new show is set in the '60s, the decade Sean Pertwee was born. But apparently Gotham is set in a sort of timeless alternate reality where they have (non-smart) cell phones but mostly drive '70s cars and wear '40s fashions, though apparently there was a 2018 Mustang in a couple of episodes. So who knows?
Bingo. Just the other day, I ran across a blog post fondly looking back at my old IRON MAN novels from the nineties. Are those books still part of an ongoing continuity? Of course not. Heck, they weren't even "canon" back in the day.
But am I chuffed that people still read and remember them? You bet.
That's really all any tie-in authors can ask for . . . well, that and a mountain of royalties.
Damn, their eyesight was good in that final scene
(Which just aired a few days ago here in England)
That's really all any tie-in authors can ask for . . . well, that and a mountain of royalties.
With tie-ins, we're lucky to get a molehill of royalties...
While my "sensible" opinion is that the novelverse started with Avatar (and I mentioned in another thread recently that that's when I started to feel like the novels were driving the Trek universe bus, so to speak, even I knew intellectually that wasn't the case), I'd put patient zero of the novelverse as the Invasion! crossover. Books! Talking about things that happened in other books (post-Arnold)! Total tie-in anarchy!
If you like fantasy I'd highly recommend @David Mack's Dart Arts series, they're awesome.What I meant is in the future...that the upcoming shows allow for future stories in the current litverse to be written mostly uninterrupted. That's still an open question I guess. I'd be surprised if the current relaunches can continue as is though. I admit I am intrigued by David Mack's Twitter post. Perhaps his upcoming "Collateral Damage" novel will give us some clues.
I'm also a bit disappointed that we probably will not see many, if any, further DS9, Voyager (except "To Lose the Earth"), and Enterprise novels going forward (probably Titan too, and sadly I think New Frontier is probably finished as well). I don't think that's just because of the potential conflicts that the new Picard show will bring in. But because there probably won't be any room on the schedule for books based on those shows. Though I still hope your idea of maybe having E-books based on those shows can happen. I'm old fashioned and prefer hard copies...but I'll take an e-book over nothing any day.
I am keeping my eye on this thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/non-trek-recommendations-for-trek-readers.300703/unread for after I finish up reading my un-read Star Trek novels. For years I had so many Star Trek novels to catch up on I really didn't take the time to read other fiction. I mean, at one point I had stacks of Star Trek books that I had yet to read. But now, I have maybe 3 or 4 original series novels to read (including 2 Bantam novels) and a handful of Voyager numbered novels to catch up on....oh, and the "Mere Anarchy" collection I picked up and the Gorkon series novels. Then I'm done. I plan on re-reading some older Star Trek books I haven't read in years, decades really. But I'll have time to read other novels and I'd like to branch out. And frankly I think a good place to start would be other books written by you guys. Since I liked many of the Star Trek novels I've read it probably makes sense to read other fiction you guys have written. Plus, of course, I'll continue to read new Star Trek novels as they come out.
So far there are two novels in the series, The Midnight Front, which follows a conflict between good and evil sorcerers during WWII, and The Iron Codex, which follows TMF's survivors into a '50s Cold War espionage story. There's a third book, The Shadow Comission, set in 1963 with John F. Kennedy's assassination as major plot point coming out next June.
Off-topic question for @Greg Cox. I've noticed that you've never written any original works of your own set in their own universe. Have you never had the desire to create your own universe or do you just prefer playing in other playgrounds? Have other projects kept you too busy create your own universes? No judgments, just curiosity.Bingo. Just the other day, I ran across a blog post fondly looking back at my old IRON MAN novels from the nineties. Are those books still part of an ongoing continuity? Of course not. Heck, they weren't even "canon" back in the day.
But am I chuffed that people still read and remember them? You bet.
That's really all any tie-in authors can ask for . . . well, that and a mountain of royalties.
I really enjoyed the original series story and Voyager story in the Invasion crossover.
Avatar does seem to be the first book where Pocketbooks decided to make it a continuing storyline, then TNG, Voyager and Enterprise (after the series ended) followed suit. I retroactively add books going back to "The Genesis Wave" because that seems to be the earliest the relaunches refer back to (though "Vendetta" was actually mentioned once or twice when the Borg came up).
I had both book one in the Lucasfilm Story Group era — with NEW DAWN — and the first novel reprint with the Legends logo (KENOBI — or, to get technical, the eighth printing of LOST TRIBE OF THE SITH). I said then the books were still on my shelf, and that was all that mattered to me; the works reached people, and that was the important thing.
Flash forward five years later, I can say that those Legends-branded novels are still in print and still selling fine (Kenobi is up to its 11th printing, Lost Tribe its 14th). I published a sequel short story to Kenobi — and the book just announced today as the #5 (corrected rank; I’d heard higher earlier) hardcover on this week’s New York Times bestseller list is none other than a new Thrawn novel by Tim Zahn!
The intent was to give the filmmakers room to work, and that happened — but beyond that, it’s hard to say a whole lot changed, other than that the process meant that more elements could be dropped into stories previewing things in other media yet to come.
All franchises are different; I make no observations in the above connected to Trek. But nothing about my view stated in 2014 has changed: The stories important to readers will always matter, whether or not they fit neatly into a timeline. And I’m further confident that the very smart folks looking at this will do their best to make it work.
Flash forward five years later, I can say that those Legends-branded novels are still in print and still selling fine (Kenobi is up to its 11th printing, Lost Tribe its 14th). I published a sequel short story to Kenobi — and the book just announced today as the #5 (corrected rank; I’d heard higher earlier) hardcover on this week’s New York Times bestseller list is none other than a new Thrawn novel by Tim Zahn!
The intent was to give the filmmakers room to work, and that happened — but beyond that, it’s hard to say a whole lot changed, other than that the process meant that more elements could be dropped into stories previewing things in other media yet to come.
All franchises are different; I make no observations in the above connected to Trek. But nothing about my view stated in 2014 has changed: The stories important to readers will always matter, whether or not they fit neatly into a timeline. And I’m further confident that the very smart folks looking at this will do their best to make it work.
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Yeah. Now at the time I don't think a conscious decision was made to make TNG a continuing storyline of novels. It just sort of happened. I think the A Time To....books was where it became more obvious, then "Death In Winter" clearly followed that and so on. The Genesis Wave was referred to a couple of times in the A Time To...books, and I got the definite sense the narrative, or the universe, was the same. So in a sense I guess I'd say The Genesis Wave was retroactively added, much like you could say "A Stitch In Time" and "The Lives of Dax" were retroactively added to DS9. The Genesis Wave was referred to a few times after that as well. I believe the last time I saw a mention of it was "Indistinguishable from Magic" since that book featured the return of Dr. Brahms. I haven't seen it noted since then....but then that's not surprising. In universe it the events of The Genesis Wave occurred a long time ago and a lot of significant events have happened since then like the Section 31 events, the Borg invasion, the Typhon Pact. Like the Dominion War, the Genesis Wave is probably a distant memory by now.
And as an aside I really enjoyed books 1 and 2 of The Genesis Wave. They definitely had an epic feel to them. Vornholt probably should have stopped there though. Book 3 and Genesis Force definitely were a step down I though. I guess he wanted to depict the aftermath and rebuilding after the events of the Genesis Wave but it lost that epic feel IMO. And I always like when a later novel refers to something that happened in a previous novel, like when GF would be mentioned. I also liked when some of the later Borg novels would actually go back and bring up the events of Vendetta. A fairly recent TNG novel actually noted events in Vendetta in fact.
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Honestly, it's mostly the other projects thing. Writing an original novel is always on my list of New Year's Resolutions, but then somebody offers me a chance to write a WAREHOUSE 13 novel or whatever and, well, there are bills to be paid and we need to get a new washing machine, so . . . .
Plus, I'm enough of lifelong fanboy that there's no way I'm going to turn down an opportunity to write a GODZILLA or PLANET OF APES book, and, before I know it, my schedule has filled up for another year.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you. This is a good problem to have.
Yeah, true. Just because you write Star Trek books for S&S doesn't mean they'd publish one of your original works (and the same for other tie-in publishers).
I guess that still could help in the sense at least you have contacts with those publishers, and aren't trying to get in from the outside. But that's probably as far as it goes I would imagine.
I mean, does it help? If you were to write an original work does it actually help that you write tie-ins? Would that at least get your foot in the door to make a proposal, let's just say to S&S since they are the Star Trek publishers?
And on the author’s side, you’d also want to look at all possible venues to find the best fit. There’s just an investment involved there — financial if you have an agent, an investment of time if you don’t. Nothing wrong with it, it’s just more involved. Like Greg, I keep intending to get to it, but other opportunities arise.
In a way, I've been spoiled by tie-in writing. I can sell a book based on a fifteen-page outline and get paid an advance before I even start writing the book, whereas an original novel would probably have to written on spec, in hopes that it would eventually generate income at some point down the road. At the very least, I'd have to write a full outline and a couple sample chapters, with no guarantee of ever getting paid for it. Hard to justify working that into my schedule when a publisher is dangling a new tie-in job in front of me and I still need to pay for that last root canal . . .
Granted, to answer Damien's question, I do know plenty of editors and publishers, some of whom have expressed interest in seeing an original book by me, but finding time to write one is a challenge.
Granted, to answer Damien's question, I do know plenty of editors and publishers, some of whom have expressed interest in seeing an original book by me, but finding time to write one is a challenge.
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