Really. The era seems to be wide open for exploration and adventure. I would love to see more novels set in the gap years.
There have been, what, nine or ten? The original run of six, plus The Buried Age, One Constant Star... Memory Beta reminds me the Terok Nor trilogy was under the TLE banner, and let's throw in Cast No Shadow, since it was in the timeframe and after the brand was created. So, twelve. That's not bad for a loose conglomeration of books. Vanguard and Seekers put together have about as many. I was surprised they've kept it alive as a "series" beyond the original six, to the point of going back to the old cover design for OCS.
My guess is that they're tricky to market-- you need a premise with familiar characters. Notice how Art of the Impossible has almost none, but slaps a guy named Worf played by Michael Dorn on the cover.
There's definitely plenty to look at there. Adventures for the Excelsior, Enterprises B and C, since the Stargazer series is done, any future stories set on that ship could be slotted into The Lost Era banner. And with the Typhon Pact era novels needing to slow down their pace to avoid 2387, this would be a great alternative, even if it's just one novel a year.
To add a little more detail, Treklit authors are in a catch-22 situation right now where a) they're bound by contract to take all events seen in any onscreen Trek as official and hew to them appropriately, but b) Bad Robot holds the rights to events seen in the 2009 Star Trek film and won't allow them to be directly referenced in Treklit.
I was pleasantly surprised that the series actually continued on as long as it did. I was under the impression it was just a one time miniseries, so I was surprised when they went back to it for the Terok Nor trilogy and then again for One Constant Star. The fact OCS came out so recently and so long after the others makes it look like there is a chance we could get more in the future. Does anybody know if they ever considered putting Cast No Shadow under the Lost Era banner? It does take place right in the midst of the era, and features Vaugh who was already in one or two of the books in the series, so there's really no reason it couldn't have been.
I had not noticed a shortage LE novels. Although, I'd love to read a Kirsten Beyer LE novel about Janeway's early career and/or depicting the formation of her friendship with Tuvoc. KB makes me like many of the Voyager's crew more than the show did.
It's not Beyer, but if you're interested in early Janeway, Jeri Taylor's Mosaic has a pretty great picture. She also has a fairly significant supporting role in part two (I think part two?) of Christopher's Buried Age in 2359.
^Thanks, I did not know about that one. I came to Trek Lit when Taking Wing was published and did not branch out from Titan until that series collided with the Destiny books.
Well... They coud skip 2387 and always say that something horrible happened to Romulus and nobody wants to talk about it. It would probably be weird and make Romulan stories very complicated: "Remember.. That thing last year.. With Romulus?" "Oh yeah. That... wibley wobley timey wimey stuff was very.. horrible". Or we just spend seven publication-years in 2386 and wait for the contracts to expire.
That is really bizarre. But as suggested, simply don't mention it. Most other grand, universe shattering stories are simply left in the dustbin of history in Trek novels. If they're mentioned at all, it's simply in passing. Just omit that one throwaway "see, they're really all connected stories" line and move on. To me it's just a wide open space (the Lost Era) and I think there's a lot of cool stories still to be told there. I'm glad for the novels we've got, but wish there were more.
Jeri Taylor also wrote the Pathways book which is the back story about the rest of the crew, Chakotay included.