Someone on the TrekBBS forum recently resurrected the thread devoted to Strange New Worlds 10, which I hadn't seen in quite a while, in order to offer up a story-by-story review of the anthology.

I appreciated that--so many people who review collections never bother to cover every story therein--even though that person gave "You Are Not in Space" a middle-of-the-road assessment:

Good, readable Hoshi story. I was kind of hoping for a more rousing conclusion.

On a related note, I had written letters to each of the book retailers in Winnipeg before the new movie came out to let them know about the existence of SNW 10, basically working the "local author does good" angle in connection to the Star Trek franchise and hoping they might stock up on it again.

Over a month has passed since I mailed those off, so I decided to start looking into how effective my (small) efforts at marketing had been...and while I haven't been able to check everywhere yet (both McNally Robinson locations will need a visit, for starters), Chapters and its affiliated bookstores allow you to search for titles at all locations in a given area, so I know that as of this week, there were seven new copies of Strange New Worlds 10 available in the system. :)

I'm not saying this would work for every market or every Star Trek tie-in writer, and some authors have been luckier than others (daytonward, for example, had a lot of support from Paramount's Kansas City publicity machine), but with a lot of debate right now about what Pocket Books could or couldn't have done to promote the line in the wake of the film, I felt I should take matters into my own hands.

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #220 646 in Books "Only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)."
Amazon Kindle Sales Rank: #42 662 in Kindle Store
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #193 725 in Books "Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)."

The most commonly reported statistic on Star Trek tie-in fiction is that its readership is generally about 1-2% of the larger audience for the franchise as a whole.

In the hope that a rising tide raises all boats, and a larger audience for the new movie equals a larger audience for the tie-ins, let's move some paper and list the most recent Star Trek outings by the people on my friendslist:

Emily P. Bloch (deltagrl) most recently contributed to the Star Trek literary universe with the short story "Shadowed Allies" in Strange New Worlds 9, edited by Dean Wesley Smith with Elisa J. Kassin and Paula M. Block.

Marc Carlson (marccarlson) most recently contributed the short story "The Immortality Blues" in Strange New Worlds 9.

Keith R.A. DeCandido (kradical) most recently contributed A Singular Destiny, the first followup to the Star Trek: Destiny crossover trilogy. He also edited Mere Anarchy, which collects the six-eBook miniseries "covering 30 years of TOS history" as a trade paperback, and wrote the short story "Family Matters," which appears in Shards and Shadows, a Mirror Universe anthology edited by Margaret Clark and Marco Palmieri.

Allyn Gibson (tiggerallyn) most recently contributed the short story "Make-Believe" in Constellations, an anthology edited by Marco Palmieri which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the original Star Trek.

Jim Johnson (ineti)--who was cool enough to pick me up an autographed copy of an entirely different media tie-in anthology, Doctor Who: The Quality of Leadership, at last year's Shore Leave--most recently contributed the short story "A Terrible Beauty" in Shards and Shadows.

Gerri Leen (gerrileen) most recently contributed the short story "The Smell of Dead Roses" in Strange New Worlds 10, edited by Dean Wesley Smith with Paula M. Block.

David Mack (infinitydog) wrote the epic Destiny trilogy (consisting of Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls), which really shook up the Star Trek universe in print. He also wrote the short story "For Want of a Nail" in Shards and Shadows, and his next Star Trek novel will be Precipice, part of the Star Trek: Vanguard series he co-created with Marco Palmieri, which occurs concurrently with The Original Series.

Steve Mollmann (steve_mollmann) most recently contributed the bookend short stories "Meet with Triumph and Disaster" and "Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You," both with Michael Schuster (michaelschuster), in The Sky's the Limit, an anthology edited by Marco Palmieri which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Scott Pearson (scottpearson), who gave me a really cool shout-out last week, most recently contributed the short story "Among the Clouds" in The Sky's the Limit.

Amy Sisson (amysisson) most recently contributed the short story "'Twould Ring the Bells of Heaven" in The Sky's the Limit.

Paul C. Tseng (exculpatory) most recently contributed the short story "A Dish Served Cold" in Strange New Worlds 10.

Dayton Ward (daytonward) last contributed Open Secrets (whose story was co-created with Kevin Dilmore), the most recent novel in the Vanguard series. They also wrote the short story "Ill Winds" in Shards and Shadows and Things Fall Apart, the first story in Mere Anarchy.

...and of course, my last appearance was "You Are Not in Space" in Strange New Worlds 10.

All of the titles I just listed are also available in paperless formats such as Amazon Kindle, so let's move some electrons as well. ;)

I know some upcoming Star Trek books have been pushed back to 2010, friendslist, but have I missed any of your items coming out in 2009...?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65 208 in Books "Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)."
Amazon Kindle Sales Rank: #17 876 in Kindle Store
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #187 130 in Books

I couldn't begin the holiday without first deferring to a trio of performers who truly understand its spirit:


In honour of the day, I'll also offer up the same challenge I offered last year for anyone reading this...

Comment here with a topic, and I will write a limerick about it for you.

Please keep it to one topic per comment, though you can comment more than once, and there's no deadline for submitting topics.

As with the last edition of this challenge, I'll do my best to be as prompt as possible on replies.

In honour of the holiday, I thought I would offer up a challenge for anyone reading this...

Comment here with a topic, and I will write a limerick about it for you. Please keep it to one topic per comment, though you can comment more than once.

I know I can be notoriously slow at replying to comments, but I'll do my best to be prompt on this.

...but I finally received my contributor copies of Strange New Worlds 10 last week. :)

As I mentioned in my last entry, I'd allowed for a lot of mailing wackiness to ensue, since that's been known to happen randomly with cross-border shipments. Once I was past the ninety-day point, though, it seemed prudent to get in touch with Pocket Books to see what might be going on. The original order could not be tracked down, but thankfully, the books were ordered again, and this package managed to make it to Winnipeg without incident.

I can only hope the original order enjoys its life out in the postal ether...

Three of those copies were already spoken for by various members of my extended family, but the remaining seven will stick around until someone expresses an interest--or until I decide to give someone a really self-centred present. :P

If you've evolved beyond these primitive physical books, however, you'll be happy to know that SNW 10 is now also available as an Amazon Kindle Book. Feel free to enjoy it in whatever format makes you happiest.

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #288 799 in Books (#16 726 in Kindle Store)
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #122 383 in Books

Yet another healthy chunk of time has gone by without a proper update from me, so this is going to have a mix of both the latest regarding Strange New Worlds 10 and some random stuff which has been going on lately.

(I will be blogging a proper con report about Shore Leave, I swear, but this is not that entry...)

First, on a somewhat frustrating note, I still haven't gotten my copies of SNW 10. :/ I didn't worry about it too much before Shore Leave, because no one else seemed to have gotten them either...and then, I allowed for a bunch of extra time to clear any customs hurdles, since I believe I was the only Canadian in this volume...but there's still been no sign of them at all. *sigh*

On a more amusing note, though, Amazon.ca sent me an email a while back with recommendations based on my Amazon Wish List--and SNW 10 was at the very top. :} I guess my tastes are easy enough to figure out...

Speaking of Amazon, the first review finally showed up on Amazon.com last week. I disagreed with many of the reviewer's thoughts (he dissed some of the stories I really liked, for one), and he has a very strange rating system, but for what it's worth, "You Are Not In Space" received a brief and middle-of-the-road assessment as a "good story, but a little predictable in it's [sic] ending."

More important to me was the review which appeared in Issue #7 of Star Trek Magazine, on newsstands now:



John Freeman's review included the following, which made me very happy:

Paul C. Tseng's story A Dish Served Cold...is a gem, as are Time Line by Jerry M. Wolfe...the Vic Fontaine story So a Horse Walks into a Bar... by Brian Seidman and the Hoshi Sato-centered You Are Not in Space by Edgar Governo.

Lest I fail to give a shout-out to the other writers just mentioned, Paul C. Tseng is exculpatory around these parts, and Brian Seidman has his own website as well. Unfortunately, I can't find any online presence for Jerry M. Wolfe. :/

Also unfortunate is the fact that I waited so long to mention that the official Star Trek website is hosting a "Strange New Worlds 10 for 10" Book Giveaway, where you can actually win a free copy of SNW 10. Why is this unfortunate? Well, for one, the contest is only open to US residents to begin with; and for another, the deadline is tomorrow afternoon, so I'm not really leaving you with a lot of time to enter--but there is time, my American friends!

I'd love to follow all this up by talking about the various stories I need to mail off before the impending deadline for Strange New Worlds 11 on October 1...but as I've mentioned before, such a volume will not be happening. *sigh* Various reviews and posts online have lamented the end of the series, and I doubt I can add anything new to those, other than to say that I'm as sad as everyone else. Alas, I shall never earn a Wardy.

In that case, you may be asking, what have I been up to?

The usual fandom activities and a lot of birthday shopping, for the most part.

I was very surprised last Monday to discover an autographed photo of Christopher Lee in the mail...a photo, I can only presume, intended as a donation item for the charity auction I held last year, in response to the letter I wrote him just under two years ago. I should be getting that letter from Ringo Starr any day now...

I've been talking about Doctor Who to anyone who will listen lately, so I thought it was awesome a couple of days later to spot a "DR WHO" licence plate on a Mini Cooper going down Osborne Street. I've been told that "TARDIS" is already taken in Manitoba as well, but I have yet to see one on the streets of Winnipeg.

I also thought it was awesome that "Dick in a Box" won an Emmy last weekend. :) I can honestly say there was no more deserving entry in its category.

Shopping for birthday presents turned out to be easier than I expected in some ways and harder in others. (September and October have a concentration of birthdays for people I'm close to, including my own. The only other period with so many birthdays coming at me at once is mid-March.) For one, I had a hell of a time this past Friday trying to find a copy of Babylon 5: The Lost Tales for my friend Bradley, but I had a much easier time finding Serenity: Collector's Edition for him, after having the reverse be true a few weeks ago when I considered getting a copy of the latter for myself. (At this point, I'm leaving it as a very obvious birthday suggestion for other people. ;))

On the bright side, there was a Browncoat at the HMV where I bought Serenity, who was smart enough to ask if I'd already bought Firefly since it was currently on sale. We had a nice little bonding moment where she expressed some excitement that this Collector's Edition exists in the first place. :)

Despite a few hours of searching that day, mostly around Polo Park, I didn't encounter anything else I was looking for, birthday-wise (for Bradley or anyone else), and then ran out of time and had to head to The Forks for some pool with xandersgirl (one of the birthday people in question), jack_pride, and my brother Tony, followed by a trip to Cinema City for a second-run viewing of Ocean's Thirteen. A definite highlight of the evening was putting together our list of five celebrities of each gender for our respective laminated cards (Friends-style) over dinner before the movie, which was both enlightening and a lot of fun. I wasn't so thrilled with my guy list (a couple of them could be switched out very easily), but I'm quite happy with my girl list, as I feel it represents a great lineup of very attractive women. ;)

Also worth mentioning was Tony's Consumer Rage gene kicking in at the cinema after a snafu over our movie tickets, which is a rare event in itself. (For anyone who hasn't met my brother, he's generally a very quiet person, so seeing him get his hackles up for any reason at all is akin to a J. D. Salinger sighting.)

Saturday was a similar story as far as shopping went--a mix of finds and frustration--but St Vital worked out somewhat better than Polo Park had. I didn't have time to head downtown that day, but their Chapters had more of the things I wanted, and I managed to find the B5 DVD at their HMV location.

Since I was there anyway, I checked the Science Fiction section to see what was stocked, and sadly, no copy of SNW 10 remains there...but for some strange reason, they had fifty copies of The Klingon Dictionary sitting on their shelves, far more than anything else related to Star Trek in the entire store. Don't get me wrong--it's a great book, and I do own a copy, but it's a fifteen-year-old Star Trek reference work, and such works are often said not to sell well compared to original ST fiction. What's up with that?

At any rate, I wasn't there for that, but I did pick up Those Left Behind and Firefly: The Official Companion (Volume One) there to round out Bradley's birthday package. I debated over whether to try and find Volume Two before handing the gifts over, but (as xandersgirl correctly pointed out) I automatically have something to give him for Christmas this way...

Looking for birthday cards is at least as hard for me as what I just described. When it comes to my personal card-buying philosophy, I try to avoid rhymes, bad jokes, and (to a certain extent) glitter, while leaning towards cards that are witty and/or literary. Even if a card meets all of these criteria, I still have to do the obvious and make sure it reflects how I feel about both the person and the occasion, with plenty of space for me to write my own sentiments. (I'm one of those verbose fill-up-all-the-space-available guys...have you noticed yet? ;)) All of this knocks out so many potential candidates that, in an ironic twist, I tend to buy a lot of cards when I'm in a card store, since I'll grab anything that I think will fit the bill at some point, e.g. birthday cards for friends whose birthdays are months away.

My most recent card-shopping trips have proven no different from this pattern.

For now, at least, I seem to be caught up on all birthday-related matters, but I'm sure there are still more gifts to be bought...

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30 766 in Books
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #58 773 in Books

Strange New Worlds 10 is out...

...and my inbox has the flood to prove it. :}

Jim Johnson (ineti), one of the other writers in the collection, sent out a batch email to those of us who're going to be at Shore Leave this weekend, leading to a back-and-forth of twenty-seven messages (at last count) waiting to be read.

There've been lots of things going on lately in relation to the book beyond those emails, though, and I've been eager to post about them as they happened...so naturally, my computer has been on the fritz for the past week and a half. :/

This is the first extended period I've spent online since the beginning of the month as a result, and I'm still making sure everything is all right. (In fact, if you sent any email to my home address around Canada Day weekend, you might want to resend it, just in case...) Ironically, the main hardware problem I had was the hard drive I wasn't using, so with luck, there won't be any serious problems now.

I have a lot to do today, but I'll quickly try to hit the highlights.

Since I'm still worried about making a good impression at Shore Leave, I've been doing a bunch of clothes-shopping, starting around the end of June. Thanks to some expert sartorial advice, I think I'm in good shape, after quite a bit of experimentation...

(I'm not sure there'll be Outfit of the Day posts in my future, though...sorry, guys.)

I was also looking to pick up a new set of glasses (a long time coming, really), so I headed over to my optician the day after I first hunted for wardrobe. The focus was on a new set of frames (insert your own "focus" joke here), so I didn't really care if they just used my existing prescription, but they insisted that it was too old. Annoyed, I asked them why I couldn't just get the frames if I was wearing that prescription right now, especially since I'd tried to make an optometrist's appointment and they had "nothing available" before mid-August. The two offices are affiliated, so they looked into it--and oh, all of a sudden, I can get an appointment the next week after all. Funny how (figuratively) waving a wad of bills in front of them has that effect.

At any rate, "the next week" was a week ago today, and I paid seventy dollars to discover that...I still have the exact same prescription as I had before. *sigh* At least they sold me the glasses this time.

The day I failed to get the glasses wasn't all bad, though, as I managed to pick up the issue of Star Trek Magazine I mentioned previously (Issue #6, still on newsstands ;)). The article ended up being more of a sidebar amidst other news about upcoming Star Trek publications, with a tiny little paragraph per story in the anthology. All told, one sentence of my interview showed up in that sidebar, but it's all good--I still had something to show prettydark when I ran into her later that afternoon. :)

The flight to Baltimore and the hotel room are all taken of now, too. The flight ended up costing somewhat less than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise, but I ended up having to go with one of the alternate hotels as opposed to the Hunt Valley Inn, where the con is actually taking place. (The phone number they gave to be placed on a waiting list never even called me back. :/)

Late last week, I received my first Royalty Statement in the mail from Simon & Schuster...but with the book not out yet, there wasn't exactly a lot on it. :} Having said that, I noticed the same day that both North American Amazon sites were now listing the book as In Stock, so I started getting excited...

...which brings us to Saturday.

I headed out to search for more clothing and brought along some rather old Chapters Gift Cards (despite what I said about how staying out of that store was good for my wallet), since the store "reserves the right to expire" their value and I wanted to make the most of them while I could. Although the main goal was picking up some additional outfits, along with assorted household items for The New Place, I was hoping to get Firefly: The Official Companion (which I felt bad about not owning already, given how long it's been out) and some of the Trek books I wanted to catch up on. I knew SNW 10 was supposed to come out soon, too...but imagine my surprise when I saw three copies of it sitting on the shelf. :D

Keep in mind that I haven't received my copies from the publisher yet, so this was my first contact with the real, physical book, story and all. It was a great moment...

...and needless to say, part of my purchase was now a sure thing. ;)

That copy ultimately isn't for me, but since it's the copy I have right now, I've been working my way through it anyway. I've looked at all the bios and skimmed through my own story, quickly noting that they didn't go along with most of my copyediting feedback--but I've also already noticed one glaring typo (in one of the bios, where it's really easy to notice :/), so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Beyond that, I've only read one other story in the anthology so far, but I'll give some more thorough thoughts once I've gotten through the whole collection (i.e. after my trip). I'll also get an annotation page up for the story as soon as I have the chance to put it together.

In the meantime, however, there is much to be done before tomorrow...

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7265 in Books
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #3840 in Books

With barely a month to go before its official publication date, and with a number of you asking me what's going on with it, I should really let everyone know how things with Strange New Worlds 10 have been...

For one thing, I got paid. ;) The advance was fairly modest in the grand scheme of things (though the anthology has a pretty good per-word rate by most short-story market standards), but it was the first time I've ever been paid for something I've written. As someone who has self-identified as a writer for a long time, that was a very significant moment for me.

Also significant was an email I received at the beginning of March from Jeff Ayers (author of Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion), asking me some interview questions for eventual inclusion in an article for Star Trek Magazine (published by Titan Magazines) on SNW 10 and the history of the anthology as a whole. Jeff's email was my first encounter (beyond the obvious approval implied in getting published) with feedback on the story from someone who isn't close to me, and (fortunately) he had nothing but kind words to say about "You Are Not In Space," so I was reassured. :)

More recently, the back cover text for the collection was released a few weeks ago, which you can read (along with an excerpted story) on Simon & Schuster's website. It's always cool to see one's name in print, even if neither the descriptions on the back cover nor the excerpt relate to my specific story...

Craziest and most surreal of all, however, is the fact that I'm going to be an official con guest for the first time. I was offered a free membership and guest status at Shore Leave 29 in Baltimore, and I even have my own listing page on their site now...which is, yes, a rather plain listing page at this point. The Writers' Liaison has asked for a bio and photo a few times, but (despite this being all about writing) I haven't really been able to come up with anything. :/ Any suggestions on how I should describe myself, and/or what type of photo I should use, would be most appreciated.

I'm thinking of it mostly as a "business trip" (especially since right now, it looks like I'll be going alone, which I know will be much more boring than the alternative *sigh*), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited by the idea of being at a signing table, or sharing a panel with other Star Trek authors and editors, or having people ask me questions about my story. Since all of those experiences are very new to me, I'll be doing my best to appreciate the adventure of it all.

Making it to Shore Leave might also prove to be an interesting adventure, as I'll have to budget carefully to make sure everything works out. (Oh, who am I kidding? Keeping me out of Chapters, Future Shop, HMV, and McNally Robinson for a few months should be enough to do the trick...)

Since I really want good things to come of this trip, and I know that there are several networking events (like a Meet-the-Pros Party and a "no-host writer breakfast") over the course of the con, I've been very nervous about the fact that I don't feel "prepared" enough for it--which goes beyond the fact that I haven't booked a flight or hotel room yet. It's just that there'll be so many guests there, and I haven't done any sort of catching up on current Star Trek releases. :( Originally, I'd hoped to go back and read the previous SNW anthologies, along with some of the more popular books from the past few years, but at this point, I'll be lucky if I manage to get through Voyages of the Imagination itself (even though Jeff Ayers indicated he wouldn't be there) so I can feel like I have a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to the wide world of Trek literature.

Looking at the list of writers in attendance, there are a few things I could do to "cram." Keith R.A. DeCandido (kradical) will be there, so I should at least finish Articles of the Federation, his well-received 2005 novel described as "The West Wing meets Star Trek;" and I've been meaning to pick up the two Mirror Universe collections which came out earlier this year (Glass Empires and Obsidian Alliances) regardless. That's a start, I suppose. Perhaps I won't seem too much like I'm living in the media tie-in publishing world of ten years ago...

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #171 770 in Books
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #43 335 in Books

The contracts have been signed (in quadruplicate, no less) and the tax forms filled out for Strange New Worlds 10, so it looks like this thing is really happening. ;)

First off, thanks to everyone who commented or emailed or phoned after I broke the news...I know I've already thanked some of you personally, but it never hurts to reiterate my gratitude.

I received the copyedited version of "You Are Not In Space" on the 1st for my own corrections, and it was due today, but I was able to do my part and courier the corrected pages back to New York by the end of last week. :) It was interesting to do a page-by-page comparison between my original submission and the copy they sent me; I'm not sure if the story was retyped at some point or if they merely played around with the Word file I emailed to Pocket Books editor Margaret Clark (also the person who first phoned me with the news, by the way :)), but in a weird twist, some of the "corrections" on the new copy actually matched back to what I'd had in the original submission to begin with. Go figure.

Other than that, there wasn't a lot to change (and I wasn't allowed to make more than minor changes anyway), and on a few points, I called stet and offered my take where I differed with their call on something like punctuation. In one case, I realised I'd missed an utterly, utterly wrong pronoun in a sentence (but then, so had the copyeditor ;)), and in another, it turned out that a particular piece of Star Trek minutiae was incorrect in both my version and their correction. :/

And now, more waiting ensues...

While I wait, though, Dean Wesley Smith (the main editor for the Strange New Worlds anthology series, and thus, someone to whom I owe a lot) has posted an early version of the cover for the collection:



This, of course, shows the saucer section of the Enterprise-D crashing to the surface of Veridian III--one of the more memorable scenes in Star Trek: Generations, but not exactly an image that fills me with confidence for the future of this anthology. Smith himself, on the other hand, really likes it, saying on his forum that he "thought the cover was perfect for the last one...[a] real signal that this phase of this is over for now," since Strange New Worlds 10 has been announced as the end of the series. *sigh*

I hope I can keep his positive perspective.

I also hope I can make it to Shore Leave in Baltimore this July, since SNW writers (along with various other Star Trek authors and editors) traditionally go to that con en masse, which makes it seem like an excellent place for me to network. (The attentive link-follower will notice that Dean Haglund is scheduled to be at Shore Leave, too. If he and I both make it, that'll be the third con in less than a year where I've seen him appear...and not one of these cons is in the home province we share.)

That should bring everyone up to speed...

Any entries, starting with this one, that have the Strange New Worlds tag on them will end with a tally of how SNW 10 is doing on the two North American Amazon sites, following in the tradition of pages like the Firefly Amazon Ranking Tracker, as well as serving that selfish competitive streak of mine which you've come to know and love. ;)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #532 269 in Books
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #293 397 in Books

I can't even begin to tell you how hard it's been for me to keep this news to myself, as I first learned of it several weeks ago, but I haven't been allowed to talk about it openly until now...

My Star Trek: Enterprise short story "You Are Not In Space" has been selected for inclusion in the upcoming anthology Strange New Worlds 10 from Pocket Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster).

Here is the official announcement from the company's website...

Although the book will not be released until this summer, it is already available for pre-order on both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, so feel free to buy as many copies as you like. ;)

On a more serious note, please feel free to spread the news around--mention it to any fannish people you know, repost it liberally, that sort of thing. It can only help in the long run, and I would definitely appreciate your getting the word out.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about this...if you've known me for any length of time (and I mean any length of time), you should already realise that this is right along the path of what I want to do for a living, so it's nice to (finally) get my foot in the door of The Franchise, if ever so slightly.

Those of you who want to keep up with what happens next can continue to check back here and/or on MySpace, as I'll be tracking further developments in both places.

Hopefully, I'm just taking my first steps into the exciting world of being a media tie-in writer...and maybe, just maybe, I get to have that career that I want after all.

On that note, I think I should go write some more.