201 - Star Trek Author David Mack

Join us for our Valentine's Day special as we welcome New York Times bestselling author David Mack and unveil Don's gift to Trevor: a surprise Cameo from a certain "Star Trek: Picard" actor. David discusses his new book "Star Trek: Picard: Firewall," and finds himself right at home bashing Don and Trevor equally. Listen to the entire podcast for in-depth discussions on LGBTQIA+ characters in the Star Trek universe, book banning, and the state of our political discourse. Season 2 of No Win Scenario is here!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Trevor. Trevor, I I hearI hear a voice. Guess Trevor,
listen for somebody I do not wantto talk to, but I'll be responsible
here. Yes, is that you, Don Is that you, Trevor?
It is me? Listen before westart the show. This is this is
I don't know if you know this. This is going to be a Valentine's
Day episode. And yeah, we'reclose to Valentine's Day here when we record

(00:23):
this. And I don't want youto be sad or lonely or not have
a gift from someone. So Trevor, I have a gift for you,
Trevor Todd stashwork here. This isthis is kind of an intervention. Uh
uh, I'm I put Captain Liamshawon the on the the show with this

(00:45):
ship. Uh, this is anintervention. So the number one host of
the Nowen Scenario podcast, Don wantedme to reach out to you, the
second best host of the show,and uh he he wants me to tell
you to stop calling him. Uhyou are. He's a little tired of

(01:08):
hearing about your love for Star Trekand Beyond Jenna Sis whatever whatever you call
it. I mean, I'm I'mnot a nerd. Uh. So he
wants me to say, hey,can you can you knock it off with
all the trek stuff. It's it'sa little too much, the p cards

(01:30):
stuff. It's a little too much. Uh. Look, I understand it.
I completely get your devotion to toa franchise with maybe the finest captain
in Starfleet. But uh, don'she's had it up to he's headed up
to here, so so put iton ice cool your jets. Stop being

(01:57):
such a nerd. And uh youyou're a terrible sci fi fan. And
he says that you have you havezero class. His words, not mine.
I just want you to know thatthat I appreciate your trek love,
uh and and all of your yournerdiness. This is him. I'm just

(02:19):
a messenger. Don't really phaser themessenger. Do you understand what I'm saying?
But in the meantime, I hopeour paths crossed in the future,
live long and prosper. Starting upthere you go, Happy Valentine's Day,

(02:39):
Trevor. I want because I don'tknow when your birthday is, so I
don't care. So I figured inpost production, get ready to beat this
out. You are such you aresuch a people will still be able to

(03:00):
read my lips. Huge, ButI loved it. Thank you, You're
most welcome. I think that's thefirst time you've put even a penny towards
my entertainment. And I know thatwas so hard for you, very very

(03:20):
difficult, and I know, andI genuinely thank you for that. That
was very very funny. And couldI get a copy please? Absolutely?
And you know, I'm thinking weshould put this up on the on our
website. You're kidding me, Absolutelyabsolutely, sir Evan, go check it
out. And Trevor, let's let'sget on with the show. Sounds great.
I haven't listened to anything you've saidin the last twenty seconds. Damn

(03:43):
it, Trevor. Oh god,I hate you so much. Well to
you, we can cross off thereading. I watch almost everything in the
majority of this terrible What is thispodcast about? My record? He's turning
off? Damn it, Trevor.Hi everyone, and welcome to No When
Scenario Podcast. I am Don andwith me is my little sidekick forever,

(04:09):
a little sidekick who I think isat least two feet taller than you,
at least two feet taller, andaccording to my daughter, a couple of
decades older too. Ah, howmuch some of us as well. That
was quite a long, little coldopen we had with Todd Stashwick. So
I'm very excited to get to ourguest today, David, before we do

(04:29):
that. Oh, what's coming to? What time it is? Treaverse,
Tangent? Okay, we're going tobreak the format a little bit. I'm
gonna involve Don in this, andbelieve it or not, this actually is
science fiction related. In nineteen ninetynine, a little sat clever satire parody
film came out called Galaxy Quest.Love it and I saw maybe ten or

(04:55):
fifteen years ago, and I hatedit. Well, of course, because
you hate anything. It was terrible. Well, a few nights ago,
the Alamo Draft House in Boston washaving a repertory screening of Galaxy Quest.
A friend asked me to go.She said, listen, I love this

(05:15):
movie. It's hilarious. I toldher I didn't like it. She said,
you're insane. Come with me.Give it another try so fine and
give it another trick. Within tenminutes, I realized you were wrong that
this film, it's brilliant, isso clever, so clever, and so
funny. One of the best StarTrek movies ever and so well written.

(05:39):
And I'm going to even go I'mgoing to go further. I'm going to
apply I'm going to suggest that thefilm even has a deep layer to it.
It's so clever and well done thatI honestly felt that I was seeing
a group of people, that therewas this underlying theme here, a group
of people who, other than theirego, really didn't have much at stake.

(06:01):
But then we're put into a situationwhere they really had to learn as
actors what improvisation really means, andimprovisation when stakes are on the line,
like the eradication of you know,of an alien race, and it's just

(06:21):
there under the surface. On topof all of this just humor well staged
direction. I will argue, Iwill argue, even though it was kind
of satirical, I would argue thatthe production design and the special effects were
very good and served its purpose.I was dead wrong about the film.

(06:42):
Galaxy Quest is very clever, verysmart, very funny. If you haven't
seen it, which I'm sure everybodywho listens to this podcast five of you
have seen it, it's a verygood film. You have wasted a minute
of our audience's valuable time where you'rethe only person on this planet who thought

(07:06):
the movie was bad in their lifetimeand who hasn't seen it in the last
fifteen weeks. Well, maybe thisis maybe this is my way of trying
to win a couple listeners on myside. You know, you know,
we'll keep working on it. We'llkeep working on it, We'll keep working
on Thank you. Let's keep workingon and that is the end. Well
are you first of all? Areyou happy for me that I liked it?

(07:29):
We're all happy that this conversation isover. So can we have it
please? And that's it for Trevor'stangent fantabulous. Okay, with that,
I am super excited to talk toour next guest, Dave mac So everyone's
stay tuned. I was so excitedwhen this person was announced because I actually

(07:50):
knew who they were. And beready, I can't wait. This is
so good. I can't wait.It's great. And Trevor admits to having
read it a book? Who perioda book? Yeah, that's stay tuned.
Hi. I'm David Mack. I'ma New York Times bestselling author of

(08:13):
science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. Most of it for Star Trek.
Over the years, I've also writtenfor Star Trek on television, for Star
Trek Deep Space nine. I've beena creative consultant for Star Trek Prodigy,
Star Trek Lower Decks, Star TrekDiscovery. I'm working on a number of
different projects at the moment, someof them with Star Trek, some of
them original. And I've written forTrek in pretty much every format you can

(08:37):
think of except for feature film.I've written for video games, comic book,
short fiction, reference works, CDROMs, computer games, TV.
I mean, at this point,really I've done just about everything with future
film. I even wrote stuff forwhat was going to be a live touring
theatrical production featuring the music of StarTrek, but it got canceled because it

(09:01):
was being produced during the COVID eraand the pandemic basically just wiped out all
the pre sales and ended up shuttingdown the show. But it was going
to be this European based production.So I've written for Star Trek professionally now
since nineteen ninety five, maybe evena little earlier than that, if you
had taken into account some work Idid for the Book's Office as a freelancer.

(09:24):
So I've been working professionally in onecapacity or another four Star Trek for
nearly thirty years. It's amazing.And my bookshelf at home is just stacked
with your books over the years,up there with everything else. So thank
you so much for joining us.And it got to imagine that writing a
Trek book is much more limiting interms of what you can do than something

(09:46):
completely original on your own. Oris that not the case at this point?
I know a lot of people think, you know, the bigger it
gets, the more stories that aretold, the more canon that's established,
they think that that makes it harderto tell stories in the Star Trek universe.
In fact, the more developed theuniverse becomes, the easier it becomes
to develop new stories within it,because the canvas gets bigger, the cast

(10:09):
gets bigger, the known facts inevidence get bigger, and sometimes each thing
you establish, each fact you establishin canon, rather than cutting off opportunities,
it often raises new questions. Eachfact you establish raises two or three
new questions that could be springboards forstories. So I have not actually found

(10:31):
working in Star Trek to be limiting. I have actually found the expansive growth
of the franchise over the last fewdecades to have been a great spur to
creativity. Before we get into StarTrek and certain properties specifically, I would
like to know what is your writingworkflow process? Is it a daily thing?

(10:54):
Do you have a certain hour setfor it? Don't interrupt me during
these hours? Is it? What'sit like? What's the discipline it has
changed over the years. When Ifirst started out, I was working full
time at NBC and Sci Fi Channel. I was the editor of sci Fi
dot Com back before it became City, and so I would work. I'd

(11:18):
get up early in the morning andgo to work in the city, work
all day, sometimes into the eveningbecause hours could be just you know crazy
when you're working in television and especiallyworking in marketing, and then I would
come home and deal with you know, home related business, dinner dishes,
paying the bills, dealing with thecats, all that sort of thing,

(11:39):
and then I would usually get towork, you know, around nine,
ten o'clock at night. I'd workedabout one or two in the morning,
and you know, write what Icould, and then get up at seven
or eight the next morning, goback to work and do it all again.
I did that for eight years,the first eight years of you know,
my novel writing career, my bookwriting career. That was how it
worked. And then basically I wasworking full time. I was writing books

(12:03):
at night, put my wife throughgrad school. And then once she was
out of grad school and into hernew profession. The deal we had made
was once she's employed, I wantedout of the corporate sector. I had
done seventeen years in corporate America andI was done. I had saved a
lot of money to sort of,you know, facilitate the translation, you
know, the transition into freelance life. So I wasn't going in unprepared,

(12:30):
and you know, this was justthe deal we made. So she got
a job right out of grad school. I left sci Fi in May of
two thousand and eight and went freelance. So coming up, you know,
fifteen and a half years ago,and since then, what happened was because
my brain had been programmed to writeat night, I found that that was

(12:50):
when I write. You know,I had sort of just the pathways got
ingrained over eight years. So evenwhen I left the job, still don't
write during the day. I don'tusually write when the sun is up.
Daytime hours I use for other aspectsof running my business as a writer.

(13:11):
I use the daytime hours for thingslike promotion social media, paying my bills,
dealing with taxes, dealing with corporatepaperwork on the state level, depending
on where I'm doing business, meetingswith editors via zoom, meeting with editors
in person in the city, dealingwith also just domestic business around the house,

(13:33):
running my day to day life.You know, I basically run the
house so that my wife can dowhat she does in a very demanding medical
field. So so my follow upquestion to that is that their life gets
in the way always and there aredays where there's a lot of stress or

(13:54):
days when something out of the bluehappens. It's almost every day, and
so when you sit down to writethat night, how do you separate that
out of your your writing workflow sothat it doesn't necessarily affect what you're what

(14:15):
you're writing. Does that make anysense? I'm just going to drink and
I was going to say follow upto the followup is when do you sleep?
But I sleep problem usually about fourin the morning to about noon.
There you go, Yeah, butI think, Trevor, if I could
translate maybe for you, because seeor gibberish is just not making any sense.
I think what Trevor is getting atis, how do you not have

(14:39):
what happens in your daily life affectwhat you're going to be writing. So
if you have the plan to writewhatever part of whatever story that you're working
on coming up, how do younot, like emotionally get distracted by what's
happened during the day, and youdon't. Sometimes a day is just a
you know, a wash. Youknow, some days are simply too much.

(15:01):
And you know, regardless of whetheryou're on deadline or not, there
are some days when you just haveto accept that life takes the forefront.
Example, I was, you know, in the middle of writing Firewall last
year and around May, which wasthe time, you know, I was
hoping to sort of get some momentumgoing on the manuscript. After numerous delays

(15:24):
in getting the story approved, Iwas finally ready to go. And then
life got in the way. Mywife's father died and there were a lot
of things that had to be dealtwith During the month of May. You
know, my wife suddenly had togo away to Texas to be with her
family. But she was also shuttlingbetween Texas and Illinois, which is where

(15:46):
her father was going to be buriedand where the service was going to be.
And then you know, I hadto coordinate her travel arrangements, and
you know, there's lots of suddenly, there's lots of expenses we didn't expect,
and she's taking time off from work, you know, unexpectedly. I
have to arrange for cat sitters,I got to arrange to follow her out
to Illinois for the services. Igot to have somebody to take care of

(16:07):
my house. I got to makesure things don't fall apart in my absence.
And then there's just the emotional tollof you know, losing a close
family number, you know, losingmy father in law hit me very hard.
And it was just one of thosethings where the month of May,
the entire month as a result,was a wash. There was just no

(16:27):
way around it. That was theway it was. And trying to pretend
that it wasn't that way, Tryingto pretend that I could just get up,
go on and sit back down andgo back to work as if nothing
had happened, just that's crazy.You just do that. And so I

(16:48):
had to accept that the month ofMay was yep up the window. And
then again, you know, Igot back to work in June and July,
and I was I was working along, and I got into August,
and I was closing in on theend of the book. I was maybe
literally a few I was tracking thedays. I knew my output rate,
and I knew that I was withinmaybe a few days of finishing the manuscript.

(17:11):
And I was hoping to even haveit done a few days early ahead
a deadline. And then I gotCOVID last August. My wife had picked
it up by accident. She hadbeen traveling into the city and hadn't had
access to masks, and she hadto take the subway, and you know,
subway is basically a giant human bacteriatube, and so she brought it

(17:34):
home. She got sick. Igot sick, and I got really sick.
I ended up in the hospital.My first day of covidvice, I
went to the er. It's terrible, so it nearly it really kicked the
daylights out of me. And again, something like that happens, and you
can't pretend it doesn't happen. Ithappens. You hit something like that hits

(17:56):
you. It hits you like atruck and it takes a little while to
get back up to speed. SoI lost about a week of time that
I wanted to you know, thatI would have spent writing. I suddenly
had to focus on not dying.So I did that, not that out
of the way, and got myselfback to work and I literally made my
deadline by a matter of hours.Wow, So I got I got the

(18:19):
book done on time technically illegally,you know, if you were to look
at delivery time the contract, Yes, delivered on time per contract by a
matter of hours. Wow wow Wow. Well that's amazing. I would love
to actually because you mentioned something thereearly on, but go to the development
of Firewall. So your new bookstart took the car at Firewall. You

(18:41):
know you said you had problems gettingthe story approved or there was was there
resistance to something specific in there?Well, I mean it's just one of
those things where when you're dealing withso many different ideas going on. You've
got the writer with their idea,You've got the licenser who has their concept,
You've got the editor and what theyneed, and you've got to reconcile

(19:03):
these three things. So it's notjust a matter of pleasing my editor.
It's also a matter of I haveto meet the expectations and dictates of the
licenser in this case, Kirsten Byer, who is a good friend of mine,
fellow novelist. Now she's the cocreator of Star Trek Picard, She's
worked on several of the recent StarTrek TV live action series. She's working

(19:26):
on Starfleet Academy right now. Sheis the point person right now within Secret
Hideout in charge of vetting and approvingnovels and comic books and other narrative materials
narrative tie ins based on the SecretHideout live action shows. So if it's

(19:47):
based on Strange New Worlds, DiscoveryPicard and now Starfleet Academy Section thirty one,
it has to go through her.She has to approve it. So
when I was approached by SNS,you know, when I met with them
back in December, I think maybeDecember of twenty two, twenty one,
I don't remember. Somewhere back there. I had a nice lunch with my

(20:11):
editors and I asked, you know, what they needed coming up in the
next cycle of books, And theysaid, would you like to write the
story of seven of nine joining theFender's Rangers How and Why and considering that.
You know, the first time Iwatched the episode start a City Rag
that established the existence of the FenrisRangers, I paused the episode, like,

(20:36):
this is the first night it's dropped, I'm watching it. I paused
the playback so I could pick upmy phone and email my editor, Hey,
I'd like to write a novel aboutthe Fender's Rangers. And I get
a response back like five minutes latersaying we've been told no books about the
Fenders Rangers while Picard is still onthe air because they don't know what they
want to do with it. Soit was hands off for a couple of
years, and then suddenly here's theoffer. Do I want to write the

(21:00):
story of How and Why seven?Instead of joining Starfleet? Why did she
get rejected from Starfleet? How andWhy did she end up with the Rangers.
I'm like, well, yeah,I'd love to take that job.
I'll take that job, thank you. And so I'm told go away,
start thinking up an idea. SoI go and I start thinking up an
idea. But the idea has toget approved by Kirston and Kirsten because she

(21:23):
a lot of people know this already, but I'll reiterate for those who don't
know. Kirston was the author whowrote most of the Voyager books set after
the end of series. She pickedup pretty much where Christy Golden left off,
and she did a whole like,you know, series of like seven
or eight Voyager novels that dealt withVoyager going back to the Delta quadrant,

(21:47):
like a whole fleet called, youknow, the Full Circle Initiative or whatever.
And so she was very possessive ofthe Voyager characters in general, and
seven of nine in particular, alot of work with the character. And
although those books are now out ofcontinuity because of Picard, there was still
a deep attachment on Kirsten's part tothe character of Seven, and she had

(22:14):
very clear ideas about how she wantedSeven portrayed in the books, particularly during
the era in which Voyager has justcome home, because when we see her
in Picard, that's twenty years afterVoyager has come home. This is twenty
years along, so we're talking aboutnow twenty years earlier Voyager has just come

(22:34):
home. Seven is still fairly young, only about thirty one thirty two,
and so She's in a very differentplace in her life. She's not the
character we see and start a cityrag. She hasn't lost each head yet,
she hasn't been hardened by twenty yearsyou know of vigilante justice. She's
not that person yet. And soKirsten wanted me to adjust certain assumptions I

(23:00):
had made in the story. Shewanted it toned down. She wanted,
you know, a lower body count. She didn't want seven to be a
killer. She said that, youknow, seven is not that person yet,
and she's still going to be verymuch the you know, the person
that Jane Way has helped her tobecome. And she's not that ruthless person
yet. Life has not beaten herup to that degree yet, but she

(23:25):
is starting to get, you know, a taste of what's happening in the
world. So there were a lotof things about the depiction of how seven
acts, what seven believes, andalso how we handled the transition of Seven
from being what we saw, youknow, she was. Her relationships of
a romantic variety and voyager were primarilyheterosexual in nature, and now we see

(23:47):
that she has you know, embracedqueer relationships, you know, lesbian relationships
by the time on Star Trek card, so clearly she underwent some process of
a personal change and growth where shediscovered new things about herself. So that
was also part of the story thatKirsten wanted told. Okay and just it

(24:08):
was a matter of going back andforth and negotiating and saying, well,
you know, we can do this, or I see why you're asking for
this, but how about doing itthis way instead, so getting the story
improved. It wasn't that we hadlarge disagreements over what the story was about.
It was about the finer points ofhow to make sure that it comported

(24:32):
with Kirsten's vision and the show's depictionof Seven, while also making sense with
who Seven was at the end ofVoyager, and just making sure that we
all still felt like at the endit felt like a Star Trek story well
at the same time being a realisticexploration of Seven's psyche during an extremely important

(24:53):
and formative period of her life.That's amazing. And I gotta say you
were kind enough to get Trevor andI and vance of the books. We
appreciate that. And Trevor and Iagree on almost nothing, but we both
were like, wow, we've we'vewe came to each other and said,
wow, I really like this,so we really appreciate it. But you
know, it's it's, you know, talking about the finer point like I
had. I had a funny anda good way reaction, Like just early

(25:15):
on, Seven goes to a cluband is dancing and I'm like, has
that ever happened? Before she goesdancing? There? G has a one
night stand with an a Dorian,Like I'm like, you know, and
it's much more like everything's you know, like that side, like that side
of her is there. But itseemed very raw and realistic, and it

(25:37):
not something you see in a lotof Star Trek books, unless correct me
if I'm wrong that you write thatother people write. But I think it
felt freer in a way that thisbook did it feel that I mean,
am I reading. I mean,it's a very different sort of thing than
I've done in a lot of myprevious Trek books, and it's different from
a lot of other Trek books.And that there are really only a small
handful of previously establish Star Trek canoncharacters in the book, and that is

(26:03):
Seven and Janeway, and to alesser degree, there's a couple of appearances
by characters from Strutric Prodigy, likeTysis and Doctor Noom, who are canon,
But the rest of the story isSeven alone. I mean, she's
carrying the whole story by herself reallyin a very big way. But yeah,

(26:26):
the whole thing about her going tothe club and this exploration of life.
The entire point of Firewall as anovel is that it's structured like a
classic buildings Roman or coming of agetale, and the idea behind Firewall is
that it's supposed to be, forseven a queer, normative coming of age
tale, except that in the youknow, Findesic late twenty fourth early twenty

(26:49):
fifth century Federation, being you know, lesbian or whatever is not considered any
big deal. That's not going tobe a source of statement. But we
find the allegory for that in thefact that because she has borg implants that
she cannot be rid of because itwould kill her if they took them out,

(27:11):
she has this sort of mark,this indelible thing that people can see
that says, you know, you'redifferent, different outside her, your secret
plant that's going to destroy us,all right, So she gets treated with
prejudice, you know, when she'sfirst living on earth. You know,
this is a culture that has stilljust barely survived recent fatal near fatal brushes

(27:33):
with the Boord. They're still terrifiedof the board. There's a lot of
prejudice, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anger. So
when she starts living there, youknow, early in the book, you
see she gets her house vandalized,somebody pains dye borg bitch on the front
of her house, and the copsaren't really interested in doing anything about it.
And it's because she has this veryvisible thing that makes her different and

(27:55):
therefore self conscious, but she can'tchange. And that respect to could be
an allegory for both prejudice against race, but also it's about prejudice against those
who are openly queer, openly different. You know, anything not cis heteronormative.
And then you've got the fact thatshe has this running problem with the
Federation, where, for instance,they deny her application to have her citizenship

(28:21):
restored. You know, they thought, first of all, they thought she
was dead. So you got tobring somebody back from the dead for one
thing. That's hard enough. Butthen she wants, you know, to
say, well, I'm not AnakaHinson, I'm seven of nine. Well,
this trips up the Federation because sevenof nine is a Borg designation,
And if she's choosing Borg designation,does that mean her sympathies and her allegiances
are with the Borg And if so, doesn't that make her an enemy of

(28:44):
the state. So as a result, they wind up tying up her citizenship
application, so she can't get citizenship. She's classified as a permanent alien resident.
And then on top of that,she can't get into Starfleet because they're
paranoid. You know, is shegoing to actually be Borg agent? Is
she an infiltrator? Has she beensent all this way just to worm her
way in you know at Starfleet Academy, Starfleey Command. Sure she was fine

(29:10):
on Voyager, but her Voyager recordis full of multiple incidents of violent attempts
to escape, violent altercation, attemptsto rejoin the board collective, attempts to
betray the ship to the board collective. She did this like three times.
She has multiple, multiple infractions thatwould cause Starfley Command to go what and

(29:32):
you want to give her a commission? Are you out of your minds?
So she's getting pushed back from Starwood. She's getting pushed back from the Federation.
But the worst part of all isthat because she's chosen this Boord designation,
that again her very designation, hername, casts her as an outsider.
And then she goes. For instance, it says early in the book

(29:52):
she goes to visit her aunt Irene, and her aunt Irene can't stop calling
her Anika. No matter how manytimes she corrects her on I'm not Anika,
I'm seven, the aunt keeps callingher Anika, just refuses to accept
the new name. She keeps deadnaming her. That is because then another
important aspect of Firewall is that it'salso an allegory for trans identity. I

(30:15):
don't know if you guys have gottento the end of the book yet the
action of climax. If so,I don't want to spoils to say,
there is a a moment that ismeant to be sort of one of those
fist pump in the air, yeahmoments when she essentially gets to tell somebody
off about you know, don't evertell me I don't know my own name.

(30:37):
And that's basically for every trans personwho's ever been dead named and just
had to swallow it and that's so, that's great. And I think that
lines up with the TV show,right Picard, like how she handles in
season three, how she you know, shows how he uses her name and
how and then you know how sheshe that that's a big thread there.

(30:57):
I am curious though about you know, in your acknowledgement. So I skipped
ahead to the acknowledgements you dedicated tothe commit to the lgbt Q I A
plus community. You know your takeon her relationship development? How you you
know you developed it further in thebook than where it was from Voyager the
show in the seasons one and twoto had this relationship with Raffy in season

(31:19):
two and then season three. Somepeople have complained that it was just kind
of ignored or left to the waist. I barely mentioned, barely hinted at.
I'm curious if that bumped. Imean, I can't speak to what
the producers of course not yea,it wasn't in the room. But if
I had to guess, having watchedthe card season three, uh, you've
only got so many minutes and there'sno time. There's no time for it.

(31:40):
Yeah, and they were they wereconcentrating on a very plot driven,
high velocity, very fast paced narrative, and I just don't think that there
was a lot of time or alot of downtime in the plot they had
built to sort of allow those sortof slower, more personal moments between Seven

(32:00):
and Raffi. But I think alsowhat we're supposed to take away my guess,
this is what I took away fromit, is it Seven and Raffi
were a couple. It didn't workout. There was some awkwardness for a
while. But what we take fromPiccard season three is they've moved past the
awkwardness of the breakup so that theycan still be friends. Maybe there's a

(32:22):
chance that something could redevelop some day, but right now they're not a romantic
item. They are for people whowere briefly together. But relationships end for
all kinds of reasons, and theydon't always have to be cataclysmic, And
it could just be that they datedand it didn't work out, and there
was some anger and some bitterness,some residual you know, some lingering,

(32:45):
you know, animosity about it,but they got over it. I think
that's reasonable to me. I thinkwho knows the We'll ask Terry Mettalis one
day. But I think sometimes sometimesthe fans get a little worked up over
it or not. But that thatwas my segue to do fans bother you?
Because I was on your web pageand I love your faq. And
your FAQ is a question. Canyou help me get an agent? Answer

(33:07):
no? Will you help me getmy Star Trek novel published? Answer no?
Would you be willing to collaborate withme? No? Are you sure
you won't help me? Positive?And so on. I guess my question
is sort of the fans, howdo you feel? Well? First of
all, that FAQ, that draftof it was written almost fifteen years ago

(33:28):
when I redesigned the website. Backthen, I got a lot more of
it than I do now. Someof the things that I would add,
such that Bob. The more recentthings I get in my feedback que are
basically fans who are only just nowor in the last few years have discovered
my forty four hundred novel for whichI was specifically hired with the remit of

(33:52):
well the show isn't coming back,we don't know what they were going to
do for a finale, so theyhired me and Greg Cox to write a
two part story, him writing partone and me writing the conclusion. They
said, imagine what you would dofor the finale of the forty four hundred
if you got to write it.And so I took the Mythology of the

(34:12):
forty four hundred and I wrote it. And then at the end, you
know, I turned my manuscript andthe editor said, well, we don't
know if this book sells. Ifthese do really well, we want more.
So could you add a tag?Could you add a scene here that
would enable us to spin off andkeep going with more books. I said,
doesn't that dilute the impact of theending of the book. And I
said yes, but at least itleaves a door open if we need to.

(34:37):
And I was thinking, well,you know, we can always pre
a thing of another book in thefuture, but sure, if you really
want me to, I'll do that. So I did it, and then
of course it confused the living daylightsout of all the poor forty four hundred
fans who got to the end ofwhat should have been the conclusive ending of
the story. And then they getthis tag scene that implies there's more,
and they go, so, whathappens next? Where's the next book?

(34:57):
And I go, well, thesebooks didn't sell, they didn't commission them.
There there are no more. Well, what am I supposed to do
now? I say, rip outthe last few pages of the book and
just pretend you'd never read them.Yea my best offer. I don't know
what to do. I can't helpyou tear those pages out and just pretend
you didn't read them. I gottaimagine there's frustration all the time with you
know, get I get some questionsthat are very reasonable, and then I

(35:20):
get some where you know, recently, some fan contacted me with questions about
characters like I'd written some Mirror Universenovels, so they were curious about,
you know, what would this characterhave been doing, and you know,
this character was established here, andwhat happened Why didn't this character appear in
the Mirror Universal what happened to thisone? And what about him? And
what would have been his state?And I'm like in some cases, I'm

(35:42):
like, well, you know,I made the assumption of this based on
this, and then as it getsmore and more granular going down, I'm
like I just suddenly resorted to answersdon't know, don't care, don't know,
don't care, don't know, don'tcare. And then they sent like
the entire like they must have copiedand pasted from like Memory Alpha or Memory
Beta, one of the wiki sitesof the start the entire crew manifest that's

(36:07):
known to have been in the bookson the Iss Enterprise, the original over
the years of the twenty third century. Is this the correct manifest? I'm
like, how the hell would Iknow? That's a lot of names and
a lot of dates. What amI your historical researcher. Am I your
Google? This is not my job? Figured this out for yourself? Why

(36:30):
out? So at that point Istarted getting a little testy. I'm like,
no, this is trying to turninto a colossal waste of my time.
And at some point I just hadto say, all right enough response
way, yeah. I didn't expectany pushback on this specific novel regarding,
you know, the the support forsexuality. I read an article yesterday and

(37:00):
Wire about how it's the twentieth anniversaryof that show The l Word, and
how this twentieth anniversary is being celebratedduring the time whereas there is well,
I mean, it's not bad,but what this writer believes is the least
support the least amount of support forqueer women and people that identify and women

(37:20):
identify as women in particular. Doyou, if do you expect any pushback
from the family. I mean again, I'll be surprised if anybody even notices
to be frank. I mean,it's a star Trek novel. How much
cultural impact is it really likely tohave. I would like for it to

(37:40):
have cultural In fact, I lovepeople to know us. I would love
to have this book get banned inmultiple states across the Sunbelt. I would
love to have Florida in Texas declareme a threat to the American family.
Go ahead, boost my sales.I dare you please order in bulk.
You're free to them for in themas long as you pay for them first.

(38:02):
Oh my god. I never thoughti'd get David mac to say burn
my books. Go ahead, don'tprint more. It's just pay for them
first. I don't care what youdo with it once you pay for it.
It's not my problem. I don'teven care if you read it once
you pay for it. To payfor it. I mean, I think
you're right, though, You're rightto point that this is a difficult and

(38:25):
dangerous time to be a woman queeror otherwise or otherwise. Uh. Civil
rights are being rolled back and trampledin multiple states across the United States,
and for some reason that I justknow. Actually I would say I can't
comprehend, except I unfortunately comprehend alltoo well. The trans community is being

(38:50):
particularly targeted with just unbelievably stupid punitivelaws and harsh peepment, not because they
pose any genuine threat to the stabilityof American life or whatever, but because
they are so small a community,they are therefore vulnerable, and it's always
easy to pick on the vulnerable.It's always easy to escapeguat the vulnerable,

(39:15):
And I think that's you know,one of the things that upsets me most
is seeing bullying elevated to the politicalarena, bullying elevated to the legislative scale
of things. When bullying gets tothe point where we're now actively legislating making
people's very existence potentially a felony,to make it just to exist as you

(39:38):
are, honestly are, that's thepoint where I just have to say,
you know, screw you. I'mgoing to fight you on this one,
because now you're messing with my colleagues, You're messing with members of my family.
You're messing with my friends. Yeah. The lack of war, that's
war. The lack of empathy isshocking exactly how it grows tremendously. What

(40:02):
have you personally? What have youpersonally seen in terms of the people you
know, the people you work with, the people that you're related to,
what have you how? How haveyou seen it affect them? This this
wave of lack of empathy or evenweaponizing empathy. I would I would agree

(40:22):
with that characterization. I'm fortunate andmany of those I'm close to are fortunate,
and that we live in what areconsidered blue states or safe states,
places like New York, Massachusetts,California. But even in places like that,
there is still a rising sense ofanxiety, paranoia, a sense that,

(40:42):
you know, what if this breaksfree of these sort of clusters in
the you know, in certain states, and what if it goes national?
What if this kind of hate seizespower on a national level. There's a
definite palpable sense of, you know, overnight, because these folks are so

(41:05):
visible and vulnerable at the same time, it would be very easy for hateful
folks to round them up and putthem in camps. I mean, even
from blue states. If this sortof hate takes over at the national level,
all bets are off. Nobody's safe, and so there is definitely a
sense of I would say there's definitelya sense of fear. There's a sense

(41:30):
of anxiety that rights that you know, people have struggled to obtain over the
course of decades or being wiped awaywith frightening speed. And there's a sense
that there's an urgency now that Idon't think it has been felt in a
long time, that something has tobe done to push back and reclaim those

(41:50):
rights and defend those rights from furtherinfringement. And that was again part of
the emotional underpinning for me as Iwrote Firework, was thinking about Seven as
this character who is going out forthe first time by leaving behind her voyager
family who have now scattered. Whenthey first come home, she finds herself,

(42:10):
you know, all alone. Allshe's really got is Janeway. But
at some point we all have tobreak away from our parents, and in
many ways, Janeway represents a motherfigure to Seven. She's the mother figure
that takes the place of her realmom and then supplants the board queen.
But at some point. We allhave to break away. We have to

(42:31):
make our own identity, We haveto define our own place in the world
we you know, in the worldin which we live. And Seven has
to do that. And so shegoes out and what she sees, you
know, is not the bright,shiny federation. She's trying to get as
far from that. She's going afterthe fringes of that and then beyond it.
And what she's finding is not everyplace in the universe is fair.

(42:53):
They're not all equitable. That thereis. There are places that are still
minred by economic injustice, social injustice. There are places that are filthy and
poorly maintained. There are places whereatrocities still occur, where the rule of
law has failed. And she's seeingwhat happens when the rule of law fails,

(43:15):
what the consequences are for the powerless, what the consequences are for the
disenfranchised, And that's what awakens inher. Around the middle of the book,
she has essentially the great emotional awakeningthat the Voyager characters have been trying
to steer her towards for years.They've been trying to awaken and foster within

(43:37):
Seven her sense of human empathy hersense of human connection, her ability to
empathize with other sentient beings, tofeel their pain, and to appreciate them
their reality as much as her own. And it's a difficult thing getting this
former boorg drone to rediscover this aspectof herself. And then when it finally

(44:00):
hits, it hits in the middleof a firewall, when somebody is showing
her this scene of atrocity, whichif you read the details and you know
anything about World War two history,you'll realize is based in part on a
real place called Babyar, which isa ravine outside Kiev in the Ukraine where

(44:21):
in the early period of World Wartwo in the thirties, the Nazis rounded
up all the Jews of Kiev,about sixty to eighty thousand of them,
and they marched them out to thisravine and they executed them en mass over
the course of days, and theyfilled this ravine with bodies and then just
left them there. And so it'sone of the most horrific mass murders in

(44:45):
World War two history, in worldhistory. If you read the accounts of
some people who were lucky enough tosurvive, you know, who were hit
by bullets but were not killed,and then just basically laid under the pile
of bodies, some of them fordays before they were able to crawl out
and told the world about what happened. It's just horrific. And then you
have Seven, who has been usedby the Borg as this emotionless tool to

(45:12):
assimilate thousands of other beings over thecourse of you know, her eighteen years
of assimilation and suddenly being confronted withthis scene of mass slaughter. You know,
you know, bones bleached in thesun, bodies turned to greasy ash.
But she's feeling it on her hands, and she's realizing this is what
the murder of eighty thousand people feelslike, and empathy hits her like a

(45:36):
wave. It just damned Suddenly,that's like the worst moment for it to
turn on, but that's what ittakes. And it connects her to her
past as a Borg drone, andsuddenly there's all the guilt that comes with
it. How many lives did Idestroy? For how many thousands of beings?
Was I the last thing they sawbefore their individuality was stolen? And

(45:58):
it's great. It's a terrible momentfor Seven, but it's also a vital
moment. It's it's the opening ofher heart and it changes her. And
then after that she's on a mission. She now becomes seven, on a
mission of both vengeance and atonement andbrought it out to the to the real

(46:19):
world, you know, that gettingpeople to see other people's issues or life
or just who they are humanity,Yeah, you know, and and that
that lack of empathy that some peoplehave. They can't get over it unless
they see something. But the problemis now people don't. They see stuff
and they don't believe it. Sogetting to spots where you can't have real
life people have that awakening and havethat empathy for people because they don't believe

(46:45):
what's right in front of them.Nobody knows if anything has been deep faked
or ai or or And that's partof why it's so vital in the story
that she's not seeing it on amonitor, she's not seeing it at a
distance, down on her knees,literally down on her knees, and she
has to physically touch it. It'swhen she touches it and feels, you

(47:07):
know, the greasy ash of slaughteredbodies and sees the ash of pulverized bones
on her hands you can't deny that. It's like suddenly the reality is there
and it's sticking to your hands.It's the equivalent of blood on your hands,
but different. Yeah, Now,Star Trek is such a huge playground
to play in, you know,I just want to know, Like,

(47:30):
what is you dedicate so much ofyour work, so much of your life
towards it, creating more of it, Like what does it ultimately mean to
you? Like? Why? Imean? I guess I grew up with
Star Trek imprinting on me, youknow, the way a duckling imprints on
the first moving thing it sees.My folks, you know, when I
was a kid, would plant mein front of the television, and before

(47:51):
long I discovered syndicated reruns of StarTrek, And so I grew up with
the ideology of Star Trek hiring mybrain from the very beginning with the notion
that we are better as a speciesif we are together. It is better
to make friends than enemies. Itis better to make peace than war.
It is better to create than todestroy. It is better to heal than

(48:14):
to kill. The real world oftendoesn't work that way. But part of
the problem is that we don't chooseto make it that work work that way.
If more of us chose to makeit work better and insisted that the
people who answer to us and runthings, if we insisted that they ran
it that way, and if moreof us voted people out who don't,

(48:35):
we could steer the future. Wecould steer humanity toward a better future.
Humanity can have a better future,but it has to want it, and
people have to choose it, andthey have to fight for it, and
they got to work for it.It's not going to come for free.
And I think that the value tome of Star Trek as an entity,
as an intellectual property that has capturedimaginations of people around the world world is

(49:00):
that it is this beacon. Itsays, even when we're not perfect,
even when we screw up, webackslide, we can still choose to correct.
We can still choose to say,yes, I've made a mistake,
but I can do better. Ican atone I can fix things. We
can choose not to be the samecrappy people we've always been. We can

(49:22):
choose not to be the same violentpeople we've always been. We can choose
to put aside the anger and tryto find a better way, whereas you
know, I think that there's equalvalue, for instance, in a franchise
like Star Wars, where the messageof Star Wars is the violence and danger
of fascism is going to be omnipresent, it is never beaten. Every generation

(49:45):
must fight it again. But thatdoesn't absolve you of the responsibility to oppose
it, to resist it, tofight, and to fight for something better
and defend something better. These areboth equally important, equally valid message.
It just so happens that, youknow, I think that the Star Wars
one is a little more hopeful.I'm sorry, the Star Wars one is

(50:06):
a little more cynical. The StarTrek one is a little more hopeful.
I prefer Star Trek, but Ialso love Star Wars. So what are
you gonna do? So to followup on what Dawn's saying, he was
talking specifically Star Trek, what aboutspecifically seven? Is that what is it
about the parameters of seven, herpersonality, the entire canvas of her?

(50:32):
What is what attracts you to beinga part of contributing to that canvas?
And I'd just like to adser tothat before your answer is that for me?
You know, I grew up onNext Gen and I love Deep Space
nine and you know, I watchedFoyager and all this stuff, but I
never was super connected with Seven whenI watched Voyager. But I think post
show in novels and in the piccardseries. Now the character has developed well,

(50:59):
so, you know, and I'msurprised that I'm like, wow,
I'm ready for to watch the showand read more books with her now,
you know, and keep going.So you know, but both what is
there with seven? But in general, how do you choose these characters to
explore? And David, I wantto apologize for Dawn making my question about
him. So, h you're NewYorker, right, yeah, so so

(51:24):
am I? He completely understands TrevorNew Yorker's I'm I'm a queen's boy.
So yeah, I live in Queens. Oh do you I was baseid growing
I'm in the story. Oh great, Okay, Trevor, we found in
the woods. Yeah, but I'mstuck up here in Boston with him.
But yes to you. But tospeak to your question about what it is
about Seven, Uh, she isin you know, for Voyagers, She's

(51:45):
their take on the outsider character inthe way that Spock was the outsider in
TSU, the way that I thinkOdo was meant to be the outsider in
d S nine, the way thatData was the outsider and t there's always
in most Trek series someone who representsthe outsider, and it can't be much

(52:05):
more of an outsider than seven andthat she was, you know, in
the Board Collective. She had beenstripped of her humanity. She had been
reduced to a drone, a tool, a slave, and they liberate her,
and at first she doesn't even wantto be liberated. In many respects,
she's you know, got the equivalentof Stockholm syndrome. Whether or not
that's a real syndrome that's being debatedtoday, but let that go. But

(52:28):
she's got all this psychological damage.She's been cut off from her humanity.
And one of the things that Ifound intriguing is I took this deep dive
into her psyche even after she's liberatedby the crew of Voyager and is now
living among the crew of Voyager,who are all very open minded. They're
the best of Starfleet. They're tryingto nurture her, they're trying to guide

(52:51):
her back into human civilization. Sothey're all very kid gloves with her.
Nobody's that harshly critical, and they'revery gentle with her, whereas real life
is not going to be that way. Once she gets back to Earth and
the Federation, suddenly life is alot meaner, and a lot less forgiving,
and much more prone to prejudice andanger. So she's trying to rediscover

(53:16):
her humanity. And as I tookthe deep dive into her head, I
realized, from her point of view, here she is. She's thirty two
years old. She's finally striking outon her own, cutting the apron strings
from her surrogate mother figure of Janeway, and she's realizing that she has been

(53:36):
robbed of all of the most formativeyears of her life. She was robbed
of her childhood. Importantly, shewas robbed of her adolescence and her young
adulthood, all the periods in whichmost people spend figuring out their identity,
who they are, what they wantto be, what their sexuality is,
what their gender identity is. Allthose sort of exploratory periods of her life

(54:00):
where she should have been building heridentity, it was all taken away.
She was robbed of all of it. And now she's basically trying to reintegrate
into civilization, into society, butshe has no idea how any of it
works. At one point, Ibelieve I refer to I think this was
in the scene in the club whereshe's trying to figure out the you know,

(54:22):
the mechanisms of flirtation and it's likea language everybody else speaks that she
was never taught, and she's tryingto figure it out on the fly,
but she can never quite pick upenough to understand what the hell anybody else
is talking about. David she hadand she I loved she had a terrible
one night stand. I mean thatwas I mean, that was great.
I loved it. That was Thatwas probably the suggestion of Kirston Buyer,

(54:44):
because she said, well, youknow, it's okay that you know,
she has this moment. She says, but it's important that you show that
there are negative sides to it,negative consequences on the emotional level. And
I said, sure, I getthat, and I'll definitely deal with that.
So I took that suggestion from Kirston, and basically, you know,
my approach to detailing seven, exploringand sort of seeking out connection, romantic

(55:07):
connection, sexual connection, anything anykind of human connection. It's all about
the same sort of vulnerability that anybodyfaces, regardless of orientation where you're coming
from. There's an intrinsic vulnerability toputting yourself out there and trying to find
somebody else to have an intimate connectionwith. It's just it's a human thing.

(55:30):
It's not about any particular gender oranything. It's about, you know,
you're opening yourself up to the potentialof getting hurt. You're trying to
connect, You're trying to feel wanted, you're trying to feel good about yourself,
and in a way you're trying tofind that through another person. And
it's just so complicated, especially ifagain, for seven she has been robbed

(55:52):
of eighteen years of her life whenshe should have been learning how to do
all this, and now she's tryingto pick it up on the flow and
just it's all going by her inone hundred miles an hour, you know.
So she and she thinks this isgoing to be this sort of transcendent
moment, but as she describes itin the book, instead of transcendent,

(56:13):
what she got was tawdry, andshe winds up feeling sort of unclean about
it. Almost ashamed of it.And I put together a Spotify playlist of
songs that inspired the book, andit's up on Spotify even now. And
one of the songs that was chosenfor this, like I have certain music

(56:34):
that's in mind for the club,and but the song that's playing on the
morning after when she wakes up aloneis a song called The Rush by JJ
Wilde, and it's all about desireand shame. It's about wanting to connect
but feeling ashamed of your own desires. And there's a line in the song,
a line of one of the lyrics, and I'm glad my mother can't

(56:58):
see me, because if she did, I don't know how I would go
on. And then there's also youknow, it's easier to learn to forget.
That was when I learned to forget. It's easier than learning to live
with regret. So it's basically that'ssort of where seven is emotionally at that
point, is she's yearning for connectionbut doesn't know how to get there,

(57:20):
and nobody seems inclined to be patientenough to teach her. But that's also
what's going to be important about therelationship she forms later in the book,
because one of the other things,again element of the classic buildings Roman style,
is she's going to meet the firstgreat love of her life. Yes,
she dated Janeway. Daneway, shedated Chacote, and that didn't work

(57:42):
out too well. They eventually obviouslyhad to break up because it canonically they
broke up, and I sort ofexplained some of the reasons for that.
When Seven is denied her place inStarfleet, this creates a lot of envy
and a lot of anger and alot of resentment, especially when Chakota gets
promoted and now he's going to bein charge of this top secret project on
the Protostar. You know, she'sgetting all this sort of attention, but

(58:07):
it means he can't bring her withhim because she's pretty risk and so she
she envies him, and she's alsoangry at being left behind, and she
takes this toxic stew and she selfsabotages their relationship, and it's why they
end up, you know, justshe's just got too much anger, she's
got too much resentment built up,and she can't forgive him for succeeding and

(58:30):
having to leave her behind. Soas much as you know they wanted to
hint at Chakota being some you know, big thing for her. At the
end of Voyager, I see thatflaming out. So I sort of felt
like I had this opportunity for Sevento find the first great love of her
life, and where those things don'talways last. And we all have,

(58:51):
or many people, I should saymany people have that sort of first early,
you know, big relationship, youknow, the first time he felt
really hard for somebody and it lastedfor a while. And some people marry
their first two eleven, some peopledon't. Some people sometimes those relationships for
any number of reasons, don't workout and you move on in your life.
So I presume that's again going tohave to happen with Seven and the

(59:15):
character of ellery Cade at some point, but it doesn't happen in this book.
One of the things I was positiveI did not want to have in
this book was the disposable gay relationship. I did not want the trope of
bury your gaze. I wanted tomake sure that the interesting person of color
who's part of the team doesn't haveto get killed to show how dangerous the

(59:35):
situation is. And it's just aslittle things like that, like you know,
there's the trope of you know,the Burier gaze is probably the most
pernicious of them, where you givethe character the relationship but somehow feel compelled
to kill off the gay lover beforethe end of the story. Drove me
crazy, and I know queer readershate that, so I made a conscious

(59:59):
choice. I'm like, no,I'm going to subvert that. I may
even walk right up to the lineand make them think I'm going to do
it, but I'm not going todo it because I specifically wanted my queer
characters to have a happy ending.I want them to be able to say,
you know, happily ever after untilnext Because you you frame the whole
conversation of seven telling the story too. I was butchering thee I can't Bejazel,

(01:00:22):
thank you. I was trying to. I was practicing that earlier.
Was that yours and you did aterrible job. I did it horrible both
times. Was that intentional? Wasthat was that thought out ahead of time?
Was that coming from somewhere else toframe the story being told to her?
Because that's kind of a traged relationshipor a tragic bad relationship and have

(01:00:44):
developed well, yeah, it's anominous thing. Yeah. Yeah. Basically,
I wanted a framing sequence to sortof pull things together because they wanted
part of the book, at leastsomething in the book to ground it in
the Picards series that youers saw somethingthat they would recognize, a depiction that

(01:01:05):
would at least feel more familiar,because I'm doing this sort of origin story,
which is like twenty years back inwhich the Rangers are only just starting
to sort of deal with the effectsof losing oversight, losing their legitimacy,
and they're slowly going to degrade intothe Robinhood like band. They are twenty

(01:01:25):
years later, they're not there yet, They're still much closer to their origins
when she first joins them, soshe's there just as they're beginning to fragment
and lose their cohesion. But theframing sequence with Bejazel that was basically about
grounding it in something that people who'veseen the series at least season one will
go, Okay, I recognize thisdepiction of Seven as a Fendros Ranger,

(01:01:52):
and the sort of depiction of hermeeting Bejasl is just a dramatization of something
she mentions having met Bejasl on Fenerousthat Bejazel posed to someone who wanted to
become a fenerous ranger. She saidthat in Cannon Uh, And we know
that later Bejazel takes an interest inharvesting Borg tech from x Borg and that

(01:02:14):
it was an unfortunate comment by Seventhat targeted that caused Bajazel to target each
chef. And so the idea isthat this is that canonical moment which she
sort of spoke of in past tense. This is that moment. This is
that tragic moment when Seven was smartenough to downplay her own organ plants for

(01:02:35):
self defense but unfortunately puts a targeton Eachev's back without real life. But
to Claire, for you, youwere asked to ground it in Picard,
Yes, it was asked that thereshould be something, even if just a
framing sequence, that gives viewers whohave watched Star Trek Picard something to ground
it. And that is familiar,right because it's antry depiction of hers ranger

(01:02:58):
and the character of Bejazel and thatstory which is part of the known Picard
continuity. It just gives us aplace to hang our hat, right,
Yeah, because it was interesting toyou know, you're forced the framing of
it just by the title, right, having Star Trek percard colon Firewall,
like you're forced that in your mindby its fans, and that's because it's
the most recent series that they wantto put out there. So you're also

(01:03:19):
because it's based on events that arespecific to that series. Sure, the
whole thing with Feminous Rangers. Ofcourse, you can't just label it Star
Trek Voyager because the Fenois Rangers arenot part of that. Yeah, so
it has to be sold as aprequel story under the Picard banner, even
though most of it feels like aVoyager center. Yeah, yeah, it's

(01:03:43):
interesting. Well, thank you somuch for your time. So just before
you go, so you've got you'restarting off twenty twenty four strong with Firewall.
Can you talk about anything you're workingon or what you you know in
a or if you can't then well, I mean, obviously I don't want
to promise anything I can't deliver on. Although I do have a novel project
I'm working on, it doesn't havea home yet, so I don't want

(01:04:04):
to say too much about that.What I do have coming down the pike
that I know of in twenty twentyfour are six pieces of short fiction,
four of them for Star Trek toOriginal. The four pieces for Trek are
going to be published in Star TrekExplorer magazine. The first of them comes
out in March in issue eleven,and that's a short story called Dignified Transfer

(01:04:31):
to TG story set during the Stargazerera. Don't want to say too much
about it, obviously, you knowit's a rumination on death and loss.
And what's important about that one tome The fact that I think it turned
out really well as a story isthat it is dedicated to my late father

(01:04:53):
in law and it's coming out duringthe month of what would have been its
birthday, so that's sort of importantto me. And issue twelve, I'm
gonna have a story called Memoriam.Again, don't want to spoil it,
but it'll say it's a TOS movieera story takes place or any era of
say it takes place a around thetime between Star Trek five and Star Trek

(01:05:15):
six. Somewhere in there. Issuethirteen will have a story called Family History,
I believe. Yeah, family History, that's going to be it's sort
of timeless. I guess you wouldclassify it more as TNG than anything else.
And it's basically focuses on Wesley Crusheras a traveler. And then the

(01:05:39):
one that I'm writing right now forissue fourteen, which would be at the
end of the year, is Picardbased, and I'm just gonna say it's
called Free Blade. And if you'vewatched Picard, you've a season one,
you can probably figure out what FreeBlade is. So that's what's coming on
the Trek front in terms short stories. And then I have two original pieces

(01:06:01):
of short fiction which were written overthe last year or two for themed anthologies
which are going to be coming out, and I've been told I've been assured
they're both going to come out intwenty twenty four. One is called Combat
Monsters, edited by Henry Hertz.I believe that'll be out from Blackstone Publishing,
and the premise there is real battlesof World War Two reimagined if they

(01:06:26):
involved certain monsters of authors choosing.So each author was told to pick a
battle or engagement of World War Twoand then insert any kind of mythological monster,
cinematic monster, monster of their owncreation, whatever they wanted, and
Henry basically sort of curated it tomake sure nobody chose the same creatures that
there was a variety, and sowithout saying what kind of monster, I'll

(01:06:51):
just say that my story is calledbox Scar, which is the name of
the plane that dropped the second atomicbomb, not the first, and it's
basically the story of the dropping ofthe second atomic bomb in Japan, but
involving a monster. And then theother anthology is Last Train Out of Kepler

(01:07:11):
two eighty three c edited by DavidBoop, scheduled for publication by Bain.
It's coming from Bain Books, andthat's his third and probably final collection of
what he calls space Western short stories. And for that I wrote an original
short story called Living by the Sword, which again don't want to say too

(01:07:32):
much about, although one thing Iam proud of is that I decided to
make the protagonist and point of viewcharacter basically an adolescent girl of Chinese descent
living sort of in the far future, and to make sure that it was
culturally sensitive and correct and that Ididn't make any really stupid blunders, I

(01:07:53):
got some wonderful help and expert consultationfrom my friend fellow author Mary Fan,
who is a first generation Chinese Americantremendous talented author in her own right,
and a lovely person, great singer. But she was very helpful and that
she shared with me, you know, her perspective as a person of Chinese

(01:08:16):
descent, to help me make sureI got the details right about this person's
take on their own cultural background.And then there might also be another piece,
an academic piece of publishing essays aboutstar trek and media tie ins,
which I was asked to write anessay. I wrote an essay basically about

(01:08:38):
the profession of writing tie ins andwhat the industry looks like from a professional
perspective rather than a fan perspective.And that's I believe called Strange Novel Worlds
you recoon anyway, that's also supposedto be at I think summer fall.
So I've got a lot of,you know, weird stuff that's not my
usual. Plus I'm working, hopefullyI've been working on an audio drama project.

(01:08:59):
We're waiting for final green light togo to script. I'm hoping we
get it. If we do,then hopefully later this year i'll be able
to announce that. But if wedon't get the green light, then it'll
going to turn around and die andwe'll never speak well. The quantity and
more importantly, the quality of yourwriting is so impressive and so thank you

(01:09:20):
so much for joining us. Uh, everybody, wait, hold on real
yeah, thank you, thank you, Dom, thank you. I was
gonna say we should Where should peoplebuy buckets of your creates, of your
of your latest book. But goahead, Trevor, No, go ahead,
done that. That actually is avery very important question. Do you

(01:09:40):
have a preference where they buy StarTrek cards as long should buy the buy
them either an ebook or in print. Uh, you know, I don't
really care what retailer you buy themfrom. Buy them from Cobo, buy
them from Eyebooks, buy them fromGoogle Books, buy them from Amazon and
Barnes and Noble. I don't careone of these, you know. If
you want to keep up with justwhat I coming and what's on sale and

(01:10:00):
what's going to be in pre sale, you can visit my website davidmack dot
pro. That's David mac mack dotpro. And from the front page you
can navigate to my bibliography. You'llsee the most recent titles right there on
the front page. You can orderright there from the front page, it'll
stay upcoming pre order now or nowon sale. So that's pretty much a

(01:10:23):
great way to keep track of whatI have currently available. If you're interested
in Star Trek short fiction, Iand many other great writers, including folks
like Jake Black and A. Cormac, James Swallow, Christopher Bennett, and
many others. Greg Cox have beencontributing short fiction to the Star Trek Explorer

(01:10:45):
magazine. Some of those are beingcollected now in special anthology collection volumes.
If you want to get them asthey come out, subscribe to the magazine,
get the digital supplement added on,because sometimes some stories are printed in
the print magazine and sometimes they're printedor distributed in the only in the digital
supplement later on. I think theyall get collected in the collection editions,

(01:11:10):
But if you want to get themas they come out, sign up for
the magazine, get the digital supplement, and every two months, aside from
all the other great stuff you getfrom Star Trek Explorer Magazine, you also
get quality new original Star Trek fictionthat you can't get anyplace else. And
then, obviously, if you wantto track me on social media and you

(01:11:30):
act with me, you can findan author page on Facebook at facebook dot
com slash the David Mac and youcan find me on Blue Sky, which
is the replacement to the bird sitenow owned by the fascist idiot Elon Musk.
You can find me on Blue Skyunder the handle David mack Nice.

(01:11:51):
Well, it's Friday night, soI'm in a good Moodsir Trevor. I'm
actually let you have the last wordon this one for a change. David,
this is going to be a reallyreally easy question. But what I
want to know is, how manyminutes into this interview did you realize that
Don is the most boring person you'veever talked to in your life? I

(01:12:13):
mean, is he in competition withyou? Dave? Dave, how could
you say that? I think it'sthe sound effects for me. For that
one we might we might have tobring you in on this podcast. I
think this dynamic really works now,the three of us, this works.
Well, yeah, we're gonna We'regonna have an all star episode one day,

(01:12:34):
you know, maybe many months oryears from now, and bring bring
our favorites back. So you actuallyin all in all serious, in all
serious, is all jokes aside,Dave, I have severe a d D
and it actually got worse during thepandemic, and I have been really struggling
with book reading, really struggling withit and it's been really difficult, and

(01:12:59):
uh, I got I got intoFirewall, and I just, I honestly
just felt this confidence that I'm goingto finish this. I really enjoy it
and I want to say thank youfor that. And I honestly hope everybody
gets this book. It was itis. It's difficult for me to read

(01:13:24):
right now and anything, and Ifound that this I found it to be
very engaging right away. Well,thank you. That means a lot to
me, and I'm glad that ithas provided that positive experience for you.
Yes, thank you, but I'mhonored that that you feel that way about

(01:13:45):
And I can confirm that Trevor canin fact read. I can't read.
It's a struggle. An end forthat, don't you do. Thank you.
See he's good with this, Davidall all the luck in the world
with this book. It sounds awesome. Yeah, thank you, congratulations,
and thank you so much for joiningus and really appreciate your time. It's

(01:14:06):
been a pleasure. Oh, thanksso much. Good night, All right,
welcome back, and wow, Trevor, that was an epic conversation with
Dave and really went deeper than Ianticipated and really loved talking to him and
I've read all like a ton ofhis books and I'm so thrilled to have
him books. Go out and getthe book. Oh, I'm not kidding

(01:14:31):
when I when when I mentioned inthe in the interview that I really do
struggle with reading. Now, Iyes, I can read. I can
read fine. I just we haveproof I don't. I'm just not my
attention span, my my attention deficient. You know. It's it's bad.
The A D D is really bad. And I really struggle. This book

(01:14:58):
h brought me in right away,and uh, I'm I'm invested. And
I don't know if that's a sellingpoint for any of you, but I
highly highly recommend it. I usuallyread autobiography, depressing books and comics and

(01:15:19):
obituaries at your agebituaries, I valueone. You're not kidding And uh,
that was harsh, that was dark. Well you know it is literally you
can't afford the newspaper it is.You are stouched. Uh I, Uh,
it's a very good book. Pleasego out and and buy it.

(01:15:43):
Go out and buy it. Iwill I will say that. You know,
I enjoy a lot of Star Treknovels since I was a little kid.
This doesn't read to me like manyothers. I was very surprised.
It was it cooks, it moves, it's mature, or it's it works
really well. So that's amazing.I really really enjoyed. Yes, I'm

(01:16:08):
mad at you last week. Yes, sir, I did something that I
actually did not want to do,but I did it you want sake of
our friendship, David. I didit for this, for the podcast,
everything, for the podcast. Idid it because for a moment I was

(01:16:34):
like, I like don and youpissed that all away. Okay, what
did you do? I, yes, sir, invited you. I respond
to you too when I max screeningon my calendar. I didn't say you're

(01:16:56):
not invited anymore. And I'm deadserious, you're not invited anymore. That's
sad you're not. Yeah, hedid. He texted me and said,
hold some dates for doing two andthen we'll do a podcast imax. And
I'm talking like we have one ofthe few full frame, eighty foot tall
imaxes and you know, other thanOppenheimer and Nope, like Dune, even
though it wasn't filmed that way,is actually being converted for full IMAX,

(01:17:20):
and I was like, Dawn,let's go, let's go together. Then
afterward, you know what's what's Let'scome back record a podcast. I'll get
tickets. Let me know. Deadsilence, You're out, You are out?
Well, can I tell you something, Trevor. It looks like I'm

(01:17:40):
gonna be on DC for work.That work is the thing that you do
to make money and buy things.I do plenty of work, Thank you
very much. By the way,the toilets are kind of dirty. Can
he get back to that after theshow? Dude, you better cut that
out or I'm gonna punch you inthe face. Well, thank you so
much, Trevor. I unfortunately cannotjoin you, but I would love to

(01:18:02):
see it. Perhaps the following itat least got back to me. No,
it's that painful. It is thatpainful to communicate with me. That
is that paid fortistic communicate? Isthat? So? Are we are we
going to? Uh? You knowthe presentation is going to suck. But
it isn't Fandango or Fathom Events doinga Dune. It's pretty a Lynch Dune

(01:18:27):
screening and we have to go absolutely, we have to go. Yeah,
completely, see the best Dune filmever made. Yeah, I have a
I have a state issued legal medicalmarijuana card. Am I allowed to be
high off my face during that filmbecause that is the only way I'm going
to be able to get through it. I love that movie. It's so

(01:18:48):
it is something terrible. No,it's not. We're definitely gonna go see
that again, hopefully be a betterprint than the one that you took me
to. I think, hey man, that was an original thirty five print.
It was just constant dirt everywhere,torture, you know, it's so
sad. It's so sad. Isee a lot of thirty five prints,
and that was actually pretty good.I mean, the Prince today, they're

(01:19:10):
they're just they're all in collector's handsand they're just in brutal condition. Anyways,
what's not been brutal has been thisseason of no in Scenario so far,
because we've had uh an artist novelist. Yes, I'm really really surprised
and enjoying how how we've been goingthis season. Who knows where the rest
of the season will take us,and you know what female will have for

(01:19:30):
season three? Can you imagine weshould be thinking about season three? I
quit I'm excited you're ready to quit. I'm excited by no am I ready
to quit. No, but Ican feel I feel that you're ready to
cut me out of this podcast.Somehow I feel it. I can feel
it, my daughter. I'm gonnalet you do it. I'm gonna be

(01:19:54):
like a barnacle. I'm gonna justlatch Audie. I'm gonna bite and not
let go. Wow. Sorry,Okay, Don, always a pleasure talking
to you. I know in fighta lot. But I actually after the
David Mac interview, I texted youand I said, thanks, this is
after the David Mac episode. Yes, I did. I Can you at

(01:20:15):
least pretend that this wasn't recorded tothree weeks later if after a recent interview
that we did. I I textedyou and I said, thank you for
being such a role model to youand so inspirational. I'm trying to have
a sincere moment. I said,thank you. You know you're doing a
great job and I'm really happy tobe doing this with you. Wow.

(01:20:39):
Yeah, I think we should justended with that. I think so and
nothing more sarcastic. So for nothingmore sarcastic. My name is Don.
My name is Trevor again. Myname is Don. Let's try that one
again. My name Trevor went don'tknow for no win scenario, for no

(01:21:01):
win scenario, and I'm Trevor.Thanks for listening, Thank you for listening. By now