A reader over on the Trek BBS site drew my attention to the fact that January 25th 2018 was the 10th anniversary of the release of my first full-length Star Trek novel – Day of the Vipers – so I thought I’d mark the occasion with a brief post.
When then-Pocket Books editor Marco Palmieri came to me with the idea of writing a novel that was a prequel to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a taut political thriller, I said no. Twice.
Up until then, I’d made my bones in long-form fiction writing action stories with stuff-blowing-up and the idea of crafting a work that would be carried by hushed conversations, conspiracies and like sent me backing away to my safe place.
But Marco – an insightful chap and a great collaborator – insisted I mull it over. And I came around to it, I saw it as a way to test myself as a writer by doing something outside my comfort zone.
Day of the Vipers was the first in a series of novels that covered the turmoil during the Cardassian occupation of the planet Bajor, as hinted at in the early episodes of DS9; book one was written by me to help round out a trilogy with books two and three – Night of the Wolves and Dawn of the Eagles – written by S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison.
Before the Dominion War and the decimation of Cardassia… Before the coming of the Emissary and the discovery of the wormhole… Before space station Terok Nor became Deep Space Nine… There was the Occupation; the military takeover of an alien planet and the violent insurgency that fought against it. The Star Trek: Terok Nor trilogy chronicles this perilous period in the history of the planet Bajor.
All three books got a fantastic cover treatment by the amazing John Picacio, and I still have a big print of the Vipers art in my office…
The series was well received by fans, and set me off writing Trek novels – my latest, Fear Itself, which ties in to the new Star Trek Discovery series, will be out later this year. Vipers went on to win in the ‘Best Speculative Fiction Original’ category for the 2009 Scribe Awards for tie-ins, an endorsement that I was proud to have – and a sign that I’d made the right choice in taking on the gig.
You can hear me talking about the novel (and some of my other Trek fiction) in this interview I did for Trek FM’s Literary Treks podcast Matthew Rushing and Christopher Jones.
If you’d like to read them, dead-tree editions of the Terok Nor series are harder to come by these days, but eBooks are available from Amazon UK, Amazon US or via Simon & Schuster’s website.
