Questions for David Mack or others?

[Dayton Ward]

^ Another "it depends" question. Sometimes the editor seeks input from the author on cover design, whereas on other occasions, such as in the event of a mini-series or other multi-book project involving different authors, there's usually a "unifying theme" developed for those books. Even then, the editor might still solicit ideas for elements of individual covers.

 

[Mysterio]

Leave out Seek a Newer World, which might never see print,

I was looking forward to this. Chapters/Indigo still has it listed as coming out June 29th. What happened?

 

[Thrawn]

All four of the Abramsverse books were cancelled from this year's schedule. The reason given was to avoid creative conflicts with the next film.

They're all written and paid for, so they'll probably come out eventually (maybe with minor edits), but who knows when.

 

[Christopher]

Here is a goofball question. Do you have any say so in the art on the cover of your books? Or is that done after the work is turned in?

Actually it's usually done well before the manuscript is finished, because it needs to be available earlier for publicity. I often get to see the cover while I'm still writing the manuscript, and there have been occasions where the cover art has affected what I've written. (The cover for The Buried Age depicted a scene I wrote two days before I saw it, and when I did see it, I went back and rewrote the scene to incorporate the concepts in the cover art, which greatly enhanced the atmosphere of the scene. I also incorporated details from the cover art of Over a Torrent Sea in my descriptions of Aili Lavena. And the really great, dark and ominous cover of Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder inspired me to take that book in a somewhat darker direction that I'd initially planned.)

Sometimes we get input before the cover art is done, but more often it's the editor who develops the idea along with the artist, and the author can make suggestions upon seeing the draft art. Sometimes those suggestions lead to changes, sometimes not, at the editor's discretion. As a case in point, Marco didn't go with my suggestion for the OaTS cover (which was to show Aili in mid-leap like a dolphin breaching the surface, arcing through midair), but he did seek my input on some of the specifics of her appearance.

 

[RobertScorpio]

On many of the covers it shows the characters...Kirk..sisko..ect..do the actors get paid for the use of their images? Or is this the "that isn't shatner, thats Kirk" motif.

Rob

 

[Christopher]

I think they do get paid, yes, or at least they get the right of approval. Sometimes a licensee doesn't have permission to use an actor's likeness. That's why, when Trek guest characters like Harry Mudd or Garth of Izar showed up in DC comics, they didn't look like the actors who originally played them. But I'm not sure if that's because of money or just because of a likeness rights issue.

 

[BrotherBenny]

^ Yes, I'm fairly certain I passed that mark a while ago.

That question inspired me to figure out my own sold/published word count, and I posted the figures on my blog:

http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/how-many-words/

Counting everything I've sold, fiction and nonfiction, and including things not yet published, I'm at 974,360 words. Total published word count to date is 874,660. Leave out Seek a Newer World, which might never see print, and my total sold word count is 892,360.

So odds are that Star Trek DTI will be the work that puts me over a million published words.

Christopher, your blog shows a nice breakdown. Thanks for that.

David, any chance you could provide a breakdown like that? I'm just curious.

And to any other authors who aren't afraid to chime in, please do let us know what yours are.

 

[Lonemagpie]

My published word count for books would be *around* 1.6 million words. (averaging the Dr Who's as being about 80K each, Beautiful Monsters around 150K and the others about 100K.) That doesn't, therefore, include short fiction, my two previous Trek stories, or magazine work, but does include two nonfiction books. It's maybe around 1.3 million or so if we're going by novels alone.

And that's not counting IFM

 

[David Mack]

My best estimate of my total, paid, professionally published word count in prose fiction is somewhere in the vicinity of 1.547 million words. If one were to add my professional credits as a magazine writer, television writer, comic-book writer, and game writer, that number would likely be closer to 1.75 million words.

 

[JonoKyle]

First off I'd like to say I find that you all are exceptional writers - I can honestly say that there is not a single Star Trek novel I have read that I have disliked or one I own that I haven’t read at least three times.

I wasn’t even a fan of Star Trek when I read my first Star Trek novel (which was about the time of the third season of Deep Space Nine) – now I have a collection of Star Trek DVD’s and novels, and the first thing I do when I enter a book store is check the Star Trek books to see if a new novel has been released.

I would like to thank you all for the hard work you put in to making these stories captivating and enjoying.

What I was interested in knowing is how much freedom you get when writing the novels in the overall flow of the storylines and the changes with the central characters and the Star Trek universe – for instance do get given a general guideline of what will be happening within the Star Trek universe and you develop your storylines from there or do you pitch a storyline and then the changes are incorporated into the effects it will have on future stories.

For example, things like Ezri leaving Deep Space 9 to command the Aventine, Worf becoming First Officer of the Enterprise or the death of Duffy and Barnak in Wildfire. And universe changing events like the destruction of the Borg invasion in the Destiny novels and formation of alliances like the Typhon Pact.

 

[James Swallow]

With prose novels and short fiction, I'm just shy of 2.1 million words; with scripts and non-fiction that rises to 2.5. I'd estimate adding all my videogame and journalistic stuff would bring that up to just under the 4 million words mark.

Phew. Maybe I should take a holiday...

 

[Dayton Ward]

What I was interested in knowing is how much freedom you get when writing the novels in the overall flow of the storylines and the changes with the central characters and the Star Trek universe – for instance do get given a general guideline of what will be happening within the Star Trek universe and you develop your storylines from there or do you pitch a storyline and then the changes are incorporated into the effects it will have on future stories.

Again, "it depends."

Sometimes the editor will engage a writer (or writers) with an idea or theme, and task said writer(s) with developing a story around that notion. Other times, the editor will invite the writers to help brainstorm an idea into a story or series of stories, and other times the writer comes to the editor with something along the lines of, "Hey, I have this idea....." and writes up a proposal pitching said idea, and things go from there.

And then there are the occasions which involve any or all of the above.

 

[Christopher]

What I was interested in knowing is how much freedom you get when writing the novels in the overall flow of the storylines and the changes with the central characters and the Star Trek universe – for instance do get given a general guideline of what will be happening within the Star Trek universe and you develop your storylines from there or do you pitch a storyline and then the changes are incorporated into the effects it will have on future stories.

For example, things like Ezri leaving Deep Space 9 to command the Aventine, Worf becoming First Officer of the Enterprise or the death of Duffy and Barnak in Wildfire. And universe changing events like the destruction of the Borg invasion in the Destiny novels and formation of alliances like the Typhon Pact.

Well, the ideas for all those things would've come from the writers, or from the editors in collaboration with the writers of those particular tales. But subsequent writers telling stories set afterward in the same continuity would naturally have to acknowledge those events when coming up with their own stories.

A lot of people seem to have the impression that the writers are just hired contractors doing what the editors have already decided they should do. That's kind of the way it works in feature films if you substitute "directors and producers" for "editors," but in books, coming up with story ideas is what the writers are hired for in the first place. We generate the ideas. Maybe the editors have certain story points they want to hit, certain events or changes they want to see happen, but it's the writers who figure out the specifics and the context, and as often as not, the major events and changes are the writers' ideas in the first place. (For instance, nobody told me to set Riker and Troi on the path toward starting a family. I included that because it felt like a natural outgrowth of the story, and I was actually a bit surprised that it got approved.)

 

[Thrawn]

And his specific examples are all things that authors came up with, iirc... possibly Worf being first officer or Ezri commanding the Aventine were editor driven, but I think I remember all the rest being authors' ideas.

For sure, Wildfire was Mack's idea, though he apparently didn't have Duffy dying in the first pitch. The editors told him to just go for it, and actually kill him off as well. The Borg invasion was definitely Mack's idea.

 

[TerraUnam]

Didn't David Mack say that he had lunch with an editor and he was shown the Ships of the Line pic of the wreck of the Columbia? Which is how that thread got woven into the tapestry that is Destiny?

 

[Thrawn]

Didn't David Mack say that he had lunch with an editor and he was shown the Ships of the Line pic of the wreck of the Columbia? Which is how that thread got woven into the tapestry that is Destiny?

Yes. But he was the one that decided to use the Borg. The editors didn't like it at first, having recently done a couple big Borg stories (Resistance & Before Dishonor), but Mack convinced them that it was necessary.

 

[Dayton Ward]

:: deleted, cuz Thrawn beat me to it ::

 

[garoo1980]

That question inspired me to figure out my own sold/published word count, and I posted the figures on my blog:

http://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/how-many-words/

Counting everything I've sold, fiction and nonfiction, and including things not yet published, I'm at 974,360 words. Total published word count to date is 874,660. Leave out Seek a Newer World, which might never see print, and my total sold word count is 892,360.

So odds are that Star Trek DTI will be the work that puts me over a million published words.

You should got some confetti ready