Are you a Star Trek fan? So am I, and here’s the cover of the anthology my story “Seventh Heaven” appears in, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II, published by Simon and Schuster’s Pocket Books division. When first released, you could find it in any major bookstore. Now, you can find it on Amazon. It’s a Borg love story, what could be sweeter?
Actually, writing for the Star Trek universe is a challenge, and not just because Paramount owns Star Trek and has rules about their characters, the biggest being YOU CAN’T CHANGE THEM. Since you’re here, I’m betting you probably know something about writing. A basic part of what makes stories satisfying is that your protagonist starts out one way, and by the end of the story, events you have put him or her through have changed your protagonist. It’s called character growth, something we crave in people and may never see <evil grin>, something we expect to find in our fictional characters as they come out of the crucible we writers put them through and pin wings to their chest at the end (ouch!) and say, ‘Attaboy! You learned something!’ But how do you do that when, by the end of the story, you better have them looking exactly like they started out? Because if you don’t, Paramount is going to take that action figure out of your hands and put it back on their shelf and say, “Don’t you ever touch my toys again!”
Try it sometime. It’s one of the most challenging writing exercises you will ever do, and the only way you know you’ve succeeded is when they hand you a check and put you in one of their books.
They did a huge release signing for this one, at the biggest Barnes & Noble I’ve ever seen, in New York City. It was a lot of fun scribbling in fans books:
“Resistance is futile. You WILL be assimilated … but you’ll enjoy the ride.”