Best of 2025 Trek Author David Mack

Episode Transcript
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Welcome back everybody time for Trek watch. John Santrasire on
the Word Balloon Network. Really happy to be welcoming David

(01:29):
Mack to word Balloon. You know the name, wonderful Star
Trek novelist, wrote a couple DS nine episodes as well.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
We're going to get into all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
He has a brand new book with the Strange New
World's cast, and of course was the co writer on
Star Trek Con. So, without further ado, here's my interview
with David Mack. David Mack, welcome to word Balloon. It's
a pleasure to meet you. And as I was telling
you in our Facebook messages, I'm a longtime fan, so
thank you for doing us today.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Weans for me here. Thanks you having me on.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Absolutely ring a fire brand new book for Strange New Worlds?
Is this your first add up?

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Way? Holding it up? Well done?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Is this your first book as far as you know,
hold it up again because I had it on speaker
mode so people can see it now. There you go, nice, fantastic,
all of our favorites right there on the cover.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Is this your first Stranger World's book? Yep, excellent.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
And I got to tell you, man, you really captured
the tone of the show. But of course, given the
amount of Star Trek books, is it easy to shift
for each show it and then find that right voice
for each show?

Speaker 1 (02:37):
It takes a bit of effort. You have to watch
the show, you have to listen to the characters, but
more to the point, you also have to pay attention
to the big picture. What kind of the show is it.
There's a much different mood at work in Discovery than
you would find in Picard. There's a very different mood
on TG than you would find in the original series.

(03:00):
For instance, the original series is very much a product
of the nineteen sixties Cold War mentality, whereas TG is
very much a product of nineteen eighties post Glass Knost
international relations. It represents this period of time when people
you thought were enemies suddenly don't seem so dangerous anymore.

(03:21):
There's a chance to build bridges. And although that was
hinted at in Tos for instance, there was still a
sense that the rivalry was pretty intense at that time.
So as you approach each series, you have to figure
out what is the personality of the series, what is
the context of it in terms of the Star Trek universe.

(03:44):
And for instance, like with my Picard novel Firewall, it's
almost more of a Voyager sequel than a Picard novel.
It's not really set during much of the time covered
by the Picard TV series. It's more of a backstory
novel about how Seven came to be a fenerous Ranger. Yes, so, yeah,
so and again. For that, I had to tap into

(04:06):
the mindset of the TG universe and Voyager universe. What
was the mood on Voyager, what was the tenor of
Voyager all about? And then how did that get subverted
for Seven when she came home, how were her expectations
basically chattered and basically forcing her out to find a

(04:28):
new life. With Ring of Fire, the task was to
find that sense of action and adventure, but at the
same time keep it light hearted except for when you
need it to sort of veer into something with emotional weight,
because they do both on the show, there's usually moments
of lightheartedness to sort of take the pressure off. But sometimes,

(04:52):
even in an otherwise you know, light episode, you may
have a pretty heavy moment for one of the characters,
like and Benga when you learn about the sort of
dark secrets of his past, and then you also learn
stuff about Laon and the you know, the trauma she
endured when she was young. And then in this story,
of course, I'm building on material from season three that

(05:14):
was touched down but not really explored in depth about
Christopher Pike and his youth, and I tied that together
into what I felt was a cohesive picture of how
his youth basically shaped the man he became, and how
the man he became shaped the choices he made as
a star fleet officer, including some that he regrets.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
No, I really enjoyed hearing about more of his backstory.
I mean, god, ever since they had Jeffrey Hunter in
the cage and we got to see it in Menagerie,
It's like, Yeah, what is this guy all about? And Yeah,
I've really I've enjoyed Pike's journey. Well, you know, and
I appreciate you saying that each show does have its

(05:56):
own voice. Can you quantify because and a lot of
times the different choices that were made in Strange New
Worlds season the season. I gotta be honest, after this
third season, I don't know what the show is other
than you know, the very basics of well, this is
the story of the Enterprise, you know, during the Pike era.

(06:18):
But as you were saying in terms of the characterization
of TOS and TG.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, I would say that probably what you're seeing in
Strange New Worlds, it's not just the story of the
Enterprise free Kirk. Strange New Worlds is basically about Christopher Pike.
It's about a man who when we first met him
in the first episode of Strange New world we were
seeing the aftermath of a guy who'd gotten beaten up

(06:46):
by his career, who had had some reversals of fortune
and was not ready to go back out there. He
had sort of retreated from that destiny, and we see
some of that in and some of that pain in
Jeffrey Hunter's performance back in the Cage. And what's interesting
is that Anson Mount channeled that beautifully in the Strange

(07:10):
New World's pilot, because what he's dealing with are things
that Pike encountered during the Discovery TV series when they
had to go into the temple at Boreth, the queen
On Temple with the time crystals, and he gets the
glimpse of his future. What strange New World as a

(07:31):
series I think He's going to eventually prove to be about,
is Christopher Pike going from a guy who had lost
all that hope and had gotten this vision of his
impending doom and had let it defeat him, turning it
around and finding instead the understanding that nothing lasts forever,

(07:51):
that life is fleeting, that our time with our friends
is fleeting, and he, instead of moping, he chooses to
make the best of it. He chooses to embrace hope.
He becomes the warm, paternal father figure at the core
of the Enterprise family in a way that Kirk really
never did. I mean, Kirk was a legendary commander. He

(08:14):
was heroic, he was bold, he was a loyal officer.
He had a lot of great qualities. But what you
don't see a lot of between Kirk and his crew
in the original series is paternal warmth. That is not
part of Kirk's dynamic. He's a very bold and complicated character,

(08:34):
but that's not a facet that he tends to show
to his subordinates. Pike, on the other hand, believes in
a concept called a servant leadership, which is actually a
style of leadership and command taught at military academies, and
the premise behind it you see it in when Ike

(08:55):
cooks for his officers, when he has personnel into his
quarters which she's had retrofitted far beyond what regulations should
probably allow to build a chef's hitchen in his quarters,
and he cooks for his crew. He cooks in these
beautiful meals, and this is an aspect of servant leadership

(09:16):
where the person who is in the chief command position
puts themselves in a world where they are serving, where
they are nourishing the people beneath them, because it embraces
the concept that command and leadership and authority is not
about power over others, it's about responsibility for others. The

(09:37):
point of being a captain is not that you have
power of life and death over everybody on your ship.
It's that you have assumed responsibility for the care of
everybody under your command. You are entrusted with this ship,
you are entrusted with this crew. You have a duty
to protect them and to essentially look out for them,
to protect them from forces outside the ship, to protect

(09:59):
them from the bureaucracy, to take the blame when something
goes wrong. The bucks should stop with the CEO, and
Pike embodies this perfectly. He is the warm, caring, loving
heart at the core of this version of Enterprise. And
this series, I think is eventually going to be about
seeing Pike go on this journey where he realizes that

(10:22):
exploration for its own sake is a joy and it's
worth doing up until the last moment when you can't
do it anymore. And of course, what we know that
Pike doesn't yet know because we've seen the Menagerie, is
that what he thinks is going to be his death
or which is going to be the end of the
life that he knew. He's hasn't realized yet that you know.

(10:45):
Eventually what's going to happen this Spock is going to
take him back to the Telsians, who are going to
free him from the prison of his mind and give
him at least a virtual version of the life he deserves.
So it's interesting to get the life that he deserves.
Pike is going to have to learn to let go
of depression, let go of cynicism, let go of you know, resentment,

(11:11):
and it said, embrace the joy of life for every
single minute that you've got it until you don't got it.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
I appreciate those broad strokes. And by the way, I
really I agree with you in terms of I love
the fact that he cooks for his crew. You know,
I had the pleasure of interviewing Celia and Ethan Peck
on a convention panel and I asked them if they
thought Starfleet was a military organization or not. And it

(11:38):
was funny because and I think also to play with me.
You know, first of all, you think gave me this
looked like really, we're going to do this, and it's
fantastic that the crowd went ooh, like what's going to happen?
And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not looking for
an argument. I just want to know what you think
because and I really appreciate what you're saying, David, because honestly,
I have to feel sometimes that it's not military enough
at least this iteration. It not that in terms of

(12:01):
the way Pike cooks for his crew, but I mean no,
and then it just feels like there's a level of,
if not in subordination, a questioning of the captain's call
on something he asked for other opinions, which is great
and I think a good leader should do that and
it shows his shade as opposed to say a Kirk
or something like that. But I do sometimes wonder if

(12:21):
the military kind of gets away from the show. And
you'll forgive me, but I you know, again, I think
you spell a well in your books, and I don't
expect you to, you know, answer for the show necessarily, But.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Well, I can't because I'm not in the room. I
don't know what informs their decisions. I don't know what
conversations they've had about it, so I don't know whether
it's a conscious choice or whether it's simply a reflection of,
you know, what they feel star Trek should feel like.
I'm not going to second guess them because I'm not
in the road. I will say that from my perspective,

(12:55):
even with what we've been shown on Strange New Worlds,
Starfleet is is inarguably a military organization. Is its organizational
structure is military. Whatever else you might want to say
about it, that does not mean that it's ethos is militaristic,
and I think the difference that what you're feeling here,
it's not that the organization is not military and structure,

(13:18):
it unmistakably is. They have capital shifts capable of wiping
out planets. They are the sole authorized form of state
violence in defense of the state that's military. They have
courts martial, which by definition can exist only in a
military organization separate from the civilian system of justice. They
have the Starfleet Code of Uniform Justice, which can only

(13:41):
exist separate from a civilian code of law. By definition,
they are a military structured organization. What is different is
that they are not They don't represent the same kind
of militaristic ethos that we see in twentieth and twenty
first century military on Earth because they are more an

(14:02):
exploratory agency that is charged with national defense. So they
have a national defense role. They have an internal security
role to protect interstellar shipping, to basically watch the border.
But they also have a task a charge that militaries
haven't had really since maybe the seventeenth or eighteenth century

(14:23):
on Earth, which it used to be that the military,
along with the merchant class, shared responsibility for explorations, seeking
out new trade routes, finding new places to go, new lands,
new islands not yet discovered, braving seas not yet crossed.
This used to be one of the great adventures, and
it used to be that only military vessels with the

(14:45):
backing of governments, had the financial resources and the manpower
to undertake these kinds of missions. So what we see
in star Trek is a return to that where although
you have some daring civilian and who are very bold
and are willing to go out beyond the edges of
the frontier and find ways to make it happen, a

(15:08):
lot of the exploration that is done by the Federation,
A lot of that, you know, the first steps in
spreading out is taken by Starfleet. Starfleet is back in
the role that we saw in Master and Commander. It's
back in the role of people like Magellan who are
basically guarding the way forward for all those who are

(15:28):
going to follow them. So this is more of an
exploratory group. These are scientists, these are explorers, these are diplomats,
but they just happen to have been through a military
academy so that they know how to run a warship.
And because they are on a worship in space, the
least forgiving environment known to human beings. You have to

(15:49):
have the hierarchy of command. Gifts cannot function as democracies.
There's a reason why ships function with a captain and
an autocracy and a chain of command, because if they
don't that he go down and everybody on them dies.
That's why. Now, could there be a more military sounding

(16:11):
way to go about a stranging world. Sure, but that's
not what the writers are about. That's not what the
show is about. As against I said, what the show
is about is Pipe of Journey, and his personality is
one that he sort of has a loose and informal take.
He has given up on the pretenses of the you know,

(16:31):
the bold, untouchable commander. He's thrown that out the window.
That means nothing to him anymore. That whole sort of
captain is above it all persona. He's dispensed with it.
He has no more use for it. What he wants
and what serves his needs emotionally as a character is
to bond with the people around him, to form relationships,

(16:55):
to understand and trust them implicitly. And so that's really
you know, he's coming at it. Like I said, he's
more of the warm, paternal heart at the core of
a family, a found family as it is that is
going out into space in exploration. So in that respect,
the writers I think are taking the approach and it
should feel more like a family of people who are generally,

(17:19):
you know, good natured and generally you aligned in the
same direction and care about one another. But occasionally we'll
come into disagreement or conflict with one another, and they
just don't want the sort of the cold slammed down
of the military. Well, you know that's a subordinate or
you know, you can't question that superior officer that goes

(17:40):
out the window when you approach it as this is
a found family, and what Ike is trying to encourage
among these officers is a sense of camaraderie, a sense
of unity, and a sense of illness. So in that respect,
I can see why from an aesthetic perspective, I embracing

(18:01):
more military idioms does not serve their storytelling needs.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Okay, I you know I made the point of it
doesn't have to be the Marines. It could be the
coast Guard, and the Coastguard still has the military structure.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
And you know that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
And also I always felt that, especially when it was
greater in the sixties, it was a combination of that
and the Peace Corps, where they were kind of going
to undeveloped countries and going, hey, we can up you
a clean water, we can help you with our resources
to make your civilization better, and that seemed to be
the ethos of the original series.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Well, well, the Peace Corps doesn't have sixteen inch guns
and Camp embardos planning to last for more. But otherwise
I think your meeting sure. But you know, no, I mean,
if you want to have that kind of show, I mean,
if you've got you know, access to Amazon Prime. There's
a great Australian show from about sixteen years ago called
Sea Patrol. Yes, I love Seat Patrol. I was I

(18:56):
was binging it back at the beginning of the year
when I was, you know, writing this. So you'll probably notice, uh,
the characters on the ship that is rescued at the
end of Ring of Fire, they're all named after the
characters from Seat Patrol.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Fantastic. I didn't notice that. That's excellent, man, go.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Through it's all the characters from Sea Patrol. That's a
great thing. Man, that's fun. And also trying to drop
these Easter eggs in they're obscure, but for those who
get them, they're fun. That's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
It's been a while since I've seen Sea Patrol, but
I definitely watched a bit of it on amazonic oh,
you know, in the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
So that's great.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
And I also, hey, you're you're going through a black hole,
You're going through a strange new world. And I love
the stuff that's happening on the space station as well,
but also the balance of because and I'll be honest,
I'm not crazy about it, but I know it's part
of the show, the inner relationships, and it really does.
There's a lot of you know, Riverdale High kind of

(19:54):
romance going on, and certainly On and Spock and you know,
Pike and Bettel, Right, that's what the show is.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
It is what it is, as as as don't fraternize
with the enlisted personnel.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
But balancing telling the science picture because honestly, I think
you do it well.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
I've appreciated in all your books.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
And also we're going to get to con if if
we can, because you know you're wrapped up con Oh,
why what's the matter with talking con Well, I mean.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
It says you have to get that usually preapproved by
cibious publicity. But as long as we keep in general,
we should be able to talk about it all right.
But I can't. I can't go into any sort of
real behind the scenes stuff because I was there for most.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Of it, Okay, because I mean, yeah I did. I
mean I did have a couple of questions and if
you can't answer then, but yeah, the balancing the relationships
with the sci fi do is that how does that
work for you?

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Well, obviously they're important to the storytelling on Strange Worlds.
Uh be tell you know so? Again represents Pike trying
to embrace happiness in the now, and yet the universe
seems to conspire to take it away from him at
every chance. What's interesting about the Spock's storyline, first with

(21:13):
Chapel in season one and two, and then in season
three we had the introduction of him in Laan and
the complication of doctor Roger Corby. What's interesting about this
is specifically the fact that it is during this period
of time, under this warm, paternal, protective environment that is

(21:33):
created by Pike, that Spock feels finally comfortable enough to
explore the human side of his personality. This is in
contrast to the cold, domineering father he had in Sarek,
who basically made him suppress his human side, who at
all times encouraged Spock to embody and reflect only his

(21:57):
Vulcan upbringing and his Vulcan ancestry. And then suddenly you
have Pike. Ike, in a lot of ways, represents a
second father for Spock. He is the human father. He
is the human side of his nature. He is warmthed,
he is friendship, he is loved. And so it is
under this, you know, this different paradigm it Spock has

(22:20):
the courage, has the freedom to explore this other side
of himself, to get to know it, and eventually he's
going to choose a more disciplined Vulcan approach that we're
going to see in place by Tos. But it makes
sense to me that in order to know himself, to
know his own mind, and to make a holistic decision

(22:41):
about what is right for him, he has to know
what is my human side, what is my Vulcan side?
Is one dominant? Is the other? Not? Which one feels
more natural to me? Should I explore my emotions. Should
I control them more? Should I control them less? It
is natural that a young man is going to want
to answer these questions through experience, and the only way

(23:04):
to get that experience is to do things and to
have relationships and interact with other people. So I actually
find Spock's journey through this part of his nature at
this point in time completely plausible because of the second
father paradigm he is going with Pike, which perfectly fits
Pike's Hall paradigm. It makes sense to me in terms

(23:24):
of where he is in his life, who he is
under the command of Fiight, and just like he's a
child of two worlds in this respecting now as a
child of two fathers. And this is why Spock is
willing to go to such lengths for him in the Menagerie,
in cos it's not just that this was his former
commanding officer. It's not just that this was his favorite captain.

(23:46):
This is his second father. This is the father of
his human heart. This guy means the world to spot
the world to him. He will bend every rule, he
will break every rule. He will go to the end
of the universe for this guy. This is his second father.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I'm hip to that and I agree with you, but
I know that from where we are in Menagerie, and
we got a little bit of it what you're describing
in the first season, but I feel like it hasn't
manifested as much as they tried to pay attention to
their characters, which I'm for. You're on an ensemble show,
and I think that was one of the problems with Discovery.

(24:25):
And again, David, I apologize because you're not here to
answer for the ethos of the show, but I am
with you, and I just I wish i'd see more
of it in the show. I would assume that you're
putting more of it in your book, though well.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
I have one and a half seasons left to go.
This particular book, Ring of Fire is not necessarily about
that Spocky relationship and that aspect of it. Although if
I had an opportunity to write another strange New World's book,
that might be something I would really want to dig into,
just because I find it to be a fascinating dynamic.
Couldn't agreement. And while I, you know, appreciate and respect

(25:03):
that you have your your criticisms of the series and
maybe other modern iterations of track. I have a responsibility
when I'm writing as a Talian writer to find what,
to find what it is I love about the property,
to embrace it and to channel it. And also it

(25:24):
is not my place as a Talian writer to second
guest the creative decisions of those who are creating the
property on which my works are based. So while I
respect your right to have critical opinions, don't expect me
to echo them back to you.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
No, man, it's it, And again I agree to disagree,
and then it won't keep me from watching this show. Yeah, man,
it's cool. And but also you know, but in your book,
of course, you've got that great the scenes with Lawn
and Spot discussing their relationship, and you got Spock saying, hey,
this Kirk guy, you know, what's what's up with him?

Speaker 1 (25:59):
And what were you doing there?

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, and again this is early, so I accept it.
But also there is just like, oh man, I don't
you know again I get I guess I'm sentimental and
I'm like, I don't want to see my friends that
lounge and get pissed about a girl and everything, which
is cracking me up.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Again, you'll see I got to smile on my face,
you know, so I disagree, but I also have entertained.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Well, it's also because I knew at the time I
wrote it, I had all the scripts for season three,
so I knew where season three was going, okay, and
I know that, and I know that by the end
of season three, Spock and Kirk are going to bond,
which again makes total sense to me. I remember back
in my youth, way way back when, when I was
like maybe thirteen, fourteen something, that between eighth grade and

(26:44):
start of high school, one of my buddies who lived
like diagonally across the street, his family hosted a girl
from France, French foreign exchange student for the summer, and
she came over. Her name was Karenne Crazy. I was
pretty about Brint. Of course, so was my other friend Jimmy.
Jim was also crazy about grind and we basically both

(27:07):
spent the whole summer pursuing her, and she turned us
into into rivals, and whatever I knew to thought, we
would have never spoken to each other again, except that
on the day she leaves, you know, and we're we
both come out like the night before, we're both like,
oh yeah, well, yeah, maybe I'll be there. Maybe I'll
see her off, maybe I want who cares, you know,
And then of course we're both there like bright and early,

(27:28):
like thirty minutes before she's supposed to leave. We waved
goodbye to the car as the family drives her off
to the to the airport, and we sort of stand there,
me and Jimmy in silence, and our friends driveway, and
the cargoes around the bend at the end of the
road was gone, and we're silent for a few seconds,
and I go, so, yeah, hungry, I got them eggs
and cheese. We can make an omelet or something. He goes, yeah,

(27:49):
I could eat. And it was like we went right
back to where we were before the girl showed up,
and suddenly we were back to buds and it's like,
let's go make an omelet.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's hilarious, fantastic the you know, I like Laana as
a character, but that NOONI and singh thing.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Man, it just again, how do you? I mean?

Speaker 2 (28:07):
That's and truly another thing with Patel as well, and
I listen, I love that. I think it was a
great relationship. I think, honestly, Melinda or forgive me, and
now I'm forgetting her name, the actress's name, Battel. But
she was great, and she was great. I went on
Earth for that matter as well. Oh yeah, Melanie, Melanie, Melanie,

(28:28):
thank you, Melanie Scraffano.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Indeed, so she's great. But again we read the phone book.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Honestly, I think she was the MVP of season three.
I really do no disrespect to the others, but really
she had a great, clear storyline, and I know she
delivered it well. But you know, and and of course
we had there it's a wonderful life ten minute you know,
montage of what their life could have been. But it
when you know at the end that the Telosians have

(28:56):
this revirtual Yeah, you you know where I'm going, man,
because and again it's not their fault because Verena, you know,
is there in the in the in the cage and
even in the discovery episode, and it's like, well when't
he you can't help but being a Star Trek fan
and go, yeah, how come she's not how come he's
not thinking about Battel, So any thoughts on.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Them, Well, we don't know that he didn't think about Patel.
What we know is that they reunite him with Verna
because she's still there, right, uh. And we know that
he had a bond of some kind with Verna and
he was sad to leave her behind. We don't know
what life they just for all we know they go

(29:37):
into captivity together as friends, and maybe she has her
imaginary lover and he has his. Maybe they give him
back Totel. We don't know. We weren't there, we didn't
live his life. We don't know. So I'm just gonna
let that one go. And also, because this whole issue
with Mattel and the Wonderful Life sequels, you gotta remember,

(29:58):
although we know Menaj he is coming, it does not sure.
Absolutely this is still a very real emotional loss for Pike. Absolutely,
and so I think. But we've still got a season
and a half to go. We don't know what the
crew is going to go through, aside from being turned
into puppets for some reason, which frankly I'm there for.

(30:19):
So I'm ready to take the ride. I don't care.
I'm having fun. I mean maybe i'll you know, the
next New World's book, I'll do, It'll be the muppet
versions of the characters on the book. Per see. I
may ask for I'll probably say no. But I'll ask hilarious.
But you know, we don't know what's going to happen
over the next season and a half. We don't know

(30:41):
what journey left, you know, is left for Pike emotionally
between where we've left him at the end of season
three and where we're gonna find him. So there's there's
a lot of game left to play. There's a lot
of game left, fair.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Enough, man, No, And again, I love it. It's fantastic
and really hate Honestly, I liked the way you had
Pike lamenting over Batel in your book and everything. And
then yeah, and also honestly, I think a great book
can walk between the rain drops, and I think that's
what you're doing with this. And obviously you're saying it

(31:14):
between the Kirk Farragut and first time in command and
what is Starfleet to documentary and everything, and it's like, Okay,
we know where we are.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah. I mean, when I read through all the scripts
for the season, my part of what I was looking
for was a place that had a gap in the
chronology big enough to fit a story, big enough to
fit a novel, because a lot of the continuity on
the new shows is so tight that there's just no
gap between episodes. Sometimes it's like no worry, where you
can sneak something in. So when I found this gap,

(31:47):
I was like, Okay, that's perfect. And then what I
had to do was find out what is the state
of play of the various interpersonal relationships, who's absent, who's there,
who's in conflict, what are the issues? And what I
saw was that at that phase of season three, Spaking
Laan have started. You know, they're together, but they're not

(32:08):
sure where they are. It's starting to get weird, and
part of it is just that Laan is not in
the commitment and the weird emotional triangle that's going on
with her Chapel and Spock. It's not that Chapel still
pines for Spock, or that Spaka even necessarily pines for Chapel.
The issue here is that Chapel is worried that she's

(32:29):
hurt Spock's feelings to the point where she's lost Spock
as a friend at a time when she really would
still like to have his counsel and his trust. So
she's worried that she's lost him as a friend and
doesn't know how to fix that. Laan is worried that
Spock is putting all this pressure on her to create
this committed relationship, but she's not even really sure she
wants It's never really been her nature to pursue this

(32:52):
kind of thing. And then he doesn't know whether he's
supposed to pursue a committed relationship with Laan or keep
it casual with Lowe on. He doesn't know the ins
and outs of you know, the mating ritual as he
might refer to it, or the social you know, morays,
the niceties of it all. He doesn't know the tricks.
It's like he's trying to speak a language he's never

(33:13):
been taught, and he's learning it on the fly. What
is the language of a relationship? What is a love language?
And he doesn't have the vocabulary yet, So he's working
on And so I looked at all these various elements
and this struggle that's going on between the three of them,
which is not really a love triangle so much as
three people who are continually misunderstanding each other. And then

(33:33):
we resolve that by putting them under crisis together, putting
them into action together, and letting their actions reveal what
they feel about each other. By how far they're willing
to go for one another. So that was part of it.
And then the fun bit for anyone who has finished
watching the season, if you've seen four and a half Balkans,

(33:53):
there's a scene near the end where Laan is talking
with Una and Una keeps putting on the spot, what
is going on with you in spot? Why does this
feel weird? And finally, you know, Ln costs up. She says,
I found a pair of his socks in my quarters
today and UNA's like, dirty socks, no, no, clean socks

(34:14):
folded in a drawer. I want to are we those people?
Is he putting socks and drawers? And of course what
I have at the end of my book is I
set up the whole easter egg. If he's trying to
find some grand gesture, some bow jests that will allow
him to non pressure without applying any pressure, so on,
that he cares and that he wants to have more

(34:35):
of a relationship. And somebody tells them, well, don't you
remember when you were at the academy they would do
leave behind you leave behind something in the other person's apartment,
and it's a way of sort of marking your territory.
And showing it together. And so someone said, and he's like,
I know what I will do. I will leave a
pair of clean socks in that empty drawer in her quarters,
and that will be my bow jest. That will go her.

(34:55):
How much I care what she sees is why the
hell is he leaving socks in my op?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, it reminds me of about last Night, the movie
that Madman wrote and everything, and then they and Rob
Low and Demi Moory have that conversation, Wow, a whole drawer.
I can have a drawer. And I mean, come on, man,
we've all been there, We've.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
All had our relationships like that. Absolutely, man, that transitional phase.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
So no, I I I I get it, and I
appreciate that. That's fantastic, so very very fun. Honestly, man,
I had a lot of fun with that. You got
you got the voice of the show down.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Man.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
I'm telling you, I hear the key is? Do you
hear the characters in the tie in novels? And truly, David,
I felt that way about a lot of your books.
The Destiny series you did was great. I loved your work.
I loved your work on Coda. Coda was oh, you know,
I'm a comic book guy. I mean, this is crisis
signifinite tracks in the.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
I never read. Oh that's insane, that's it.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Well, it didn't matter because and also the way you
got brought back those aliens from Time zero, which always
had an interesting idea, it was like, you know, yeah,
and it's like we didn't know enough about him. And
I don't know which of the three it was three
of you, right there, Rod Coda altogether.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, it was me, Dayton Lord and James.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Swallow okay, and you and Dayton I know obviously did
Destiny with a different third writer.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
I believe right. No, Destiny was all me.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Oh, I beg your pardon excuse me? Oh, you know
I wrote all three books. I forget which other series
maybe that you did Vanguard? Oh excuse me? It was yes,
which and also.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Dude, yeah, Vanguard Saga.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Let me tell you, honestly, this is what I think
New Trek needs to do. Let's hear about different people.
You can you can explore the same area and it's
fun to maybe have people pop in and see recognizable characters.
I'm all about a new crew. I think Chris can't well,
it's doing a great job.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
At id w right.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Now he's got that red Shirt series and stuff over there. Yeah, yeah,
And it's like, hey, anything can happen. We don't know this,
we don't know this crew. We don't know what the
hell's gonna happen as crew. That's another thing that I
think is rough exploring a prequel, you know, And I'm
all about it's not the destination, it's the journey getting
to the destination. So I respect that, but like, you know,

(37:14):
some of the cliff hangars are like, well, there's plot
armor for Scotti and Ahura and other people that might
be under you know, temporary duress until we get to
the first episode of the following season.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
But it's like, yeah, everything's going to be life and death.
Life and death is not the only form of dramatically
interesting material. There are other things that can happen to
these characters other than their life is in jeopardy. You
can challenge you can challenge their preconceptions, you can challenge
their morals. You can have them go through loss and heartbreak,

(37:45):
you can have them go through transformative experiences. All of
these are dramatically worthwhile explorations. A character does not have
to be mortally vulnerable within the context of a story
in order to tell an interesting story about the effects
that they or the emotions they experienced as a result
of an experience. So it's there is more to life,

(38:10):
more to storytelling. Then will they live or die? All right?

Speaker 2 (38:14):
That's for I had no idea. And it is this
correct that a couple of Deep Space nine episodes were
based on story pitches of yours.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, I co wrote two episodes.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, okay, so Starship Down and Starship.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Down with it was my pet yea with John Jay
or it over and paper Moon, right, Paper Moon, which
started out as a very different concept, also pitched by
me and John at the same time we pitched Starship Down.
We pitched both of those at the same time, after
the end of season three, actually, when maybe season three

(38:49):
was wrapping up, we were pitching those and then obviously
we wrote Starship Down for season four, and then the
other one just went through develop and notes for like
three years because they liked the idea that we pitched,
but they weren't sure how to use it. They weren't
sure where it would fit in what they were doing,

(39:11):
and so they did their best with it, and then
after about three years They finally said, we could do this,
we could do this, We could use it like this
and we could drop it in here. They said, okay,
send it back to mac and Ordover and have them
rewrite the outline. So we get a call from Ron
Moore says, okay, we know you pitched this. Now we
need you to write an outline based on this. We

(39:32):
need four to five pages. We need this. And it's
nog Is, you know, sealed himself inside the Vegas holidack
thing where he insists on doing his rehab whatever. He said, Okay,
why has he chosen to wall himself off in Vic
Fontaine's hollow Suite program for his rehab? And I swear
to god this is Ron Moore's actual answer. How the

(39:55):
hell do I know it's your story? Okay, sure, so
I go away. And basically it's funny. We John and
I have the written by credit on storryship Down that
went to but that went through like five in house
rewrites by Rideekavaria before it was approved by the showrunner

(40:17):
and went into production. Very little of our actual work
survived onto the screen, but we still have the writing
credit for a couple of our keen reasons about credit
and producers they want to save their credits for the
episodes that they originate, and this was a freelance episode,
so they figured just give us the credit. So whereas

(40:40):
you have the Paper Moon where John and I are
credited with story by and teleplays by Ron Moore. Okay,
but it was done very fast, like the need to
turn this thing around, you know, in the middle of
you know, they're trying to wrap up the series and
they need this one done to follow Siege v R.
Five to five eight. And it got turned around very fast,

(41:01):
and as a result, it didn't go through a lot
of heavy rewrites. A lot more of the actual words
that John and I wrote in that outline made it
onto the screen. A lot more of ideas that we
brought to the outline made it onto the screen than
did in the episode where we're credited as written by.
So it's kind of funny even though we only had

(41:22):
story credit, a lot more of our work made it
onto the screen for that episode. So I have a
lot of pride in how that episode turned out. It's
meant a lot to a lot of people who gotten
a lot of emails over the last couple of decades,
a lot of them from wounded soldiers or soldiers who
would binge watch DS nine while on deployment in Iraq

(41:44):
or Afghanistan because there's nothing else to do. And it
meant a lot because a lot of them who had
friends who had lost limbs in combat and had to
go through stuff like this, understood exactly what the mindset
of Nog is in the set, and I had some
inkling of it because when I was twenty one, I

(42:04):
was pretty badly hurt in a car accident. I was
a passenger in a car that got t boned on
July fourth, and I ended up, you know, having to
learn to walk again. It took me six months in
therapy to walk. And so I had this you know,
taste of mortality at the age of twenty one. That
sort of you know, showed me. It's like it's very

(42:25):
easy for everything you think you have to get taken
away in a blink. So when we were asked, you know,
to figure out what's going on in Nog's head, I
just wrote back, I just went back to that experience
where you think maybe you're about to die, You're in
a car, you've been hit, you're spinning. The whole world
as a blur, and then everything comes to a stop

(42:45):
as your car wraps around a telephone pole and they
have to cut you out with dogs of life and
you can't walk, and I'm like, will I walk again?
I don't know, And so I take that it's like
and suddenly I realized, this is what now he's afraid of.
He's like, if they can blow my leg off today,
they can blow my head off tomorrow. I'm not invulnerable

(43:07):
when you're young, when you're in your twenties, you're a fool,
You're an idiot. Your brain isn't even fully formed yet.
Till you're like twenty six, you think you're invulnerable. You
think you're invincible, you can defeat anything, nothing can touch you.
You're immortal. You think you're immortal. And then something like
this happens. Now gets his leg shot off, or I

(43:28):
get my back screwed up in a car accident, and
suddenly all those illusions go away, they're gone, and you
realize I could have died right there right then. Now.
I's thinking that should have been a little further up,
that had blown my guts out, my whole torso would
be gone. I'd be dead a little further up. They
could take my head off next time, and I got
to go back out there. Everybody's calling me a hero.

(43:50):
I'm not a hero. I'm a kid that his leg
got off, and I don't want to go back out
I'm no hero. I don't want to go back out there.
But I have two and this is what I'm just
coping with. He's got major PTSD. And it was because
of the experiences of the research I did for that,
the way that episode was received a number of years later,

(44:13):
I ended up co writing a book called No Turning
Back with an Iraq war veteran named Brian Anderson. He
was an army MP. He was driving I think somewhere
in it might have bagged, but it was somewhere in
a rack and their humby got hit by an ied.
He lost both legs I think above the knee. He

(44:36):
lost most of his left arm. I think, you know,
maybe from like the elbow down. So he was like
a triple AMPTE. And he was got like eighteen months
at Walter Reid, but he came out with this whole
sort of reinvigorated, you know, you know, lust for life,
and he realized that, you know when you're a triple ampt.

(44:57):
You can do stunts on screen nobody else can do,
like simulating limbs being blown off without CGI. And he
realized he wanted to be an actor. He wanted to
be a stuntman. He became a spokesperson for a company
that makes mobility, you know, motorized assisting devices for mobility
so that you can get around. And you know, he

(45:21):
just he made the most of his life. You think that,
you know, what, what can you do something like that?
He learned a snowboard. Sure, yeah, the guy does more
daring stuff after than I've ever done in my life.
It's amazing. That's cool. So so I wrote this book
with him about his experiences and about what he learned

(45:43):
from it, and how other people, even those who have
not gone through that kind of trauma, can learn from
his trauma. How to move through, how to you know,
refuse to accept limitation, how to cope with the loss,
how to cope with the change. So he sort of
just he takes you on his whole journey of denial,

(46:03):
of suffering, of anger, of resentment, and then also finally
to acceptance and then too how to thrive. So yeah,
it was really kind of a lot of that began
with the fact that I had that experience of my own.
Then I channeled it into that episode, and that was
what put me on the radar, that led me to
work on that book with him.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Wow, that's that's an incredible story, and I'm glad the
guy turned what a terrible situation into opportunity and then
really a good life for himself as best as he can.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
That's amazing. That's incredible. He's a remarkable man.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
And Aaron, my guy just you know, acted the hell
out of your guy's story.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
I mean, he realized he was beautiful. What a performance.
A toured of course, he and h and the guy
who played Vic Fontaine.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Oh god, Jimmy Darren, Yes, Jimmy Dearmon is always just fantastic.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, they were both so great and it was Yeah,
it had the distinction as an episode of being the
only one where a pair of recurring players took the
a story and dominated the majority of the episode and
the most of the top line cast just faded into
the background. And it was the strength of the writing
that the da Steine writers had done over the preceding

(47:13):
seven seasons to develop nog from Punk Kid on the
promenade to kid has potential, gets sponsored to the Academy
by Benjamin Cisco, and becomes a young soldier in wartime
officer on the Rise. What an arc? What an arc?
I mean, Nog has one of the most amazing character arcs.

(47:34):
And he wasn't even above the line passed. He was
a supporting player and he has this amazing story. And
it's a tribute to the strength of the writing on
DAS nine and the strength of its concept that they
could do an episode like that.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Absolutely, man, Now I'm with you. You know, I got to
interview Andrew Robinson about Garrick. I feel the same way
Jadie Hertzler with Martok, and it is these other characters
that had incredible arcs and it was so great it
got even.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
The way you owns. I mean, yeah, yeah, you know
that's what truly.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
DS nine of the spinoffs is really my favorite, of
my favorite evolvom do you have a favorite?

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Oh, dear nine. If I'm choosing from among the TV shows, VS.
Nine will always be my favorite, just because I loved
what it did, how it did it, the complexity, the
nuance of the writing, the virtuosity of the writing, team
and the production team. And I mean I'd be lying
if I said I was incightedly biased by the fact
that it's where my career started. My writing career started

(48:36):
on Deep Space Time. That was my first professional credit
as a story writer, as a fiction writer. Wow, that's
my first professional credit was an episode written by on
Star Trek DS nine. That's where I started, thirty years ago. Wow.
In fact, it was almost exactly thirty years ago at
the episode aired.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
That's amazing. That's fantastic, man, it is insane how time flies.
Star Trek con a, right, A few questions. First of all,
I really enjoyed the story. I really did. And also, again,
like your novels, I think you did a great level
of science fiction and plausible science. I appreciated. And I'm
gonna spoil the you know it came out and.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
The whole story is out there. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah, so and my my, I've been reviewing the episodes
as I've gone on, but I loved that they came
up with an idea to conquer the eels, the worms,
and and it was well, you know, we can we
can make, you know, the building blocks of glass, and
we can inject them. And they will almost eat themselves alive.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Am I right? Isn't that kind of well that idea
if you ever had to deal with bed bugs, that's
diet to maxious earth. There you go. That's what it is,
and it's essentially dietamaicious earth is a mechanical insecticide. And
the way it works is it's essentially from these little
monocellular organisms called diatoms. They fossilized, they become the sort

(49:58):
of last crystalline thing, which turns into these microscopic crystalline shards,
which is you know, for an ant or a bed
bug or some other things. It's like trying to walk
over broken glass. What happens is the shattered diatoms spread
the outer carapis, the exoskeleton of the insect, basically destroying it.

(50:23):
They just eventually they fall apart, their carapus falls apart,
it gets infected, their spiracles get blocked, and they die.
And the best part about it is they can't evolve
immunity to it. Is it's not a pesticide. It's not
a chemical. It is a mechanical pesticide. It is essentially
a way to grind them down into dirt.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
That's I'm telling you man, no, that was great and
that's that's that is flying.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
I learned that because I had to deal with bedbugs once.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Applying science to science fiction, that's wonderful. And that's sometimes
I worry again, I'm sorry TV TV comment. You know,
I worry that sometimes the science fiction isn't there like
it used to be. You know, I didn't know about
the dyce in sphere until the Relics that TNG episode
with Scotty and it's like, oh man, that's a really

(51:13):
and even though that was just you know, the c
story in that or whatever, it's like, no, but that's
a cool concept. And every now and then, you know,
I just feel like in modern Star Trek that the
science fiction is kind of gone and all they you.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Know that I would disagree, for instance, that last season
of Discovery Please with dealing with the species that they
kind of that they realize is behind all the sort
of weirdness. Uh I think it was, yes, I know,
And they realize that you have to communicate with it
through its all factory sensus. It communicates through scinse scent,

(51:51):
transmits ideas and represents concepts. They have to decode its
sent language. It's all factory language. This is fascinating. This
is a species that doesn't communicate by pulses of light
or by sound. It needs tent, which is just It's
a fascinating concept which had never occurred to me before.

(52:11):
And I thought that it was brilliantly worked out by
the characters applying science, applying the scientific method, thinking like explorers,
thinking like people who are trained to think outside of
the box. I think it's a really awesome science fictional concept,
and I thought that Discovery executed it beautifully in season four.
I really loved what they did with that. It surprised

(52:32):
me in a lot of ways. So I think that
that was pretty cool. I think that, you know, obviously,
Picard did some interesting stuff with the whole synthetic bodies
and following up on the consciousness transfer. That's say, I
don't think. I think I did it better in the
Told Equations trilogy, but that's just me. I'm an egotist,

(52:52):
of course. I think that I like those books.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
The Cold Equation books are great, man, I guess, yeah, yeah,
I like to think they worked out honestly anyway.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yeah, but the fact that Picard came back to that
and continue to explore that I thought was fascinating. It
raised a lot of interesting ethical questions, a lot of
scientific questions that I think they could have dug into,
but obviously they went in a different direction. So I think,
you know, I don't think that the new shows shy
away from science fictional ideas. I think Strange New Worlds

(53:24):
has also done some fun stuff I don't love, like
the fact that the Gorn feel more like Xena Moors
from the Alien franchise. I feel like, if you wanted
that kind of a creature, sure have that kind of
creature just given another name, created new characters, yest, creative,
new species. But I now have to work with the
fact that this is the Gorn. And here's the funny thing.

(53:49):
If anybody can reccon this stuff together, it's probably me.
If you ever want, if you remember watching like TNG
and d Stein back in the nineties, they would always
be referenced saying the Breen and then if you finally
that to see the Breen with their funny little snout
masks and there they're weird garbled machine language. And the

(54:09):
thing is, you know, you kept having people say, well,
no one's actually ever seen a brain under their c
but someone has and was this and then they say, well, no,
it's actually this. And if you pull all together all
the different canon descriptions from characters who say they've seen it,
or they know this, or they've personally experienced this, and
you put all the details together, they don't fit. There's

(54:30):
no way that all the things these characters all described
from firsthand experience telling you that you know, no, the
Brain are like this. You put them on together, you go,
those aren't the same species. And eventually I wrote a
book for the Typhon Pact mini series called Zero Sum
Game where I took us inside the Brain Confederacy and

(54:54):
my solution to this set of you know, weird, uh,
you know, mutually exclusive contradictory details about the Breen. Because
people say, well, you know, don't you, as a time writer,
then have to pick which one is true? I said, no,
they're all true. That's the whole point. Look at the
name of their political organization. They're a confederacy. A confederacy,

(55:19):
by its definition, is a whole bunch of independent states
or in this case, planets, which may very likely be
populated by a variety of species. They come together. Breen
is not a species Breen is a social construct. The
Breen uniforms are created to anonymize. They are created to

(55:41):
hide the actual species because they accommodate the features of
any member of the Confederacy, so they're always changing it.
Some of them require refrigerations, some require other things, some
require different gas mixtures. Some of them just require armor.
Some of them require mechanical assistance. Why nobody uses all

(56:01):
these different experiences. They're all true, that's the point. They're
all true. But it also creates an opportunity for me
to develop. You know, what is the political strife within
the Confederacy. They have an underground movement. They got people
who don't want to live anonymized. There's this whole notion
of forced equality. They're like a dark vision. I made

(56:23):
them into a dark vision of the Federation, where it's
equality by enforcements, not aspiring to equality, not a quality
of opportunity, not a quality of outcome. But they're getting
a quality of outcome by diminishing everybody to lowest common denominator.
And the inspiration for that was a Curt Vonnegut story

(56:44):
called Harrison Bird ron Sure, where the truly talented people
are handicapped. They're forced to wear headphones that blast noise
under their heads and give them headaches. They're given blinders
so they can't see as well. They're weighted down so
that they can't be as graceful or as quick, and
somehow Harrison Bergron just manages to throw it all off.

(57:04):
And you know, so that was the expression is I
took Harrison Burgron uh and applied it to a whole
culture and developed this thing about the Breen. So if
I can do that for the brain, give me a
little time, I'll figure out the Gorn. I'll sort that
ship right out. Like people say, oh, why was the

(57:25):
Gorn so slow an arena, I'm like, didn't you hear
when the sun do this thing? They kind of go
into sleep dormancy mode. Clearly, the Metrons put this arena
planet in a system where that starlight was at a
frequency that was going to cause this Gorn to slow
down because they knew that was the only way to
give Kirk a fighting chance. They even the odds by

(57:45):
putting them on a planet that would trigger the dormancy
stage for the Gorn. That's why he's so damn slow.
That's hilarious, man. Well, now you want absolutely man, did
see did they use any of your brain? I disc
that was.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Seemed uniform and discovery? No, no, okay, no, but.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
It's okay because that's nine hundred years later, and who
knows the comparatist we could have collapsed. One species could
have taken over as the dominant role and put the
others into subservience. Maybe some sort of genetic engineering program
happened and they fused. We don't know. Y's nine hundred
years later, so what do I care? Well?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
And I respect that, and that's why I don't know
if we're going to get an explanation of the Cardassian
Klingon woman hybrid, but certainly it does open questions as
far as Starfleet Academy goes and what they've shown us.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
So I hear you, man, what are you gonna do? Well?

Speaker 2 (58:37):
I want to know, and I don't know if you're
able to answer this. But regarding Star Trek Cun, you
guys had a line of dialogue from Leir to Kuvac
regarding the Reliant not missing the count of SETI alpha planets,
and it's in the script where she's like, and I
love this, and I was really hoping that it was
going to be explained in terms of hey, like did

(58:59):
they forget how to count? There are five plants when
there should be six? So you know, we was that
a possible opportunity to have Walter Kanig do a couple
of lines or like, I don't know, are you able
to explain it?

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah? Actually we had a solution all worked out. It
got cut because it didn't serve the plot, and we
had to trim minutes off these episodes wherever we could
sure and it ended up just being one of those
things where the first reason was it didn't serve the plot,
two we needed to trim for time, and three the

(59:33):
explanation really would have worked better in a visual medium
with animation. But we did actually have the mechanics worked out.
We found an actual star system that has been discovered
and been documented that has a phenomenon that tracts perfectly
with this. It's basically got a really unusual set of
orbital patterns for planets that are locked into this weird thing.

(59:57):
What they do is the in and out of planet.
Because they're so close together, at certain points, they get
into each other's gravitational fields and they whip around each
other and swap orbital tracks. There's actually a system where
they documented that this happens. Now imagine this. You've got
Study Alpha. It has X number of planets five and six,

(01:00:20):
our companion planets that are doing this funny little thing
where when they hit the right point in the orbital track,
they swap at a very opportunity point. Puts a lot
of geog of geological stress on the planet. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but it swaps them into different orbital tracks. We can
assume that this swap at some point has occurred after

(01:00:42):
Enterprise is left, but before Seti Alpha six explodes, or
that the explosion of Seti Alpha six happens in a
way that forces five into six's orbital track, so that
when Reliant comes back fifteen seventeen years later, whatever it is,
it's not that they've missed counted the planet. Is that

(01:01:04):
they think five has exploded. They think five is gone.
They don't think six is gone, because there's a planet
in six's orbital track. Six is still there as far
as they know. They're like, yeah, it's in orbital track.
It's around the same eth. Yeah, that's six. And look
where five is a bunch of floating debris something happened
to five, and because they weren't supposed to advertise where

(01:01:26):
the hell they had put con because they didn't want
anybody going to find them. There's really not a whole
lot of record. There's no reason why Terrell on the
Reliant would have access to the knowledge. Gekov might well
know what's down there, but again he knew SETI Alpha five.
He sees, oh, set the off of five has destroyed,
No problem. Oh we're going to set the off of six.

(01:01:47):
No problem. He's in there. No, it's an up, you know.
And he realized that something's gone hideously wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
And it's the five and six swapped orbital track because
I did say CON specifically said the orbit of this planet.
That's what and that's what happened. Is when it's went up,
it traded orbital tracks with five because of this relationship
they have. Stix is now gone, but it's debris is

(01:02:20):
in five's orbital track. Five is still there, but it's
on six's orbital track. It's partner is gone. So the
swap no longer occurs because the other body with the
gravitational attraction is no longer there. Five is now permanently
trapped in six's orbital track. Stix's debris is now permanently
trapped spread out in five's orbital track. They didn't miscount,

(01:02:42):
They simply thought they mistook well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
And I understand all that. I think it would have served.
And you'll forgive me for armshair quarterbacking.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
But I just took five minutes to explain that, and
we and we have video so I can do on
our little finger motions to show you how it works.
I explaining this in pure audio on not boring the
crap out of an audience. You're killing me, man. I
think you guys would have found a dialogue way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
And again I thought, for sure, believe me, we.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Tried, We wanted to. We Kirson and I worked it
out in detail, and I pulled references. We pulled down,
you know, like it was from the James Webb telescope,
just pulling down actual research. Here's an example of an
actual star system where this actually happens. This is our
I'm like, this is our basis for the mechanics. We

(01:03:27):
had it all worked out. The problem is again we
were told that we had to trim the episodes of
a certain length. We had certain story needs that we
had to meet. And then even after we did our drafts,
they would still have to go to Paramu CBS for notes.
They would go to Secret high Out for notes that
would be feedback from Nick Meyer as he would evaluate

(01:03:47):
it against this story concept. We had all these notes,
all the notes we had to accommodate at various phases
and rewrites. Then what also happen during production for a
number of and stuff that we get cut, and then
they said, well, if we cut that, we need to
establish this over here. We need to move this character here.
We need to take these two characters and Tournam into one.

(01:04:08):
And so in the midst of all this the decision
was made. I wasn't part of all those rewrites. Kirsten,
as the executive producer on the series, handled that. My
job was first draft. He handled revisions. But even at
first draft, I said, you know, can we fit it
in here? She's like, the script's already running along. We're
going to have to cut. And it was decided that

(01:04:31):
we were more interested in the emotional relationships between the
characters and that what was most important about the SETI
Alpha six thing was the Olborians role in what happened
to it. And what their role in its destruction had
to do with their motivations as to why they deal
with Khn and his people the way they do, and

(01:04:53):
why they tolerate the things they tolerate, and it's because
they're all acting out of guilt. It was determined that
that it was more important to establish than the specific
orbital mechanics of five and six and how Reliant got
them mixed up eighteen years later. While I thought it
would have been cool, and if I'd been writing it
as a novel, I'd have had all the time and

(01:05:14):
space in the world and I would definitely have dropped
it in if I were doing it in the novel.
Of course, the last time I person in the novel
was Vanguard, and that was just well, we blew it
up by mistake. Sorry this time though, but I mean
I would reference the orbital mechanics to explain not only
how did this planet get destroyed, but also why was

(01:05:34):
it mistaken eight years later? Sure, but no, but that
is the explanation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I love it, I truly do.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
And again I had it, we just didn't have that.
We just couldn't fit in it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
And isn't that interesting, David, Because honestly, I and as
evidence of this conversation, I don't mind going over an hour,
but I obviously saw how regimented the times were for
each episode so.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Well that that's related to production cars and okay, okay,
so that's issues of production costs and production time and
schedule factored into all of that. That's part of why
the episodes had to be kept within certain lengths. While
only the first and finale episodes really go to the
forty three minute mark as opposed to the thirty to
thirty four, we were trying to aim for thirty wherever

(01:06:20):
we could. As it was, we went over you know,
in places. So but yeah, essentially, while you and I
may geek out and love, you know, the whole thing
about the orbital track discussion, and I'm sure there are
a number of fans who would share in, you know,
enjoying the geekery and nepery of it, the problem is
when we're dealing with a mass audience, they're probably not.

(01:06:42):
We have to think of the broader audience that is
more interested in the character narrative. Then in a discussion
of planetary orbital mechanics.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Well, I just felt that with Lear's problems with Starfleet
that this would be another logical and again, you guys,
you guys came up with the solution. You've explained it here.
So I will point people to this podcast if they
if it's because really, again, I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
I thought that we didn't know. It was just we ran.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
You weren't able exactly what the constraints of production and
everything else.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
I get it. I had to do what we had
to do. I hear you, man.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Was Nick Myer's thing going to be three two hour movies?

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Was that kind of minie?

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Do you know the shape of what the original story
was intended to be when it was considered for live action?

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Yeah? When I well, this is what I remember Pearston
saying on a podcast we did last night. The project
started while she and Nick were both working in the
Discovery writer's room. He conceived it originally as a three
part mini series of two hour films, a total running
time of about six hours with commercials and probably about

(01:07:54):
four and a half hours without. So he had the
basic shape of a story, He had some basic principles
that he wanted. He knew he wanted to cover a
certain amount of time. He wanted to cover certain relationships,
he wanted to establish certain details about CON's time on
SETI Alpha five, and he had just a general idea

(01:08:17):
of where he was going. But that mini series, for
a variety of reasons, it was deemed either not marketable,
it didn't fit their plan, there were budgetary concerns, there
were pasting issues, there were a lot of issues. They
liked the story, they just weren't sure how to approach it,
so they let him take another stab at it, and

(01:08:40):
it still wasn't getting where they needed it to get to.
So they thought, well, we wanted to branch into audio drama.
Maybe this would be a candidate for that, and he
was game. So he took his concept, took it from
three two hour telefilm movies, and broke it down into
a series of nine half hour audio drama scripts, which

(01:09:03):
would basically have about the same running length of time,
but with fewer commercials. Yeah, so he broke the story
down and he did a first draft in concert with
he had some additional writing and working with a producer
named Mac Rogers who was part of Realm, which is
the company that did the actual audio production of the

(01:09:25):
mini series. So Nick and Mack Rogers had that initial outline.
They did nine scripts as the first pass. I think
they might have even been a second pass on those scripts.
Those gathered a bunch of them, So this was back
like between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, and
they gathered tons and tons of notes from CBS and

(01:09:46):
Secret Hideout and other sources, and eventually it just it
hit a brick wall where they just did not seem
to get everybody on the same page. And according to Kearston,
this is the point at which ol Kirtman approached her,
I believe in late twenty twenty three and said, can

(01:10:06):
you take over this project? If you have to go
back to blank page one and just start over, keep
maybe the following elements from Nick's pits that are really
important to him, but try to rebuild this from the
ground up into something that we can actually produce. And
she said, well, I can try, but I'm going to
need help in hand. You might if I bring in

(01:10:28):
Dave back and they said, absolutely sure, bring him in.
She contacted me. I jumped at the chance to work
with her, and we started developing the story ideas we
basically thought we were going to be starting from pure
scratch trends as I wasn't precisely true, but we were
given a chance to sort of craft our version of
the story. Then we had to find a way to

(01:10:51):
marry it to Nick's version of the story, and we
were told which elements were critical and had to carry forward,
and so we rebuilt around that. We read our outlines again,
and so we finally came up with something that was
generally agreed was okay, this is the shape of the
nine episodes. In general. You guys can now go to
work and start building scripts. And here's something I made,

(01:11:14):
like a little mini writer's room. This would have been
like maybe late twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four,
somewhere in there, and we were working late at night,
Like she would get home, she would deal with her
family stuff. She's on Pacific time. I'm three hours later
on East Coast time. So we're starting meetings for me
at like eleven o'clock at night, and we're going to
like one or two doing break sessions using a virtual

(01:11:39):
writer's room environment over the web. So we're like seeing
each other's notes as we type, and we're on like
a video call while we do it, and we worked
out our outlines, and I would write them up and
I would do the first draft, send them to her
and she would do whatever she did to them, and
then they would go to Kurtzman, and they would go

(01:11:59):
to Mind and they would get more notes. After I
finished my first drafts and handed them off to Kirston,
I didn't see them again. The next time I saw
scripts was right before they were about to do production.
They'd already recorded the Levin's line, so cons lines at
that point were untouchable, okay, because they were already in

(01:12:20):
the can, but everything else was a little bit more malleable.
And I had some notes on those final versions of
the scripts, which were not entirely final. There were a
lot of changes from those to what finally made it
out into the world over the last nine weeks. The
broadcast version of the scripts, as they describe it, that's

(01:12:43):
the actual final based on the finished product, the re recordings,
you know, the rewrites in the studio, that sort of thing.
But that was all supervised by Kirston and by Fred Greenhalge,
the director, and I was not part of that, so
I don't really know anything about the casting process. I
don't know anything about the recording process. I don't know

(01:13:06):
about the rewrites or what decisions guided them aside from
you know, again what Keearsen has told me.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Okay, well, you know, and again I think Navine was excellent.
I thought Ren was terrific as Marla, the whole cast,
really the guy played Ivan, I mean. And also that
was the great thing. You guys all gave great agency
to the augments. And then I thought, you know, we
really we understood them better and stuff, am I am
I taking too much of your time. We can rap
if you need, if you need to go, okay, good,

(01:13:34):
But honestly, I really felt as a whole it was great,
and truly I hope we get more audio because let's
I mean, my god, you got to k thank god.
Uh you know, I mean, he's getting up there. He's
got fewer days left and we're not trying to curse
him in any way, but that's the reality of a
ninety year old man. And the same thing with Walter

(01:13:54):
being up there as well, and all and all the
all the originals, well the three original series vets that exist.
But also so let's get you know, hell man, let's
let's get next Gen and d S based nine and
voyager people. God, Tim Russ was just wonderful. And again
George was great too, but really Tim had to carry
a lot more water than George did and everything, and
I thought they both were great. And I'm sure that

(01:14:16):
must have been pleasing to be able to write some
you know, at least ideas if not your finished dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Did a lot of your dialogue for them? Did it?
Did it?

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Still manage to get in there?

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Now? Most of my dollars got rewritten. Bomber. I mean
as Heirson explained that she is stimied by the blank page.
Like the thing she finds hardest is facing a blank
page and just writing scenes from nothing drives her up
a wall. She hates it. She does it, she's great
at it when she does it, she just doesn't like

(01:14:46):
doing it. But she loves is rewriting if someone else
has already done the draft, and then all she has
to do is go in, rip it apart and redo it. Somehow,
she finds this from a creative standpoint easier, whereas on
the opposite, I love to that first draft. I loved
the blank page, the infinite possibility, and I create the
thing that I love the way in the form that

(01:15:07):
I want it to be. But I hate as when
other people go in and tear myself apart. So my
job was to create the version that she was simply
going to shred on the way to creating her version. Sure.
Now there's a writer whose name escapes me at the moment.
He was a longtime writer on The Simpsons, and he
would describe this process as he would burn through and

(01:15:30):
just write a full first draft of an episode that
he had to write. He would make himself do it
in one day, Like he'd go into his office in
the morning, he would just crank through it. He would
write the whole thing and be done with the first
draft in a day. He said, it would be absolutely terrible.
It'd be awful. He didn't even bother finding punchlines for
half the jokes. He would just be put in placeholders

(01:15:52):
that were absolutely awful and unfunny, because the job was
to go in and fix it later on the next draft.
He said, it was, as you know, some drappy little
elf came into my office and wrote this crappy little
draft of the script, and now I get to fix it.
So I realized during the creative process of con that
my role is that I am Kirsten's crappy little health.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
I wonder if that's Mike Gracie's been on my show.
He's a wonderful Sibisens writer. But regardless, I love that.
That's fantastic. And again I get it, man, and you know, well,
you know your role and everything, and you know, okay,
I'm sending it in.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
We'll see what they do with it. Oh hey, working
on this, working on con was a learning experience extraordinary.
First of all, working in a writer's room environment, even
a virtual one with Kirsten, I had to up my game,
like she thinks of a thousand miles an hour, because
she's trained and now she's got now ten years of
experience in Hollywood writers drums. Yeah, you've got to think fast.

(01:16:52):
You got to write fast. And here's the thing. When
you have an idea and you throw it out there.
He said, I'm just pitching blue Sky in this, and
you throw it out if it gets shot down. She says,
that doesn't work for me because this and this you
don't defend, you don't double down, you don't dig in ego. Okay,
well we'll let that go, no matter how much you
love it, even if you thought it was brilliant at

(01:17:12):
the time. If the showrunner says that doesn't work for me,
let it go, because you are not there for yourself.
You are there for the showrunner. In this case, she
was the showrunner. My job is to support her vision,
to provide her with what she needs when she needs it,
in the form that she needs it. If she tells
me what she needs is for me to write a

(01:17:33):
clean first draft, even knowing that most of my stuff
will probably get overwritten, but that she needs that she
needs it done well so that she can go in
and do her thing, then that's my job. And it's
not my job to say, well, I'd like to see
more of my stuff say in well, it's not my job.
That's not why I'm there, and that's not why the
project is this. And the project is not there for

(01:17:56):
my vanity. It's not there to serve my ego. Sure
I would love and maybe a little more of my
dialog made it through, but that wasn't the job. The
job was break the story with Pearson, be her sounding board,
you know, be a source of ideas to help her
find the ones that work. Get it all done, you know,
in a linear form, write the scripts, Make them nice,

(01:18:17):
clean and tight, give her, you know, the foundation that
she can build on, and then go in and revise
basically to base. My job is to essentially be the
first draft guy. That's what she needed me for. That's
what I was hired for. That's what I did, and
and I accept that that was my role and my
goal was to do it to the best of my

(01:18:39):
ability to be useful to my showrunner. There you go.
Would you want to write any more audio drama? Wow? Oh, sure,
I'd love to work with one. I would love to
work with Kirston on one of these. Again, I know
that she would like to do some more. We're waiting
to see what the metrics are on con We have
no idea come commercially, what whether it's been deemed a success.

(01:19:03):
If so, how big a success. Sure, we know that
the critics have been generally very favorable. Fan response have
generally been pretty good. We're happy with the way it
came out. We know that are Superiors a secret hideout
at CBS are also very happy with the final product.
All that matters now is does it turn a profit?

(01:19:24):
Is the audience there and if so, the hope is
that they will come back to us and ask us
to do more, or at the very least, invite us
to pitch ideas to do more. I have a few
ideas I'd like to explore. I know Kirston has a
few of our own. We've resisted the urge to talk
about them in too much detail because we don't want

(01:19:44):
to poison the water for each other right now. We
also don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We don't
want to we don't want to jinx it. So you know,
we're knocking on wood and yeah, run the rabbits foot,
although you know I don't have a rabbit's foot anymore
because I love rabbits. Whatever. Well that's true, that's right, right,
So but I knock on wood and we'll see what happens.

(01:20:08):
But yeah, I mean, I could definitely see this as
a form where we could tell a variety of very
interesting stories about original Star Trek characters from the Star
Trek universe. We could do adaptations of existing works from
other media. There are different types of stories. You can tell,
different settings, different environments, different time periods. If the big universe,

(01:20:31):
it has a lot of potential. I just hope I
get a chance to play with someone the league.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Are you listen again, everybody, strangely, World's Ring of Fire
out now? If you're missing in jonesing for some more
at a boy than it is, if you're jonesing for
more strange your worlds while we wait for a season four,
this is a great opportunity and it's a great book.
Are you without spoiling anything, are you in the process

(01:20:57):
of writing anymore new Star Trek novels?

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
I am. Actually I'm working on something for next year.
The contract is fully signed and executed and whatnot, so
it is officially ago. My outline is officially approved, so
that's a go. Beyond that, I can't really reveal any
details before the publisher. The publisher has to be the
one to put the details out in the world, not me,

(01:21:24):
So that's pretty much all I can say at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Okay, I tell everyone I'm not here to fuck up
your marketing plant or the company's marketing plan.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
So no, I'm just I'm aware that both CBS and
Simon and Schuester have snipers that follow me where I go.
I know not to cross the red line.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, man danger third rail, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
Little laser dot will here right here. How about non
star trek books?

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Are you are you? Are you writing any other because
and also seriously, I mean, I have tremendous respect for
Tian novelists, and I used to go to sitting. When
I go to Comic Con in San Diego, I try
to go to the awards of that stuff. Max describe awards. Yeah, yes,
Max Collins is a friend. Marv Wolfman is a friend.
John Mayberry I've met over the years, and some of

(01:22:14):
the others, you know, some of your contemporaries John, John Jackson.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
Miller, Oh, great guy John.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
And again and listen, uh, Michael jan Freeman and Robert
Friedberger are great friends of mine as well.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Yeah, Bob Greenberger and Mike Freeman or old buddies of mine.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Talking about next Week actually about his pulp book Have
you ever written any of those thrilling adventures any Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Yeah, I was involved, I think the first two. Okay, Oh,
that's great man man. For some reason, Bob just never
called me again. I guess he wants to keep Neway,
he likes to have new names cycle in. He likes
to have yes, fresh talent cycle through.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
So I suspect that, you know, he felt like I
got my two bites at the apple, and he wants
to let you know newer writers, new voices that need
the exposure to get their shot. So I get where
he's coming from.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
The other Star Trek novelists say, you guys kind of
fraternal as far as Keith Candido is a buddy as well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
You know, Keith I are more than buddies. We go
back like thirty some odd years. We were groomsmen at
each other's weddings. Oh, that's great man. When his first
wife threw him out, he wound up on my doorstep
with his stuff in a pillowcase, live with me for
like six weeks. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it was like

(01:23:34):
the odd couple. But we got along great. But yeah,
Keith and I have be in buds. You know we're Yeah,
we we we've been tight like brothers. That's great man. No,
I I don't know if you ever I don't know
if you've ever heard of the shore Leaf Convention. Yes,
please tell people used to be down in the Maryland area.

(01:23:54):
Now it's held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
That is the place where if you are a fan
of store Ar trek Tian novels and you want to
meet Star Trek tie in writers. That's the con you
go to because they invite like a a couple dozen
of us every year. I've been going out for twenty
some odd years, ever since my first ear of Star
Trek novels came out. But Mike Friedman's a regular, Bob Greenberger,

(01:24:18):
Peter David used to go every year before he got sick.
But you know, I'm there. Dayton Ward is usually there.
John Jackson Miller's appeared once or twice. We've had writers
from overseas like Lini McCormick and James Swallow, they've they've
come over. I think Diane Dwayne was there one year.
Oh nice, man, I'm such a fan. Every now and then,

(01:24:40):
rarely Kirsten is able to come out from LA and
join us.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Yeah, great, absolutely, man.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Yeah, yeah. So basically this is the play of Christopher L.
Bennett's there, you meet John Jackson Miller. There's usually a
great lineup of Star Trek writers, both classic and you know, current,
and we do signings and we do annals, and we
hang out in the bar every night. We drink ourselves stupid.
It's really great. So, yeah, that is basically where Star

(01:25:09):
trek writers of all stripes, particularly novelists. That is where
we bond. We are a very fraternal group. We're a
very uh, you know, very tight knit, and we're very welcoming.
When new scribes, you know, make their breakthrough, we welcome
them in. We make sure that they know, like you know,
they say, well, you know, I'm not a real writer,
like you know, like, did you write something on paper? Yeah?

(01:25:31):
Did it get published? Yeah, you get paid? Yeah, congratulations,
you're a writer, you're a professional. Welcome to the club,
the club. Come on, let's buy you a drink. Because
that's how Bob Greenberger and Mike Friedman and Peter David
and John Warrenholt those days. That's how they welcome me
and dating in when we made our first sales twenty
years ago. They were like, hey, you guys are part

(01:25:53):
of the fraternity. Now come on in. We'll buy you
a great join the circle, join the bullshit circle, come
on and tell stories. And we were just welcomed in
just like that. And now you know, thirty years later,
you know me Dayton, You know we're the old men.
Now suddenly we're the old veterans. Yeah, here, you man.
We used to be we see the young kirks, now
we're the old veterans.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
You're describing my broadcast career. Man, I hear what you're saying. Absolutely, man,
that's all right. Time catches up without time is.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
The uh whatever which we burn? Thank you, sir, well done.
You see this is why it's the old friend who
goes with us on the journey to remind us that
all things are impast which which quote is that from?
That's the quote that immediately follows in generations. The card says,
I prefer to think of time as an old friend
who goes with us on the journey and reminds us

(01:26:40):
that all good things end there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
You go, that's fantastic, man. We should ender right there, David. Honestly,
great talk, and you've you've you've softened my blows in
the most positive way, and I appreciate that. And really
no great, great conversation when your new book comes out.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
But you know, i'll like this time next year, maybe October.
I don't know when in October, but I think it's
gonna be out October next year. I also have an
original short story that'll be out hopefully next year. In
Anthology edited by Henry Hurtz. I don't know that he's
His publisher has announced it. So again, this is one
of those cases where a lot to say more, but

(01:27:20):
it's not even available for pre orders, so what will
be the point. But I'm very proud of that story.
I'm hoping that that anthology will, you know, again, find
an audience. His most recent one, Combat Monsters, has done
really well. That has a story that I wrote in
it called Scott called box Guard's World War Two untild
tales of World War Two featuring various types of monsters

(01:27:41):
and supernatural entities and whatnot. And so I wrote the
Bombing of Nagasaki involving a Kaiju. So I have another
story and another anthology by that editor. I have an
original novel you asked about that. I have one that
is looking for a home at the moment. My agency
is shopping it around. No takers so far, but you know,

(01:28:02):
we have not yet exhausted all of our possibilities. I
am hoping that will find a good home. And also
I over the summer I wrote a feature screenplay with
a friend of mine. Don't have an agent for screenplays.
I have one for books, but I don't have one
for film and TV unfortunately. But I have a producer
friend who's trying to showed around. I'm hoping that will

(01:28:23):
find a home and get sold and again, you know,
get some money in my pocket. So I have irons
in the fire. I have workout in the world. I've
cast my bread upon the waters. I will probably get
back soggy bread, but one can always hope for French toast.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Would you consider self publishing? I've been asking my author
friends this question because I think the market has changed,
and certainly, David got you've got a star Trek community.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
I don't know how much. I don't think beyond it.
I mean, I have some social media presence, but I
don't think that you don't have a self publishing I
don't think self publishing would work out well for me.
I don't think that I don't think the money would
be there for me right now. I would prefer to
stick with the traditional publishing model, simply because I have

(01:29:10):
a good agent. I have the opportunity to pitch to
traditional publishing houses. Maybe not the big four, you know,
there might be a smaller mid level press. But you know,
if I can write and get an advance payment and
let someone else handle the distribution in marketing, that would
be my preference. I don't like to deal with distribution.
I don't like to deal with marketing. I'm not a salesman,

(01:29:31):
as I tell people, like a lot of my friends,
all of my fellow writers, they bring stacks and stacks
and boxes of books the cons and they pile them
up on the table to do sales, and they work
a table all weekend. And I don't do that, you know,
I commit. I mean, if they if the bookseller has
my books, great, buy them from over there, bring them
to me. You want to bring my books in from home,
I'll sign them. But when the signing period is over,

(01:29:53):
I'm off. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm
going to wander the dealers. I'm going to goel or
are we going to go or to go off site
and find a nice restaurant and Lennard, we take a
few people with me. I'm not going to hang around
the table all day because, as I like to explain
to people, I didn't become a writer so that I
could spend my golden years working retail. I'm with you,
I'm not I'm not a retail salesman. It's not what.

(01:30:16):
I'm in this business because I don't like dealing with people.
That's the whole point. I work alone and I drink.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
Well, I'm glad you broke your norms to have this conversation.
So ring a fire, everybody, strange New world out now,
it looks right, and that's exactly what it looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
So and I and I and I can tell you
honestly as I've as I've told David I am. I'm
a fan of his work and I think he does
a great job. He has captured that strange New world's
voice in the best way, and I think you'll enjoy it. So, dude,
thanks you a.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
Lot all the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
John's great being

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