That's more of what I meant when I said ideas. I was just wondering how much you guys approach them with something, and how often they ask you to do something.
The short answer is, it varies! It's often dependent on the needs of the line and the direction from CBS.
Here's how my personal experience has gone...
I wrote
Day of the Vipers because Marco Palmieri wanted to make the
Terok Nor series a trilogy, so I was specifically asked to write a book that slotted in before
Night of the Wolves and set up that narrative.
Marco then asked me to pitch a novel for
Star Trek Vanguard, but that was ultimately turned down, so I was offered a slot on
Titan instead, which became
Synthesis.
Margaret Clark then offered me the chance to pitch whatever I wanted, so I wrote
Cast No Shadow because I wanted to do a movie-era novel.
I was asked to write a TNG crew novella, so I wrote
The Stuff of Dreams.
I got the offer to be part of
The Fall, so I wrote the
Titan installment of that miniseries (
The Poisoned Chalice).
After
The Poisoned Chalice was done, Margaret sought to commission me for two books and again she gave me a free hand to pitch whatever I wanted - I had a
Titan pitch (
Sight Unseen) and a TOS pitch (
The Latter Fire); I wanted to do the TOS story first, but she wanted a "24th Century" era novel at the time, so I wrote the
Titan book and did the TOS book the following year.
With
Fear Itself, the request came down from CBS: "can you write a Saru novel?"
And with my upcoming
Star Trek: Picard novel, the directive was "we'd like a story about Riker and Troi on the
Titan or Worf on the
Enterprise" and I chose the former.
